Section: Research Projects
The Centre of African Studies currently hosts around a dozen research grants. Associated staff are involved in many more. Funders include DFID, the ESRC, the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, Microsoft Foundation, the Scottish Government and the EU. Some of these grants are summarised below and further information is available via the links on the right hand side.
ABORNE is an interdisciplinary network of researchers interested in all aspects of international borders and trans-boundary phenomena in Africa. The network held its inaugural meeting in Edinburgh in 2007 on the initiative of its chairman, Paul Nugent and has since grown from some 20 to well over 200 members.
Since June 2009 ABORNE has received funding from the Research Networking Programme of the European Science Foundation, which includes the salary of the network's coordinator Wolfgang Zeller.
ABORNE and the African Union Border Programme (AUBP) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to formalize their continuous exchange on issues of scientific and policy relevance.
In cooperation with ABORNE, Palgrave/ Macmillan is publishing a new book series on African borderlands.
A more detailed introduction to ABORNE is here.
Rachel Hayman, Michelle Taylor, James Smith, Sabine Hoehn, Fay Crawford, Patricia Jeffery, Ian Harper, Marshall Dozier
The research team is conducting a System Review of evidence of the impact of aid on maternal health outcomes (May-December 2010). The project is funded by DFID as part of a pilot exercise in using systematic review methodologies to improve evidence-based policy in international development. The project compares the evidence of the impact of different types of aid on maternal and reproductive health (Millennium Development Goal 5).
Olga Morawczynski, James Smith
This project, funded by Microsoft Research, analyses the adoption and usage of M-PESA, a Kenyan m-banking application. Because m-banking has only recently been launched in Africa, this project will fill this gap in literature by analyzing the adoption and usage of M-PESA, a Kenyan m-banking application.
This is a £2.5 million project running from Oct. 2005 until Sept. 2010 involving Kenneth King from the Centre of African Studies and colleagues from the Centre of South Asian Studies, and others at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and four partners in India, Pakistan, Kenya and Ghana.
DFID Research project: Beyond the Basics - Education and Poverty.
The Centre of African Studies was awarded funding from 2004-2006 from the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), under its Policy-Oriented Research Programme, to do a study on the contribution of post-basic education and training to poverty reduction, in collaboration with researchers in South Africa and India.
James Smith plays a key role in the Innogen Centre where he is director of developing country research. His research there focuses on two interrelated themes, firstly how science and development policy interact to promote particular technologies as 'appropriate' and secondly on how institutions and innovation can best combine to produce pro-poor science for development.
Policy Innovation Systems for Clean Energy Security (PISCES) is a five year Research Programme Consortium funded by the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). Its objective is to produce policy-relevant information and approaches that can be applied by governments in developing the role of bioenergy in delivering energy access for the poor. Put simply, PISCES is about ‘New Knowledge for Sustainable Bioenergy’.
Since 2006 the Scottish Government has funded ‘Higher education capacity building’ in the Centre of African Studies. The project funds African academics to spend time in Scotland in order to develop research ideas, write, and spend time networking with Scottish academics. The project has enabled CAS to successfully host 15 fellows from several African countries.
The need for this project was identified by Honourable Suzan Motuvu Nakawuki's visit to the Scottish Parliament in 2007. The aim is to provide Scottish Education expertise and capacity to run workshops for primary school teachers to assist in improving the quality of primary education in the rural area of Busiiro, Uganda. The project will benefit the providers of primary education in Busiiro by offering training not currently available to them. The education areas identified include teacher pupil relationships, utilisation of visual aids in teaching and combating attendance issues particularly amongst girls in the community.
Paul Nugent conducted a one-year research project over 2009, during which time he was attached to the University of Stellenbosch. The project entitled “Race, Taste and Power: The Cape Wine Industry” is a study of stalled innovation over the course of the twentieth century. The project addresses the limitations imposed by racially-defined liquor laws (reflecting the influence of the temperance movement) and consumer preferences, as well as the politics of the industry that tended to promote quantity ahead of quality despite significant investments in research. The project traces the shift from a highly regulated system, administered by the KWV, to the present dispensation in which Cape wine industry has become one of the least regulated in the world.
Lawrence Dritsas, Ian Maudlin, James Smith
This project is mapping the complex post-colonial histories of two international veterinary research institutions established within the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research system (CGIAR). These two institutions, the Addis Ababa-based International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA) and the Nairobi-based International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases (ILRAD), would later merge to form the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in 1994.
‘Highwaymen Running Business’ looks at the acquisition and use of mobile phones on streets in various cities in east and southern Africa. The project covers the mobile phone use of those who have been ignored by influential researchers preoccupied with surveying entrepreneurs in fixed premises, and investigates a small number of businesses run from handsets carried on the person. The focus is on the business of mobile phone acquisition and resale, or what might more accurately be described as the trade of low-cost handsets acquired through often illegal means.
Funded by the Development Trust Research Fund, College of Humanities and Social Science, July 2009 - June 2010. In May and June 2008, South Africa was shaken as xenophobic violence spread across the country. Immigrants from various African states who had fled to South Africa as refugees or to pursue economic opportunities were subjected to outbreaks of violence that quickly spread across South Africa’s major urban areas. The state did very little to curtail these incidents.This project investigates the role of mainstream Christian organisations as socio-political actors in post-Apartheid South Africa in their attempts to deal with the immediate aftermath of the xenophobic attacks and engage with the latent xenophobia that post-Apartheid society has not confronted.
This page was published on 5 June 2011