Central Africa Initiative: Needs and Opportunities
12:00pm, 206 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI
Aliko Songolo
Chair of African Languages & Literature
Professor of French
University of Wisconsin- Madison
Bio
Dr. Aliko Songolo is Halverson-Bascom Professor of French, Chair of the Department of African Languages and Literature, and co-director of the Center for Interdisciplinary French Studies. His research and teaching interests lie primarily in Francophone literatures of Africa and the Caribbean, and Francophone cinemas of Africa and Québec. He has published a monograph (Aimé Césaire: une poétique de la découverte, 1985), two co-edited volumes (Twenty-five Years After Dakar and Fourah Bay: The Growth of African Literature, 1998) and Atlantic Cross-Currents/Transatlantiques, 2001), and was Associate Editor of the five-volume New Encyclopedia of Africa (2008). He has served as Chair of the Department of French & Italian, Director of the African Studies Program, and President of the African Studies Association.
Donald M. Waller
John T. Curtis Professor and Chair of Botany
University of Wisconsin- Madison
Bio
Dr. Don Waller chairs the Department of Botany and the Biological Aspects of Conservation major and helps direct UW’s graduate program in Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development. He teaches courses in ecology, evolution, and relationships between conservation and food security/public health. His research focuses on how habitat fragmentation and forest and wildlife management sustain or threaten particular plant and animal species. He then works to translate and apply these findings to manage forests wisely and sustainably. He co-authored Wild Forests: Conservation Biology and Public Policy (1994) and co-edited The Vanishing Present: Shifts in Wisconsin’s lands, waters, and wildlife (2008). See: http://www.botany.wisc.edu/waller/
Description
As a region, Central Africa is experiencing rapid population and economic growth and a broad set of parallel cultural changes. While some of these changes present opportunities to increase economic, environmental, and political security, other changes threaten the region’s remaining natural areas, wildlife populations, and ultimately the sustainability of cultures in the region. We see and will share our vision of several opportunities for UW faculty and students to constructively engage in promoting conservation, education, and development activities in Central Africa.
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Learn more about the Central Africa Initiative here.