AfrICANDO 2006 Presentations

Conference Agenda and Presentations

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

2:00 pm– 5:00 pm

Conference Registration and Exhibition setup

5:30 pm – 8:00pm

Welcome Remarks and Opening Reception – Bay-view Ballroom – 2nd floor – Koven’s Conference Center

Official Opening of the Conference

- Fred Oladeinde – President of The Foundation for Democracy in Africa
- Akin Ogundiran – Director, African-New World Studies
- Dr. Jose Vicente – President of Miami Dade College – North Campus
- Honorable Ricardo Allicock, Doyien Carribean Consular Corp., Consul General of Jamaica in Miami
- V. Lynn Whitfield, Office of the City Attorney, North Miami & Lumane Pluviose-Claude, Office of the City Manager, North Miami (on behalf of Mayor Burns)
- Commissioner Dennis C. Moss

Inaugural Address: Dr. Amadou Mahtar M’Bow, - former Director – General of the United
Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization | En Francais

Thursday, September 20, 2007

8:00 am – 5:30 pm

9:00am – 5:00 pm

9:00 am – 10:30 am

Registration and Continental Breakfast
Sponsored by The Jay Malina International Trade Consortium

Exhibits Open

Welcome:
- Anthony Okonmah, Executive Director, The Foundation for Democracy in Africa

10:30 am – 11:00 am

Coffee Break and Networking

11:00 am – 12:30 pm

Panel I: Culture and Development At the dawn of the global era, questions that highlight linkages between culture, development and globalization are no less urgent than vital questions for the future of the African continent. Indeed, globalization and the increased interdependency of nations raise opportunities and challenges for culture and cultural policies worldwide. These challenges are of environmental, political, social, human and cultural order. This panel will examine the importance accorded culture in the policies of development particularly at the level of diverse options and modalities and at the grassroots level. As culture is often invoked to explain both the successes and failures of development policies, what are the processes for integrating cultural diversity and African cultural values into development, policy formation and implementation? This panel will examine cultural hypothesis of models of development precisely the social and economic policies formulated at the African level. Will this model yield the expected outcome? Recognizing that each advancing cultural regions of the old world, have tapped into its cultural heritage to foster development and the panel will also examine the option for Africa.

Chair: Akin Ogundiran – Director, African-New World Studies

Panelist

W.F. Santiago – Valles, Ph.D., Western Michigan University. “ Counter – hegemony in Africa / Diaspora Cultural History”
Matthew Quest, - Florida International University. – “Reconsidering the Prospects for Self – Emancipation: Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”
Adewale J. Alonge. Ph.D., Public Schools Development in Rural Africa –& ADPED, Inc –“ Integrating Culture into Sustainable Development in Rural Africa”
Sattayah Chang, Florida International University: ”Trans – Atlantic Exchange and the Quest for Development in the African World”

12:30 pm – 2:00 pm

LUNCHEON SPEAKER
Fred Mitchell, Minister, Foreign Affairs and the Public Service, Commonwealth of the Bahamas | Bio
Sponsored by The Institute for Democracy in Africa

2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Panel 2: African Women and Development: While debunking the often stereotypical images of African women as powerless, weak and passive beings, this panel will reveal the changing circumstances of African women in the society, the way African women negotiate the sometimes contradictory demands of tradition and modernity. Modern African women mediate the freedom and mobility of contemporary city life as well as the political, cultural and gender.

Chair: Dr. Ginette Ba – Curry – Dept of English, Florida International University,” African Women and Their New Challenges in Ama Ata Aidoo’s novel Changes: Alove Story (1991).

Panelist.

Dr. Patience Togo – Dept of Social Work, St. Cloud State University: “ Political Theory of Prostitution in Ghana”
Dr. Fortunata Songora Makene – Dept of Sociology, Worcester, MA: “At Glance What Shapes Human History: Globalization and Its Impact On Girls’ Education In Tanzania”
Dr. Ginette Ba – Curry – Dept of English, Florida International University,” African Women and Their New Challenges in Ama Ata Aidoo’s novel Changes: Alove Story (1991)

3:30 pm – 4:00 pm

Coffee Break and Networking, sponsored by -The Port of Miami

4:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Panel 3 –African Values, Entrepreneurship, Economic Growth and Cultural Resource Management: We have witnessed Asia accomplishing remarkable economic progress in the last decades. This success gave birth to a new theory on the role of Asian culture on its economic success and political affirmation. This new theory attributes these successes to the role of Asian cultures particularly Confucianism. If there is a real link between Confucian values and economic development in Asia, or between protestant ethics and development of European capitalism, shouldn’t African cultures be evaluated in order to determine the
Economic potentials of their values? How can we explore economic growth or the lack of thereof from African cultural values? What are the African cultural values for entrepreneurship? The panel will tap into history to question the marginalization of African cultures and values in the grand historical narratives, identify historical moments that African cultural values have been the basis of growth and innovations, and offer deeper analysis of the linkages between culture and development as well as the link between culture and development crisis. This panel will also consider the gender dynamics of entrepreneurship in Africa, the Culture of Entrepreneurship in Informal Sector, and the different forms of indigenous credit financing and micro-lending that have sustained entrepreneurship in different parts of the continent. What are the changes taking place in these informal sectors of credit financing and micro-lending? To what extent are they still relevant to the entrepreneurs in the informal sector that constitute the majority of African workers? What support do these sectors need to be able to support the teaming population of entrepreneurs in rural and urban centers?
Chair: Edmund Abaka, Ph.D., - Associate Professor of History and Director of Africana Program, University of Miami:

Chair: Akin Ogundiran – Director, African-New World Studies

Aribidesi Usman, Ph.D., Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona - “The State of Cultural Resource Management in Nigeria”
John Jackson, Consultant, United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) - “A Matrix For African Historiography: A General Theory of Context and Chronology”

7:00 pm

Back to the Hotel / Dinner on your own

Friday, September 21, 2007

8:00 am – 5:00 pm

9:00 am – 5:00 pm

Conference Registration. Continental Breakfast, sponsored by- WHADN

Exhibits Open

9:00 am – 10:00 am

Panel 4: Cultural Education, Globalization and the Youth: The planning for the present and future development of Africa must significantly focus on the youth and their education in relation to the challenges of globalization. A society that aspires to grow and develop must produce youths that have confidence in their heritage as the necessary foundation for socioeconomic development. Are African states and their educational systems doing adequate job in educating the youth in African cultural values, practices, languages, among others. How are new agents of socialization, such as the internet, cable TV, satellite radio, film, etc shaping and transforming youth culture? What relationships do these new agents have with the older agents of socialization such as family, books, civil associations, etc. How responsive are the civil societies, schools, families, and government to these transformations? How can all stakeholders work together to develop a cultural education paradigm that is grounded in African values, what should this paradigm look like, how can this paradigm be implemented to give the youth a sense of direction that give them pride and motivation to and use this to shape institutions and values compatible with the transnational are curriculum.

Chair: Yvette D. Hyter, Ph.D., CCC-SLP,- Associate Professor of Speech-Language Pathology, Western Michigan University:

Yvette D. Hyter, Ph.D.,- Western Michigan University: “Literacy and Language Practices as Keys to Development”
Sadiq A. Abdullahi, Ph.D., Social Studies, Global Education and School Improvement, Miami Dade School System – “Secondary Educational Policies In Nigeria And The United States: The Benefits Of Comparative Perspectives”
Jessica Durand – Florida International University. Tet Ansanm: ”A Global Imperative for African Youth”
Tiffany Pogue - Florida International University, -“The Contributions That Africa Can Make To The Conceptualization Of Pedagogical Practices And Theories Of The Contemporary Public School Classroom

10:00 am – 10:30 am

Coffee Break, Sponsored by Enterprise Florida

10:00 am – 11:00 pm

Workshop on Intercultural Competence – Exploring many Aspects of Cultural Clashes and Communication Breakdowns: In spite of many similarities that exist in cultures, people from other cultures have differences in the way they do things, it is very important that we have to understand in-order to reconcile these differences so as to function effectively in across-cultural group. This simulation will help all participants,[ individually and collectively], to examine and analyze real life experiences related to race, culture, religion etc and to understand them in a new way.

Presenters:
1) Abena Busia, Professor of Literature & Women in Development, Rutgers University
2) Gwendolyn Willis-Darpoh, Ph.D., Senior Research Analyst/TAS, The American Institutes for Research. Washington DC

11:00 am – 1:30 pm

Panel 5 : African Health, What is the future ?
Africans believe that ” Good Health is Wealth". Questions about health, diseases and healing have been at the center of concerns in Africa. Changes of global proportions, including economic transformations, climatic changes, and reckless exploitation of African environments have historically impacted African lives, creating new problems for African health and challenging the ability of African-knowledge base to cope with these problems, Panels are invited to explore potential solution to the problem of poor Health Care delivery system in Africa and how to resolve the old and the new health challenges facing the continent today and how to build a sustainable health care system in the continent.

Chair: Wilson Ogbomo, Professor of History & Africana Studies, Western Michigan
University. “Health and Development: Challenges to Health Care Delivery in
Africa”.

Dr. Albert Kafui Wuaku, Dept of Religious Studies, Florida International University: “On Shiva Worship, Sexual Morality And AIDS Crisis in Ghana”
Dr. Joyce Yaa Avotri – Wuaku, Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, Tennessee: ”Talking into the air and behaving like one who has tied one yam on the head”: Ghanaian women talking about their health problems and concerns
Mumbi Mwangi, St Cloud State University: “St Cloud, Globalization and the Faces of HIV/AIDS in Kenya”

1:30 pm – 2:30 pm

LUNCHEON SPEAKER

OWNERSHIP SOCIETY: WEALTH CREATION
Becky Norton Dunlop, Vice President, The Heritage Foundation

Sponsored by: Greater Miami Convention and Visitor Bureau

2:30 pm – 3:30 pm

MERGED PANELS:
Panel 6: Science and Technology, Intellectual Property and Indigenous Knowledge:
Africa remains the least developed. Why? It has been said “science is universal” because the laws governing our universe impose bear on all human without discrimination by origin, color or faith. Then, “Technical Science cannot be a value foreign to Africa, as Africa is the mother of all civilization”. How do we explain Africa’s scientific and technological under-development?
Culture, Science and Technology explores the reasons for the deficit in scientific and technological productivity in Africa. Most recently, African Scientist are advocating for the protection of indigenous knowledge and the struggle against acts of piracy. This panel explores the status of intellectual property rights as they pertain to both contemporary African Scientific production and the indigenous scientific knowledge.

Panel 7: – Culture, Democracy and Governance: It has been said, “ One head alone is not enough To decide”. This Ghanaian proverb seems to contradict popular discourses about democracy being foreign to Africa and Africans not ready yet for democracy. Yet, good leadership has eluded most parts of Africa. What needed to be done to cultivate a positive culture of leadership, and to put in place responsive and responsible leaders? If the idea of democracy is not limited to holding elections and choosing a candidate or representative of a party, are their processes of decision making from the bottom up that takes into account every point of view in open discussions in African cultural traditions? Can Africans draw from these traditions to find solutions to recurring problems of governance and accountability? What ethical values are needed to develop leadership of mission committed to positive change in Africa? What local, regional, and global structural impediments confront good governance and how to overcome these impediments?

Moderator: Gershwin Blyden MD, Ph.D –Director, Institute for Democracy in Africa

Bradford E. Brown Ph.D, - Contractor National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Prof. Chidi Ibe D.Sc. – Executive Secretary Interim Guinea Current Commission, Regional Director Guinea Current Large Marine Ecosystem Project- “ A Case Study of a Science Driven Development Project” | Figure 1 | Figure 2
John Oshodi, Ph.D., - “African Values As Catalyst For Humanizing Technologically Based Societies”
Rasheed Na-Allah, Ph.D. – Dept of African American Studies – Western Illinois University, - “Daring Development: Africa’s Steps and Selections in an Electronic Age, with examples from Nigeria”
Bertin Kouadio- Cultural Pluralism And Democracy in Africa: “The Case of Cote d’ Ivoire”
Dr. Lindah Mhando, Dept of African and African American & Sociology – Pennsylvania State University – “Food Security and Urban Livelihoods among the Poorest In Congo" | bio

2:30 pm – 4:30 pm

5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

8:00 pm – 11:00 pm

Business Seminar: Expanding Franchise Opportunities for Small and
Medium Enterprises and Minority Owned Businesses: This workshop focuses on franchise opportunities in the food and business services industry, available to small and medium enterprises and minority owned businesses. For example, the U.S. Commercial Service estimates that fast food industry in Nigeria for the past six years has maintained an annual growth rate of 40%. Fast food industries are rapidly becoming the major employment and empowerment force known to stimulate local economies as well as creating wealth amongst new entrepreneurs. Leaders in the Franchise Industries will conduct the workshop and will provide the attendees with the information on how to choice a franchise, how to finance your Franchise, What you should know about buying a Franchise, etc, to all the participants.

Moderator: Michael P. Bush – Franchise Advisor

Back to the Hotel (OPTIONAL)

Reception, Sponsored by Miami International Airport

Gala Dinner

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2007
(Concurrent Session)

9:00 am –10:00 am

10:00am –12:00pm

12:00 pm –1:30pm

Youth Panel: Preparing our Youths for Cultural Sensitivity and Education, Religious Tolerance and Globalization

Fred Oladeinde, President The Foundation for Democracy in Africa
John Jackson, UNIA/WHADN

LUNCH: Dr. Babacar M’bow – International Program & Exhibit Service-Broward County Library
Sponsored by- The Institute for Democracy in Africa

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2007

7:30 am – 8:30 am

9:00 am – 8:00 pm

10:00 am –11:30pm

11:30pm -12:15 pm

12:15 pm-2:00 pm

2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

4:00 pm – 4: 30 pm

4:30 pm - 5:00 pm

Exhibits Setup -- William and Joan Lehman Theatre, Room 5120

African Market Exhibition: Arts / Crafts and Cultural Performance

Health Fair

PANEL 8: African Health and Development and Cosmogony: Health is wealth". Questions about health, diseases and healing have been at the center of concerns in Africa. Changes of global proportions, including economic transformations, climatic changes, and reckless exploitation of African environments have historically impacted African lives, creating new problems for African health and challenging the ability of African-knowledge base to cope with these problems. Africa has increasingly depended on Western medicine and health care for solving its bourgeoning health crisis while, because of lack of official support, African medicinal and healing knowledge is shriveling. Panels are invited to explore the potentials for intersecting African health care practices with Western modalities of towards resolving old and new health challenges facing the continent, and building a healthy continent. The panelists will also explore issues of African cosmogony, the causes of diseases: the interaction between the mental and the spiritual, traditional medicine, spirituality and healing, Modern medicine vs. traditional medicine, and African traditional medicines.
Chair: Professor Joseph McNair – Miami Dade College

Chief Adedoja Aluko – Akala Obatala of Ile-Ife, Nigeria
Professor Annette Gibson – Prof of Nursing – Miami Dade College
Dr. Morris R. Johnson – Prof of History – Miami Dade College
Professor Patti Harris - Dept Chair – Social Science – Miami Dade College
Priest Douglas Smith – International Rastafari Herbalist

Refreshment Break

Presentation: “Economic Empowerment of the African Diaspora
Fred Oladeinde-President, The Foundation for Democracy in Africa
Gershwin Blyden, Institute for Democracy in Africa

Narrated by Roni Goodrich and Pilar Rodrigez – Pilar Internet News.