2011 Newsletter - African Studies Centre - University of Oxford

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While our thoughts were turned to the future with thesevarious initiatives, the 2010-11 academic year andour teaching and events schedule was as busy as ever.The MSc African Studies welcomed its sixth cohort inOctober 2010 of 37 students. With 11 nationalitiesrepresented it was very good to recruit about a quarterof the cohort from African countries. The quality ofthe students was again very high, with many receivingimpressive scholarship awards to join us. The cohortparticipated fully and energetically in the many activitiesorganized through the Centre over the year.Our events schedule was very full with many highlights.George Bizos, part of the legal team defending NelsonMandela at the Rivonia Trial, presented the Bram FischerMemorial lecture held at Rhodes House in February. InJune Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttall presented theAfrican Studies Annual lecture on ‘Worldliness, Citiness,Postcolonial Life and Thinking from the South’. Ourannual lectures are now available as podcasts via theuniversity’s iTunes U pages (http://itunes.ox.ac.uk/).We also sponsored a range of African Studies eventsacross the university during the year. These includeda conference on Sport in Africa, an internationalsymposium on Angola, and a conference on ‘Democracy,Populism and Opposition Politics’. We were also delightedto support events organised by our graduate students:the annual Researching Africa Day, which providesgraduate students with the opportunity to presenttheir original research, was very well-attended, and theinaugural AFRISOC symposium on ‘Pan-Africanism for anew generation’ was a great success.I must end by thanking all my colleagues fortheir advice, hard work and commitment tothe African Studies programme this past year.The steps we are able to make in planning forthe future are only possible because of theirexpertise and dedication.Africa Studies Centreannual lectures on itunesLeft to Right: VC Andrew Hamilton, Kofi Annan, Stefano Lucchini (SeniorExecutive Vice-President - Public Affairs and Communication Department, Eni)Allessandro Lanza (Chief Executive officer - Corporate University, Eni)3
‘Landscape people and parks’: a research project onenvironmental change in the Lower Omo Valley,southwestern EthiopiaDr David TurtonEthiopia’s Lower Omo Valley is best known as one of the most important sites in the world for the studyof human evolution. The earliest known fossils of our anatomical ancestor, Homo sapiens, were found herein 1968, making this the oldest landscape in the world known to have been inhabited by modern humans.And yet our knowledge of its recent history remains remarkably superficial. The aim of this three-yearproject (2007-2010), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under its Landscapeand Environment Programme, was to investigate human-environmental interaction in the Lower Omo Valley,using historical, anthropological and palaeoecological methods. The project team consisted of one historian(Professor David Anderson, Principal Investigator), one palaeoecologist (Dr Graciela Gil-Romera) and twoanthropologists (Dr Marco Bassi and Dr David Turton).Vegetation survey of 50 x 50m plots to investigate bushencroachment patternsBased on oral historical accounts of land use andsettlement over the past 200 years, and on library andarchival sources going back to the 1880s, we wereable to build up the most comprehensive and detailedunderstanding yet achieved of the recent history of thepeoples of the Lower Omo. The palaeoecological researchresulted in a 2000-year record of vegetation change inthe northern part of the study area, using fossilized pollensamples from hyrax middens – as far as we know, thefirst time this method has been attempted in East Africa.This was complemented by a study of local perceptionsand explanations of bush encroachment in the savannaover the past forty years. Both the long-term andshort-term ecological studies demonstrated the value ofintegrating ecological and local knowledge in the studyof landscape change. Different ways of ‘constructing’the landscape of the Lower Omo (by conservationists,state officials and local people) were also examined, onthe assumption that the interaction between peopleand the environment is determined as much by broaderpolitical processes as it is by local ecological ones. A listof publications reporting on these findings can be foundon the AHRC’s Landscape and Environment Programmewebsite, at www.landscape.ac.uk/research/larger/landscape_people_parks.htm.As its name implies, it was hoped that the projectwould be relevant to conservation policy and helpto resolve conflicts between conservationists andlocal people (two national parks were set up in thearea in the 1960s and 1970s). As it got under way,however, it became clear that both conservationistsand local people would soon be faced with the mostdevastating human-induced environmental changein the history of the Lower Omo. This would resultfrom the construction of a hydro-electric dam in themiddle Omo Valley, which is due to start operatingin 2013. Known as Gibe III, the dam will eliminatethe annual flood, upon which all the residents ofthe Omo flood plain depend, and make possible thedevelopment of large-scale scale commercial irrigationschemes. These schemes are now being implemented,without the collaboration, consent or even priorknowledge of local people. If evidence from elsewhereis anything to go by, this is likely to have devastatinghuman and environmental consequences. We aretherefore lobbying the Ethiopian government and theinternational donor community (Ethiopia currentlyreceives more UK development aid than any othercountry) in the hope that urgent steps will be taken toavert what looks like an otherwise inevitable tragedy.For background information go to www.mursi.org/news-items/huge-irrigation-scheme-planned-forthe-lower-omo-valleyCattle returning from drinking at the Omo in the dry season4Photos courtesy of Miguel Sevilla-Callejo
Page 1 and 2: African StudiesCentre2011 Newslette
Page 3: Director’s ReportThis year was ma
Page 7 and 8: Mau Mau in the High CourtProfessor
Page 9 and 10: Bram Fisher MemorialLecture: Human
Page 11 and 12: African Studies Centre hosts Michae
Page 13 and 14: MSc graduatesorates"Control, ideolo
Page 15 and 16: An Economist AbroadMartin Williams
Page 17 and 18: Malcolm Anderson is now theEvents C
Page 19 and 20: Abigail Ludwig, USBA Comparative Po

2011 Newsletter - African Studies Centre - University of Oxford

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