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ANU Africa Network
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This website was established in 2013 by David Lucas, and renovated and relaunched in 2020 as part of a project to increase awareness of Africa and African studies in the ANU and the ACT, funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Another outcome of that project was a major research report, published in August 2021, African Studies at the Australian National University and in the Australian Capital Territory, analyzing the past, present and future of the study of Africa at the Australian National University and the wider Australian University sector.
The major innovation on this updated website is the creation of the ACT Africa Expert Directory which lists experts on Africa from institutions around the ACT, primarily the ANU. We will continue to curate this list, offering a key resource for media, government and non-government organizations seeking expert facts and opinions on Africa. Individuals can request to be added to the list by contacting the website managers.
Another notable addition is the expanded directory of PhD theses on Africa produced in the territory’s universities, a solid measure of the vitality of the study of Africa in the city of Canberra.
Reviewing these directories, it is revealing to note that the vast majority of research on Africa is produced by disciplinary experts (environmental scientists, economists, demographers, etc.) rather than area studies experts. This means that the study of Africa is woven into the fabric of the research culture of the ANU and the ACT’s other universities in ways that are not necessarily apparent.
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Intensive and extensive margins of mining and development: evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
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Intensive and extensive margins of mining and development: evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
Crawford School of Public Policy | Arndt-Corden Department of Economics
ACDE Trade & Development SeminarsDate & time
Tuesday 26 September 2017
2.00pm–3.30pm
Venue
Seminar Room C, Coombs Building, Fellows Road, ANUSpeaker
Sambit Bhattacharyya, Sussex University.Contacts
Ross McLeod
seminars.economics@anu.edu.au“What are the economic consequences of mining in Sub-Saharan Africa? Using a panel of 3,635 districts from 42 Sub-Saharan African countries for the period 1992 to 2012 we investigate the effects of mining on living standards measured by night-lights. Night-lights increase in mining districts when mineral production expands (intensive margin), but large effects approximately equivalent to 16 per cent increase in GDP are mainly associated with new discoveries and new production (extensive margin). We identify the effect by carefully choosing feasible but not yet mined districts as a control group. In addition, we exploit giant and major mineral discoveries as exogenous news shocks. In spite of the large within district effects, there is little evidence of significant spillovers to other districts reinforcing the enclave nature of mines in Africa. Furthermore, the local effects disappear after mining activities come to an end which is consistent with the ’resource curse’ view.”
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The Francophone Africans: A Last Frontier for Australia
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The Francophone Africans: A Last Frontier for Australia
DATE:Tue, 17 Oct 2017
18:00 – 19:00. Refreshments available from 5.30 pm.VENUE: AIIA (ACT Branch), Stephen House, 32 Thesiger Court, Deakin ACT
SPEAKER
Mr William Fisher is the Special Envoy of the Australian Government for the Francophone States of Africa and La Francophonie. He is a former Australian senior diplomat. Mr Fisher is currently a Visiting Fellow at the College of Diplomacy at the Australian National University.
ABSTRACT
While Africa in general, and the French-speaking part of it in particular, may seem of distant interest to Australian preoccupations, there is an increasing number of issues where Australia will find it needs constructive partners in this region. The 24 Francophones constitute about half of the African bloc, and thus are an essential group in any contested UN vote, where they can act quite efficiently as a bloc. Each country is quite different, and state governance issues are often complicated. Terrorist threats can dominate in several, particularly the Sahel countries, while much of central and equatorial Africa suffers from years of often violent political instability and poor development outcomes. The Indian Ocean states, while not immune from political troubles of their own in the past, are generally now doing rather well. Australia has no assets in the region, and no resident Embassies other than, from just this month, Morocco.
COST: Free for AIIA members, $10 for non-members, $5 students. Payable at the door.
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Mortality transition and associated socioeconomic differentials in Agincourt, rural South Africa, 1993-2013
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Mortality transition and associated socioeconomic differentials in Agincourt, rural South Africa, 1993-2013: Findings from population surveillance
Date and time:
Fri, 22nd Sep 2017 – 3:00pm – 4:00pm
***** Location: NOTE VENUE CHANGESEMINAR ROOM B, COOMBS BUILDING
Presenters:
Chodziwadziwa Kabudula (Caldwell Fellow, see below) and Brian Houle (Lecturer in Demography)Link to Flyer: https://demography.anu.edu.au/seminars/tba-4
Abstract:
Understanding a population’s mortality burden and its variation by socioeconomic status (SES) is important for setting locally-relevant health and development priorities, identifying critical elements for strengthening of health systems, and determining the focus of health services and programmes. We examine changes in mortality levels, cause composition, and variation by socioeconomic status in Agincourt, rural South Africa over the period 1993-2013. The population experienced steady and substantial increases in overall and communicable disease related mortality from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, peaking around 2005-07 due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Overall mortality steadily declined afterwards following reduction in HIV/AIDS-related mortality due to the widespread introduction of free antiretroviral therapy (ART) available from public health facilities. By 2013, however, the cause of death distribution was yet to reach the levels it occupied in the early 1990s. Overall, the poorest individuals in the population experienced the highest mortality burden and HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis mortality persistently showed an inverse relation with SES throughout the period 2001-13. Although mortality from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) increased over time in both sexes and injuries were a prominent cause of death in males, neither of these causes of death showed consistent, significant associations with household SES. These findings highlight the need for integrated health-care planning and programme delivery strategies to increase access to and uptake of HIV testing, linkage to care and ART, and prevention and treatment of NCDs to achieve further reduction in mortality. Greater attention is especially needed for the poorest individuals to reduce associated socioeconomic inequalities.
Chodziwadziwa (Cho) Whiteson Kabudula is a Data Scientist and Researcher at the MRC/Wits Rural Public Health & Health Transitions Research Unit (the MRC/Wits-Agincourt Research Unit) at the School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He is the 2017 John C Caldwell Population, Health and Development Visiting at the National Centre for Epidemiology & Population Health and School of Demography at the Australian National University. His research focuses on integrating population-level socio-demographical, behavioural, disease and risk factor prevalence data from surveillance populations with clinical, treatment and laboratory data and applying demographic, statistical, computational and informatics techniques to study population-level morbidity, mortality and utilisation of health services.