Olivia African Studies 2017

The problem of poaching African elephants for their ivory tusks has long affected the elephant population. If we analyze the elephant population by region East Africa has taken a hard hit with their population being, “halved in a decade”. Similarly in Central Africa the illegal killings have still remained very high according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. In a positive contrast the elephant population have stabilized and are on the rise in Southern Africa. This stabilization can be due to the the rise of different countries applying restrictions and laws against ivory markets. Another factor can be due to the an increase in seizures of illegal ivory. Because the world markets including Hong Kong, the US, China and the UK are implementing bans on ivory it has caused a panic in those participating in the illegal ivory trade. This closing of markets and increase in restrictions have initiated a panic in the traders resulting in them trying to sell off as...

It's hard to consider a place where an educational opportunity is not equal for boys and girls. Particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa there is a trend in the educational opportunity concerning girls and young women. South Sudan is particularly plagued with this where “three-quarters of girls do not even make it to primary school”. There seemed to be a connection between the countries on the top 10 toughest places for girls to get an education and the situations their citizens faced living in them. Countries that are politically destabilized by war lead to displacement of the citizens in the society. These displaced citizens are at risk for poverty and poor nutrition due to the instability of the nation. These people and families whose lives are being shaken up ultimately affect the young girls who find themselves without an opportunity to attend school and receive a quality education. Girls in these situations are more often then not expected to work which is reasonable if on...

        Does anyone else remember that one time Donald Trump enacted a travel ban? While some countries have since been redacted the newest edition to the countries banned from traveling to the United States is Chad. The article explores the possible reasons for the denial of Chadians, and there are not many. The first argument involves a statement saying that "Chad has failed to 'adequately share public-safety and terrorism-related information'". This seems like a counterintuitive statement because the US has made previous statements of their excitement to "expanding the cooperation" with Chad. The article also made a point that "Chad has been one of the more effective US counter-terrorist allies in the Sub-Saharan region for several years". This reasoning seems pretty invalid because the pattern of behavior in Chad in relation to the US has not changed, the only thing that has changed is the President and in turn his interpretations of ties of l...

In an ironic twist of fate it seems the number one murderer of our dear rain forests in Africa are due to our beloved cocoa plant. We have been studying in class how the change in Africa's weather was a huge factor in the development of societies across the whole continent and how favorable soils for crops were few and far between. But it seems in the Ivory Coast as well as Ghana they have tended all of their favorable soil for the good of cocoa production and all they have gotten in return is serious amounts of deforestation and destruction to the land. Acres upon acres are cleared for the production of cocoa which are then sold off to massive corporations such as Mars and Nestle. If there is no solution found to this dramatic deforestation issue there will be no forests left in the Ivory Coast by 2030. Africa is a continent who is seems to continuously adapting from its situation in the past to the harsh problems they face in the present day as well as preparing for a positive f...

In this week's reading we took a look at how the development of a substantial food supply was an uphill battle in Africa. The poor soils left little to be desired in the sense of having a successful farming communities. Iliffe says that historically the African people adapted to their environment instead of changing their environment to fit to their needs. While the emergence of food-producing communities undoubtedly took place on the continent, we have learned little about, if any, food producing communities to exist on the island of Madagascar. In the twenty-first century Africa is a country still struggling with adequate food supply, but the children of Madagascar are not the first to come to mind when we think of the lack of food and the stability of poverty. This article was posted yesterday, and it goes into detail of the struggles the children of Madagascar face off of the mainland. While Madagascar's soil can produce a multitude of crops, the people of Malagasy are fo...

In our reading this week we were introduced to the idea of Africa and how the whole history of Africa may be an illusion in itself created from outsiders looking in. It is the bias ingrained in these accounts of "history" which makes it crucial for students in the modern day to analyze this history with a grain of salt. In A Very Short Introduction it is stated, "It was the Atlantic slave trade...that forged an explicit link in European minds between racial inferiority, enslavement, and Africa" ( pg 6). The modern day Europe and all of the Americas would not be what they are today without the Atlantic Slave Trade. So this begs the question if slaves from Africa were so essential to the success of the Western world why is it that social and racial inferiority are linked to the idea Africa. The Guardian stated in an article how Moroccan Isis terrorists are now posing a large threat at the border of Europe, and how the majority of these Isis supporters came from ...