$2.9 Million Higher Education Partnership in Rwanda Announced

On October 4, 2000, the Institute of International Agriculture (iia), MSU College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, was awarded a three-year, $2.9-million grant by the Association Liaison Office for University Cooperation (alo) for a partnership involving MSU, Texas A&M University, the Universite Nationale du Rwanda (unr), and the Institut des Sciences Agronomiques du Rwanda (isar). Supported by funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development (usaid), the partnership is being established to help rebuild the agricultural sector of Rwanda, which suffered immense damage as a result of the civil war and genocide of 1994. It will seek to carry out usaid/ Rwanda's objective to improve broad-based food security in Rwanda.

Known as the Partnership for Enhancing Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages (pearl), the collaboration will provide capacity-building for the national university (unr), and the national agronomic research center (isar). "Faculty and researcher losses at unr, isar, and other institutions have been devastating as a result of the 1994 civil war," said Dan Clay, director of IIA. "This program will help restore and exceed the former capacity, training junior faculty and researchers in the agricultural sciences. One thing that makes this especially important is that opportunities for degree training have been scaled back dramatically over the past 15 years. This is a bold and sorely needed move on the part of the usaid Rwanda mission." Fifteen faculty and researchers are expected to arrive by May 2001 to begin master's degree programs in the United States, with the majority coming to study at MSU.

Additionally, MSU and Texas A&M will assist unr and isar in adopting the U.S. land-grant model in which educators and researchers collaborate directly with extension services, nonprofit organizations, and others who work directly with agricultural communities, which comprise more than 90 percent of the population of Rwanda. To this end, an outreach center will be constructed to serve as a focal point for this effort. MSU and Texas A&M will assist unr and isar in program development efforts designed to enable extension-oriented faculty and researchers to become involved in collaborative work to serve the needs of these communities.

Dan Clay said, "The iia is proud to have been given the opportunity to play a role in rebuilding Rwanda's agricultural infrastructure and developing a service-oriented extension approach that can provide much needed assistance to the rural communities of the country that have been so severely affected by the civil war and genocide."

To learn more about the new partnership in Rwanda, visit the alo web site at www.aascu.org/alo or visit MSU's Institute of International Agriculture Web site at http://www.iia.msu.edu/

Mellon and Ford Give $1 Million to Fund New Partnerships for South African Cultural Heritage

A new initiative by Michigan State University to partner with South Africans in preserving and disseminating South Africa's culture and heritage is clear evidence of the emergence of the new, democratic South Africa that treasures its heritage and wants it broadly understood.

The South African National Cultural Heritage Training and Technology Program, an initiative supported by almost $1 million in grants from the Andrew W. Mellon and Ford Foundations, is a collaborative endeavor linking U.S. and South African educational institutions, cultural organizations, and historically black colleges and universities. Over the next three years, the program will provide training to archivists, curators, scholars, and students to work over the long-term in collecting materials and oral histories and in building electronic and physical exhibits on the nation's diverse cultural heritage. Much of this heritage was suppressed under the apartheid government but is needed today for South Africans, their schools, and public life.

"The government of South Africa is delighted that this program will assist in developing the national cultural heritage of South Africa," said Kader Asmal, South Africa's Minister of Education. "I am extremely pleased that there is a truly bi-national arrangement, a genuine partnership between our two countries. MSU has played a leading role in its relationships with South African institutions and the government of South Africa congratulates MSU and its various partners in this meritorious cultural enterprise."

MSU and its partners believe they have much to gain from and to contribute to these partnerships. "Individual scholars and universities in the United States and Europe have established links with South African colleagues and institutions over the past decade," said John Eadie, director of MSU's Consortium for Inter-Institutional Collaboration in African and Latin American Studies (cicals). "This project draws its strength from the breadth of its partnerships on both sides of the Atlantic. In sharing technical expertise, our cultural institutions will gain a deeper understanding of South African history and culture and of the struggle for freedom and dignity that is among the most inspiring human triumphs of the 20th century."

To survey the specific interests and needs of South African cultural institutions, project organizers held a workshop in Durban in late 1999, bringing together archivists, historians, and curators from South Africa and the United States. Participants worked to identify needs and priorities in developing cultural heritage projects, resulting in a declaration of partnership principles and a blueprint of collaborative projects and programs to be developed over the next decade.

In summer 2000, the program hosted a four-week training institute at MSU for humanities professionals and archival, museum, and educational specialists from South Africa and from historically black colleges and universities. In November 2000, another workshop was offered in Cape Town and at Robben Island, site of the notorious apartheid prison and now a World Heritage Site. It focused on methods of collecting oral history and included community-based, field-oriented oral history projects, low-security traveling exhibits, design of online exhibitions, and specialized technology training.

An outgrowth of MSU's strong ties to South African educational and cultural institutions, the program builds on MSU's internationally recognized African studies, museum, and folklife programs and humanities-based technology. The MSU coordinating team includes H-Net, the Humanities and Social Sciences Online; matrix, the Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online; the Michigan State University Museum; the MSU African Studies Center; and cicals. Its partners are the Chicago Historical Society, the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, and a number of South African cultural heritage institutions.

For more information, contact Peter Knupfer, executive director, at 517.353. 9300 or visit http://www.matrix.msu.edu/partnership/.

-Lisa Acheson

$1 Million Grant Supports Public Opinion Research in Africa

An innovative project to survey African citizens on recent reforms in their countries should give a voice to those who often are silenced, an MSU researcher says.

A $1.05 million grant from the Swedish International Development Agency (sida) to Michigan State University's Department of Political Science and African Studies Center will fund the project, known as the Afrobarometer. The cross-national collaborative enterprise between the university and two African research institutes for democracy in South Africa and Ghana will track what Africans think about political and economic reforms in their countries.

The program is built on institutional linkages established by Michael Bratton, professor of political science and African studies, who will lead the project.

"The Afrobarometer project is innovative in two ways," Bratton said. "By reporting on public opinion, the project gives a voice to ordinary Africans, whose preferences are often overlooked or ignored by their governments."

"It diversifies MSU's funding base and institutional linkages. For one of the first times at MSU, a European donor is supporting an American university to engage African partners in field research in Africa."

Begun in 1993 in Zambia and in 1995 in South Africa, the Afrobarometer project expanded in 1999. Surveys have since been completed in ten countries and four more surveys are planned for 2001. The project has already produced numerous reports for publication in academic journals and for release in policy forums. Current and previous Afrobarometer surveys have been supported by grants to MSU from the National Science Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development, and the World Bank.

"The project has tremendous momentum," Bratton said. "Our coverage has moved rapidly from surveys in just two countries in 1998 to ten countries in 2000. In 2001 we will expand to French- and Portuguese-speaking Africa, with surveys in Mali and Mozambique, respectively. Moreover, we have just been invited by a donor agency to repeat our survey in Nigeria, a country that President Clinton identified as strategic for Americans and Africans alike."

Over the next three years, the Swedish grant will enable several new Afrobarometer initiatives. It will support networking, not only among the three core institutions, but also with researchers in the 14 affiliated African countries. It will underwrite institutional capacity building for these partners with the goal of strengthening survey research skills on the African continent. Further, the grant will support outreach and dissemination, including a Web-based publications program and the development of materials summarizing public opinion for use by policy advocates and policymakers.

The Afrobarometer is modeled in part on parallel research programs in Eastern Europe (the New Europe Barometer) and Latin America (the Latinobarometer). Researchers from all three world regions, including Afrobarometer participants from MSU, are now coordinating efforts to ensure that systematic comparisons of evolving public opinion are possible, both within the African continent and ultimately across continents as well.

"The long-term goal of the project is to build capacity throughout the network of collaborating institutions," Bratton said. "In Africa, we hope to leave behind a capacity in selected African research institutes to conduct regular scientific surveys on the evolving political and economic attitudes of national populations.

"At MSU, which already has a strong reputation in the fields of comparative politics and African studies, we hope to increase our capacity to map and interpret the realities on the ground in Africa as seen and experienced by Africans themselves."

-Russ White