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The Centre for Gender and Africa Studies (CGAS) and the UFS will host an Africa Day Webinar on the topic, Reflections on Africa amidst Covid-19, to be delivered by Prof. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, renowned decolonial scholar. The title of his lecture is Revisiting the African idea of Africa during the moment of Covid-19 pandemic.
The crisis delivered by Coronavirus and Covid-19 invites Africans to rethink and even unthink the long-standing dependency on Europe and North America for help. What has dawned on Africa is the equally long-standing aspiration of self-reliance. What is emerging is a new African idea of Africa which takes responsibility for its own challenges. This new African idea of Africa challenges the Mudimbean idea of Africa embodied in the colonial library.
Thus this presentation reassesses how Africa has relied on its own historical experience, its own knowledge, and own people to confront Covid-19. What is of interest here is the proverbial wisdom of necessity being the source of invention. The presentation brings to the fore the decolonial turn as it gestures beyond crisis into post-Covid-19 world order. It ends with a call for decolonial love founded on new ethics of living together and new economies of care.
Bio of Prof Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatshen
Date: Tuesday, 26 May, 2020
Time: 14:00
Duration: 90 min max (45 min talk, 45 min Q&A)
The webinar can be accessed via one of the following links:
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Prof Neil Heideman awarded a Fellowship
2006-07-25
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Prof Neil Heideman, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the University of the Free State (UFS), was awarded the Fulbright Senior Researcher Fellowship to visit the laboratory of Prof Jack Sites, a fellow herpetologist at Brigham Young University, Utah, in the United States of America (USA), from October 2006-January 2007.
The Fulbright programme is a flagship programme of the government of the USA which focuses on the exchange of international experts in a variety of educational activities such as advanced research and university lecturing.
Prof Heideman will use the opportunity to develop an understanding of the application of micro satellites (short repetitive sequences in DNA molecules) to population genetics questions. In recent years micro satellites have become the marker of choice for measuring genetic variability in populations. Prof Sites has extensive experience in the application of the technique and is therefore an ideal candidate to spend time with. Although not new to South Africa, the country's capacity in the use of micro satellites is still very limited, being essentially non-existent among herpetologists.
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