APPLETON, WIS. — With its abundance of natural resources and a young, dynamic population, Africa long has been viewed as a land of great promise. But political instability and crippling economic challenges have often produced more turmoil than prosperity. The world’s second largest continent in size and population will be the focus of Lawrence University’s annual Povolny International Studies Lecture Series, “Africa Today: Problems and Solutions.”
Noted Africanist M. Crawford Young, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, opens the five-part series Monday, Jan. 22, at 7 p.m. in the Wriston Art Center auditorium with the address “Beyond State Crisis in Post-Colonial Africa?” All lectures in the series are free and open to the public.
“It has been more than 25 years since most African countries became independent, yet Africa as a region remains the poorest in the world, troubled by persistent conflict, high levels of poverty, refugee flows and social problems brought by famine and disease,” said Claudena Skran, Lawrence University associate professor of government and the series coordinator.
“This year’s series looks to address both the historical and political roots of African problems as well as examine solutions to them, including conflict resolution, foreign aid, trade and different development strategies.”
Young will share an historic review of the optimism widely held by nationalist leaders, academic observers and the policy community around 1960 when much of the continent gained independence and examine the factors that prevented reality from matching that optimism, among them underestimating the burden of the colonial legacy, economic vulnerabilities and the negative impact of Cold War rivalries.
Young also will discuss the reasons why soon after gaining independence, many of the new country’s democratic institutions put in place by withdrawing colonizers gave way to single-party systems, including the use of military coups in the last half of the 1960s and the rise of “neopatrimonial autocracies” of the 1970s and ’80s. According to Young, the present map of Africa “was entirely constructed by colonial cartography, thus bearing the original sin of alien origin and artificiality.”
Regarded as one of the world’s leading scholars on Africa, Young has written seven books on African politics, edited six others and has had more than 100 scholarly articles and book chapters published.
He gained academic prominence with the release of “The Politics of Cultural Pluralism” in 1976, which earned the Herskovits Prize from the African Studies Association.
His 1994 book, “The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective,” was awarded the Lubbert Prize from the American Political Science Association as the best book written that year in the field of comparative politics. Other books written by Young include “The Ideology and Development in Africa” and “The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State.”
In addition to spending 38 years (1963-2001) on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Young served as the dean of the faculty of social science at the Universite Nationale du Zaire from 1973-75. During his career he also served as a visiting professor at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda and the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal.
A former president of the African Studies Association, Young was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998 and named to the Library of Congress’ Scholars Council in 2004. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Other scheduled speakers in the series include Joseph Sebarenzi, former head of the Rwanda parliament who was granted asylum in the United States (Feb. 20), Michael Fosdal, a specialist on British politics who teaches government at Lawrence’s London Center (April 3), Jacqueline Klopp, assistant professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University (April 10) and John Roome, an operations director with the World Bank (TBA).
The “Africa Today: Problems and Solutions” lecture series is sponsored by the Mojmir Povolny Lectureship in International Studies. Named in honor of long-time Lawrence government professor Mojmir Povolny, the lectureship promotes interest and discussion on issues of moral significance and ethical dimensions.
