This is the title of a book TrustAfrica will launch officially on February 11th in Harare, Zimbabwe. The book is a gem that seeks to tackle policy alternatives the Southern African nation could have pursued to avoid the quagmire that has entangled it today.
TrustAfrica is enhancing independent coverage of the Habré Trial proceedings taking place in Dakar, Senegal. Since the trial began on 20 July 2015, TrustAfrica’s International Criminal Justice (ICJ) Fund has been working closely with a consortium of civil society organizations and law graduates to monitor, document, and share information on proceedings across various platforms.
The ICJ Fund has mentored a group of law graduates from the Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD) in Dakar, Senegal, to monitor and provide daily reports on the proceedings. These reports are disseminated widely across various networks.
The work of these students provides an invaluable resource to activists and legal experts working on criminal justice issues in Africa and beyond. As the trial reopened on February 8, 2015 Le Monde newspaper highlighted TrustAfrica’s pioneering work in supporting documentation and monitoring of the groundbreaking trial.
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The trial of former Chadian President, Hissène Habré, resumes today, February 8th, 2016, in Dakar, Senegal. The lawyers from both sides will be making their final oral arguments in a week expected to see proceedings come to a close before a verdict is given in May 2016.
The Habré trial reached a major milestone on December 15th, 2015, the day the last witness testified before the Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC) in Dakar, Senegal. The EAC was set up under an agreement between the Government of Senegal and the African Union with a mandate to try serious crimes allegedly committed in Chad between 1982 and 1990.
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FOR most of us here in Africa what we know has always been defined by what others know or rather what they think they know about us. Externally generated forms of knowledge and paradigms tend to shape what is possible for us as people and as nations. At TrustAfrica, we believe that higher education should be a critical engine for redefining and repositioning ourselves for shared economic growth and social progress. We realize that our future and that of the next generation depends on improving the quality and relevance of higher education to ensure that it adequately responds to the challenges that we face as a continent. This e-book presents some important thinking that can potentially contribute towards specific actions that need to be taken and hopefully help us forge this new future.
Aicha Bah Diallo Chair TrustAfrica
The fund was established by the Open Society, MacArthur and Ford Foundations to aid the current Nigerian government in its campaign to fight corruption and institute criminal justice reforms. It aims to contribute towards the advancement of accountability and probity in public service in Nigeria by ensuring that those who abuse the public trust are predictably brought to justice. TrustAfrica oversees and administers the fund’s activities.
Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa and the new administration has demonstrated strong political will in tackling corruption. The fund is supporting that effort by looking at innovative ways to use technologies like social media and citizen participation to increase public opprobrium for corruption. We are collaborating with partners to build synergies, in some cases providing support for institutional capacity building. Future plans may focus on criminal justice reform and other activities, including the establishment of a civil society–government monitoring partnership and assessing the risk of corruption and capacity gaps in institutions that focus on anticorruption and criminal justice. The fund is also looking beyond legal and institutional reform and international processes to influencing behavior at local and national levels.
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ROYNF (Robert and Yeranda Nkosi Foundation) is a micro level incremental innovation complemented by comparative data which seeks to raise learning outcomes by developing a language appropriate participative learning model. The ROYNF approach is compatible with Uganda’s national Thematic Curriculum, and yet distinct, in that, it features pupils’student group work, application in private schools, and kinaesthetic/participative activities. While these might not be new ideas, their application in this context is innovative. This project targets Lumasaaba language speakers, but the approach should be useful in other languages, as well.
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The MECPK project has evolved significantly since its first iteration. It now includes the review, revision, and implementation of the Reading for Comprehension methodology (RfC), teacher training in that revised methodology, the use of an improved student learning assessment tool, comparison of learning outcomes to baseline and to a control group, increased parental support, and the establishment of local libraries.
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ELEP (Early Learning Enhancement Project), a micro level incremental innovation complemented by comparative data, seeks to raise learning outcomes by engaging and empowering community education stakeholders to produce context-specific strategies, training events and learning innovations which address the realities of each individual project school. This is done by an annual cycle of assessment, analysis of resultant data, stakeholder interaction, creation of a work plan, and community action. This cycle addresses learning outcomes as well as school management and school environment.
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