Social Science Research Council
Alex de Waal is a program director of the Social Science Research Council, a senior fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and a director of Justice Africa in London. He started his research career on the Horn of Africa in 1984 with a study of the famine in Darfur and subsequently studied the social, political and health dimensions of famine, war, genocide and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He was co-founder and co-director of African Rights (1992-98), chairman of Mines Advisory Group (1993-98), initiator of the Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa (2002-03), and a fellow of the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard (2004-06). In 2006 Alex served as advisor to the African Union mediation team for the Darfur conflict.
Dr de Waal received his DPhil from Oxford University in 1988 and has written or edited thirteen books. Among them are, Famine that Kills: Darfur, Sudan, 1984-1985 (Clarendon Press, 1989); Facing Genocide: The Nuba of Sudan (African Rights, 1995); Food and Power in Sudan (African Rights, 1997); Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa (James Currey, 1997); Demilitarizing the Mind: African Agendas for Peace and Security (Africa World Press, 2002); Islamism and Its Enemies in the Horn of Africa (Hurst 2004), AIDS and Power: Why There is No Political Crisis-Yet (Zed, 2006); War in Darfur and the Search for Peace (Harvard University Press 2007); and (with Julie Flint), Darfur: A New History of a Long War (revised edition, Zed, 2008). In the UK New Year's Honors for 2009, Alex was awarded an OBE.
President Thabo Mbeki, speaking on Africa Day at the Thabo Mbeki Leadership Institute, emphasized a necessary precondition if Africa is to claim the 21st century, namely, “the need for Africa to recapture the intellectual space to define its future, and therefore the imperative to develop its intellectual capital!”
The text of his presentation is available here: [...]
This is the second in a two-part review of Patrick Chabal’s book, Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling. This posting applies the account to an area of the continent that the author deliberately neglects, namely Ethiopia and the Sahelian-Sudanic states, including Sudan itself.
I have a confession to make. As series editor for African Issues [...]
Read the rest of Ethics and Power in Sudanic Africa.This is the first in a two-part review of Patrick Chabal’s book, Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling . Part one is a general review, part two applies the account to a part of the continent that the author neglects, namely Ethiopia and the Sahelian-Sudanic states, including Sudan itself.
Chabal’s book is an essay more [...]
Read the rest of Ethics and Power in Africa.Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, the most irrepressible Pan Africanist of his generation, died in Nairobi on 24 May 2009. His friends and colleagues are stunned at the loss of a man who was so full of life and humour, such a determined Afro-optimist, and such a devoted father to his children, Aisha and Aida. Africa is [...]
Read the rest of In Memoriam: Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem.The ICC arrest warrant against President Omar al Bashir heralds a new era for global governance and human rights. But it is not at all clear what will be the character of this new era. Is Luis Moreno Ocampo the vanguard of the human rights international, bringing a new dawn of justice and accountability, in [...]
Read the rest of The ICC, Sudan, and the Crisis of Human Rights.
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