Proverbs and African Modernity: Defining an Ethics of Becoming

African proverbs have, for good reason, attracted considerable attention from scholars, both African and non-African. One notable testimony to such attention is the international conference in South Africa from which came a monumental collection of scholarly articles now available on CD and in print. Another evidence of the interest the subject has enjoyed among African scholars is the wealth of publications they have produced in recent years, for example, Adeleke Adeeko’s monograph Proverbs, Textuality, and Nativism in African Literature; Ambrose Adikamkwu Monye’s Proverbs in African Orature: The Aniocha-Igbo Experience; Kwesi Yankah’s The Proverb in the Context of Akan Rhetoric: A Theory of Proverb Praxis; and my Yoruba Proverbs. In addition, there have been influential articles by Ayo Bamgbose, Lawrence. A. Boadi, Romanus N. Egudu, Kwame Gyekye, Yisa Yusuf, and a host of others whose omission from this rather abbreviated list is not meant as a slight. In a recent conversation, the preeminent paremiologist, Wolfgang Mieder, called my attention to the lineup of articles in the most recent issue of Proverbium [23: 2006], in which four of the five lead articles are by Nigerian scholars (Abimbola Adesoji, Bode Agbaje, George Olusola Ajibade, and Akinola Akintunde Asinyanbola) and on African proverbs, an indication, he said of the present effervescence of, and future potential for, proverb studies and publications on them on African soil. Because of these efforts we now know a good deal about proverbs as a cultural resource, their functionality and the protocols for their usage, but also their artistry-structure, wordplay, imagery, and so forth, especially after calls such as Isidore Okpewho’s (1992) that scholars pay due attention to the aesthetic dimensions of traditional oral forms.

Images as Afro-positivist narratives and counter hegemonic strategy: A study of #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou

To arrest the negative stereotypes of Africa in and outside the African continent, a number of civil society organizations and activists have launched various social media-assisted initiatives aimed at showcasing the positive facets of African cultures as well as the beautiful touristic attractions existing on the continent. One of such initiatives is the #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou movement launched in 2015 to combat the negative and colonial stereotypes of Africa through the sharing of beautiful images and videos of Africa on Twitter. The movement encouraged Africans of all horizons to share attractive images of Africa, particularly the ones that are rarely or never shown on mainstream media. Six years after the project was launched, it is high time to evaluate its strength and know some of its merits and implications. In line with this aphorism, this paper uses secondary sources and a qualitative analysis of images and videos shared on Twitter to examine the contribution of the #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou movement to the imperative of challenging colonial representations of Africa. It specifically discusses the genesis, trans-nationalization and promises of the project; and assesses the movement in the light of two philosophico-cultural currents/theories namely Afro-positivism and counter hegemony. The paper argues that the #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou movement put to question the popular but problematic belief that Africa is all about negativisms. It started a visual-assisted conversation not only about the wonders found on African soil but also about some of the cultures which non-Africans have often viewed as problematic or controversial. Such a conversation is a proof that Afro-optimism is still much alive on the continent and that; Africans are conscious that the fight against colonial stereotypes is a perpetual battle which must be fought even with the help of new digital cultures such as digitalized image-based activism.

Women and Church Ministry in Africa: Removing the Impasse Towards a Fruitful Theological Conversation.

Women in Africa, both in the traditional setup and in modern society form the cornerstone of the Church and society. They have spearheaded change in traditional and modern society and heralded the Gospel message on the African soil. Based on the formidable roles women played and the influential areas of authority they occupied in the social, economic, political, and religious dimensions of African traditional societies, such as priestesses, diviners, medicine women etc., I attempt to understand the role women play and the place they occupy in the Church and in society today taking the Catholic Church as a case study. The aim of this paper is to seek to understand the roles women play in society, as well as discerning how the roles could be promoted and improved for the betterment of the Church and society. For the discussion to achieve its objective, the following areas will be addressed: explore the place and the significance that traditional African society accorded to women; investigate the nature of women’s involvement in the life of the community as well as the precise roles that traditional society assigned to women; discover the place of women in Christianity and some of the roles the Catholic Church assigns to women members as documented; understand some of the challenges women face as members of the Church and the roles they play in enhancing the Gospel; and finally attempt to provide some recommendations in response to some of the challenges identified.

Women and Church Ministry in Africa: Removing the Impasse Towards a Fruitful Theological Conversation

Women in Africa, both in the traditional setup and in modern society form the cornerstone of the Church and society. They have spearheaded change in traditional and modern society and heralded the Gospel message on the African soil. Based on the formidable roles women played and the influential areas of authority they occupied in the social, economic, political, and religious dimensions of African traditional societies, such as priestesses, diviners, medicine women etc., I attempt to understand the role women play and the place they occupy in the Church and in society today taking the Catholic Church as a case study. The aim of this paper is to seek to understand the roles women play in society, as well as discerning how the roles could be promoted and improved for the betterment of the Church and society. For the discussion to achieve its objective, the following areas will be addressed: explore the place and the significance that traditional African society accorded to women; investigate the nature of women’s involvement in the life of the community as well as the precise roles that traditional society assigned to women; discover the place of women in Christianity and some of the roles the Catholic Church assigns to women members as documented; understand some of the challenges women face as members of the Church and the roles they play in enhancing the Gospel; and finally attempt to provide some recommendations in response to some of the challenges identified.

The central African soil spectral library: a new soil infrared repository and a geographical prediction analysis

Information on soil properties is crucial for soil preservation, the improvement of food security, and the provision of ecosystem services. In particular, for the African continent, spatially explicit information on soils and their ability to sustain these services is still scarce. To address data gaps, infrared spectroscopy has achieved great success as a cost-effective solution to quantify soil properties in recent decades. Here, we present a mid-infrared soil spectral library (SSL) for central Africa (CSSL) that can predict key soil properties, allowing for future soil estimates with a minimal need for expensive and time-consuming wet chemistry. Currently, our CSSL contains over 1800 soil samples from 10 distinct geoclimatic regions throughout the Congo Basin and along the Albertine Rift. For the analysis, we selected six regions from the CSSL, for which we built predictive models for total carbon (TC) and total nitrogen (TN) using an existing continental SSL (African Soil Information Service, AfSIS SSL; n=1902) that does not include central African soils. Using memory-based learning (MBL), we explored three different strategies at decreasing degrees of geographic extrapolation, using models built with (1) the AfSIS SSL only, (2) AfSIS SSL combined with the five remaining central African regions, and (3) a combination of AfSIS SSL, the remaining five regions, and selected samples from the target region (spiking). For this last strategy we introduce a method for spiking MBL models. We found that when using the AfSIS SSL only to predict the six central African regions, the root mean square error of the predictions (RMSEpred) was between 3.85–8.74 and 0.40–1.66 g kg−1 for TC and TN, respectively. The ratio of performance to the interquartile distance (RPIQpred) ranged between 0.96–3.95 for TC and 0.59–2.86 for TN. While the effect of the second strategy compared to the first strategy was mixed, the third strategy, spiking with samples from the target regions, could clearly reduce the RMSEpred to 3.19–7.32 g kg−1 for TC and 0.24–0.89 g kg−1 for TN. RPIQpred values were increased to ranges of 1.43–5.48 and 1.62–4.45 for TC and TN, respectively. In general, predicted TC and TN for soils of each of the six regions were accurate; the effect of spiking and avoiding geographical extrapolation was noticeably large. We conclude that our CSSL adds valuable soil diversity that can improve predictions for the Congo Basin region compared to using the continental AfSIS SSL alone; thus, analyses of other soils in central Africa will be able to profit from a more diverse spectral feature space. Given these promising results, the library comprises an important tool to facilitate economical soil analyses and predict soil properties in an understudied yet critical region of Africa. Our SSL is openly available for application and for enlargement with more spectral and reference data to further improve soil diagnostic accuracy and cost-effectiveness.

Evaluating the Nigerian prosperity gospel as a mixed ideology

There are two popular suggestions as to how the prosperity gospel emerged in Nigeria. The first school of thought posits that the phenomenon of the prosperity gospel was exclusively an American ideology imported into Nigeria, while the second view holds that it was entirely an African ideology nurtured with African ingredients and popularised on African soil. There has been little literature that has actively and adequately explored the Nigerian prosperity gospel as a combination of the American prosperity gospel and the Nigerian Pentecostal revivalism. Therefore, to fill this gap in the literature, this article suggests that the Nigerian prosperity gospel is a joint theology with elements of the American prosperity gospel ideology, which has its origins in the American New Thought movement, and the Nigerian Pentecostal revivalism, which has its origins in the Nigerian indigenous Pentecostal movement. This attempt employs a historical approach. In this vein, the narrative explores related literature about the prosperity gospel in Nigeria and offers a radical shift from the popular views that solely attribute the emergence of prosperity gospel ideology to either the Nigerian Indigenous Pentecostal revivalism or the American prosperity theology.

Characterisation of Metarhizium majus (Hypocreales: Clavicipitaceae) isolated from the Western Cape Province, South Africa

Entomopathogenic fungi (EPF) are important soil-dwelling entomopathogens, which can be used as biological control agents against pest insects. EPF are capable of causing lethal epizootics in pest insect populations in agroecosystems. During a survey of the orchard soil at an organic farm, different EPF species were collected and identified to species level, using both morphological and molecular techniques. The EPF were trapped from soil samples taken from an apricot orchard. The traps, which were baited in the laboratory, used susceptible host insects, including the last-instar larvae of Galleria mellonella (wax moth larvae) and Tenebrio molitor (mealworm larvae). The potential pathogenicity of the local Metarhizium majus isolate was tested and verified using susceptible laboratory-reared last-instar T. molitor larvae. The identification of the M. majus isolated from South African soil was verified using both morphological and molecular techniques. The occurrence of M. majus in the South African soil environment had not previously been reported.

African Soil Protection Law

The protection of soil and the sustainable management of soils is a precondition for sustainable development, food security and the survival of humankind. Africa is the continent with the least land degradation. Yet, the pressure on soils is already enormous and continuously increasing due to a range of factors, including poverty, over-exploitation, population growth and climate change. Drivers of unsustainable soil management include overstocking, overgrazing, water erosion, landslides, and over-application of agro-chemicals. In light of this, the underlying legal, societal and political conditions have been comparatively analysed in “African Soil Protection Law”. Distinct country studies from Kenya, Cameroon and Zambia serve to comparatively expose the serious impediments of soil in Africa. While mapping out options for model legislation for improved sustainable soil management in Africa, the publication addresses intertwined, interdisciplinary and complex questions pertaining to soils, which may also be of comparative interest to other continents and jurisdictions.

Application of an Index-Based Approach in Geospatial Techniques for the Mapping of Flood Hazard Areas: A Case of Cape Coast Metropolis in Ghana

Floods remain one of the disasters that destroy properties, livelihoods, and in extreme situations, take lives. As a way of prevention, geospatial applications have been employed in many cities to map flood zones and predict floods. For a country such as Ghana, floods have been ranked as the second fatal disaster after epidemics leading to several kinds of research to resolve them. To date, the Cape Coast Metropolis (CCM) has received little attention in terms of research, though flood cases in the area continue to escalate. This study, therefore, examines the use of geospatial techniques as tools in addressing flood problems in the CCM of Ghana. From a Digital Elevation Model, hydrologic variables were generated using the ArcGIS software (Esri, Redlands, CA, USA). The soil drainage classification for the study was generated from a downloaded African Soil Grid Drainage map, while other important factors that influenced flooding in the CCM were obtained from Landsat 8 imagery. Over 21% of the CCM was classified as high flood hazard zones with areas around the river Kakum estuary being flood hotspots. It is, therefore, recommended that the CCM Assembly fund dredging of streams/rivers and promote afforestation along river banks to reduce the risk of flooding within the metropolis.