The Institute for African Development (IAD) offers a summer Africa internship program that lets you undertake challenging practical fieldwork in Ghana or Zambia. If you're a sophomore or junior, join this Einaudi Center Student Info Session to find out how you can apply in the coming year.

Interns must attend two seminars in the IAD Special Topic Seminar Series (CRP 4770) and a pre-departure meeting.

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Contact: iad@cornell.edu

Is the Einaudi Center's international relations minor for you? Join this Einaudi Center Student Info Session to find out.

In the international relations minor, you study the politics, economics, history, languages, and cultures of the world and gain a fresh perspective on your major field of study. Graduates go on to successful careers in fields like international law, economics, agriculture, trade, finance, journalism, education, and government service.

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Contact: irm@einaudi.cornell.edu

The Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) offers an interdisciplinary minor, summer internships, and other funding opportunities. Join this Einaudi Center Student Info Session to find out what LACS has in store for you!

The Latin American studies minor is an undergraduate minor across disciplines that allow you to explore the history, culture, government, politics, economy and languages of Latin America and the Caribbean. Qualifying courses can be found in almost every college.

Our summer internships sent several students to Ecuador in 2022!

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Contact: lacs@cornell.edu

Digitalization in Africa: Pace, Challenges, Possibilities and Accomplishments

Hybrid link

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) impact has increased dramatically since the second half of the 20th century with accelerated pace since the beginning of the 21st century. The functioning of many social institutions and sectors such as education, the economy, health care, political process and various other areas were impacted by the increasing use of the technology with the expectation of efficacy. However, when the authorities of World Health Organization (WHO) declared on March 11, 2020, COVID-19 a pandemic, there was no common anticipation of the duration of the pandemic, its effects on of the functioning of all the sectors of society and the extraordinary acceleration of the digitalization albeit in a damage control and survival mode. One of the most striking upsurges of technology was in the education sector as school children and older learners were confined to their homes because of school closures due to lockdowns and curfews. Hence education had to be taught utilizing digital technologies. Efforts toward digitalization were already underway even before COVID-19, like the notable innovations of a cashless economy with the digitization of a well-known money transfer application known as M-Pesa, prevalent in East Africa and other similar smart phone transfer systems were being utilized throughout the entire African continent. In this advanced COVID-19 era, it has become now evident that careful and deliberate adoption of digitization is no longer a distant future: It is now. Throughout the semester, scholars from multiple disciplines will share their respective insights on the state and prognosis of the future in the digitalization era, in relation to: dimensions of the education systems, political processes, functioning of the domestic and global economy and specific business activities, healthcare provision and management, and forth.

2021 > Rwanda, United States, France, Canada > Directed by Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman
With Cheryl Isheja, Elvis Ngabo, Bertrand "Kaya Free" Ninteretse
A boisterous and idiosyncratic vision of Afrofuturist techno-revolution, in a tale of labor organization, intersexuality and cyberfeminism. From the mind of actress and playwright Anisia Uzeyman, and her husband, poet and rapper Saul Williams comes a queer sci-fi musical about hacking computers, gender, and reality itself that is as politically astute as it is artistically invigorating. Cosponsored by the Institute for African Development. Subtitled. More at www.kinolorber.com/film/view/id/5188
1 hr 45 min

Professor Kristen Harkness will discuss her book When Soldiers Rebel: Ethnic Armies and Political Instability in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2018). The book argues that the processes of creating and dismantling ethnically exclusionary state institutions engender organized and violent political resistance. This explains both the motivations and timing of rebellion: while exclusionary institutions and group grievances may persist over many years, it is in brief and rare intervals that entire systems of ethnic privilege and disadvantage are created or destroyed.

Focusing on African militaries and when soldiers rebel against the state on ethnic grounds, it is shown that when leaders attempt to build ethnic armies, or dismantle those created by their predecessors, they provoke violent resistance from military officers. This poses a deep challenge to democratization, which has brought new leaders to power who threaten Africa’s legacy of ethnic armies.

Please join us for this virtual conversation. Register here.

About the Speaker

Dr. Kristen A. Harkness is a Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews. Her research focuses on understanding how ethnicity shapes the loyalty and behavior of military institutions in Africa and has been funded by the British Academy.

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Presented by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. Co-sponsored by the Institute for African Development and the Gender and Security Sector Lab.