Africa Faith and Justice Network and the Damages of Land Grabbing: The Case of the Brewaniase Community, Ghana

This essay discusses the procurement of farmland around the town of Brewaniase in the Volta Region of Ghana by the New York based agribusiness Herakles Farm (HF). The essay highlights some of the repercussions of land grabbing by foreign corporations that seek only profit and do not fulfill promises made to locals who lease their land for a better life. It provides information on the efforts of Africa Faith & Justice Network (AFJN), a faith-based Washington DC non-governmental organization, to enable the local communities to avert land grabs and its damages. The essay aims to help African communities and individuals critically evaluate the gains and losses associated with land grabbing so as to prevent them falling into the same quagmire as the Brewaniase community. It offers a broad perspective on issues of land grabbing and encourages wise investment in land

Urban inequalities and the identity-to-politics link in the Netherlands and Nigeria

This article examines urban inequalities and minority politics in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and Jos (Nigeria). Though advanced democracies are considered to be generally more egalitarian than their emergent counterparts, there is very little, if any, scholarly attention dedicated to understanding the specific ways in which the dimensions and parameters of inequalities resemble or contrast between the two contexts. Moreover, while there is growing interest in the identity-to-politics link among urban groups, there is very little comparative sense of how the processes play out across different contexts. Based on a critical analysis of theoretical and empirical perspectives, we show that in Amsterdam, an anti-Muslim discourse, rather than group level inequalities, led to the politicization of immigrant groups. In Jos, however, minority politics is driven by a strong overlap between ascribed identities and inequalities. Though the identity-to-politics link is characterised by a complex set of processes in both cases, the outcomes vary. While minority groups in Amsterdam articulate and pursue their interests within the confines of a well-regulated political space, parties in Jos deploy violent strategies in pursuing their interests because of the prevalence of weak institutions and an unregulated political space that operates on a winner-takes-all logic. The conclusion reiterates a few key insights derived from this cross-fertilization

Frontiers of Ethnic Brutality in an African City: Explaining the Spread and Recurrence of Violent Conflict in Jos, Nigeria

There is considerable consensus among scholars of ethnic riots that ethnically mixed areas are more prone to collective violence than segregated ones. The conclusion is based on studies that compare levels of violence between segregated and mixed localities. While this addresses disparities between settlements of dissimilar ethnic composition, variations in the spread of violence across ethnically mixed areas remain a mystery. Seeking to explicate these variations, we propose an approach that examines not only the ethnic composition of a neighbourhood, but also its location in relation to adjoining neighbourhoods of similar or dissimilar ethnic makeup and their shared boundaries. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Jos, a violence-ridden Nigerian city, we demonstrate that ethnically mixed areas located between segregated ones experience more incidents of violence than mixed neighbourhoods not comparably located. Our findings have both academic and practical implications.Forschung zu ethnischer Gewalt hat gezeigt, dass ethnisch durchmischte Siedlungsgebiete anfälliger für kollektive Gewalt sind als segregierte. Diese Schlussfolgerung basiert auf Studien, die das Ausmaß der Gewalt zwischen segregierten und durchmischten Orten vergleichen. Im Gegensatz dazu ist völlig unklar, wie sich Varianz bei der Verbreitung von Gewalt in ethnisch durchmischten Gebieten erklären lässt. Um diese Varianz zu erläutern, schlagen wir einen Ansatz vor, der nicht nur die ethnische Zusammensetzung eines Viertels untersucht, sondern auch seinen Nachbarschaft zu Vierteln mit ähnlicher oder unterschiedlicher ethnischer Zusammensetzung und deren gemeinsame Grenzen einbezieht. Basierend auf ethnographischer Feldforschung in Jos, einer nigerianischen Stadt, die wiederkehrende Gewaltkonflikt erlebt hat, zeigen wir, dass ethnisch gemischte Gebiete, die sich zwischen segregierten Orten befinden, mehr Gewaltausbrüche erfahren als durchmischte Viertel ohne eine vergleichbare Nachbarschaft. Daraus lassen sich wichtige wissenschaftliche und praktische Schlussfolgerungen ableiten

Engaging Nursing Students in Meaningful Education Pertaining to Gerontological Nursing Studies: A Qualitative Descriptive Study

Background: Older people are the greatest users of healthcare and nurses represent the largest number of healthcare professionals within the healthcare system to provide care to them. This fact highlights the need to understand how nursing students are learning to work with older people. Although studies identify that practicing nurses have gaps in their knowledge regarding the care of older people, these studies do not address how nursing curricula and education pertaining to gerontology needs to be improved. Conducting research surrounding nursing students’ experiences working with older people in their undergraduate nursing program can be used to improve how student nurses are learning about caring for older people. Methods: A descriptive qualitative analysis used conventional content and thematic analysis of interview transcriptions, to identify factors that influence students’ perceptions of working with older people and students’ learning needs related to working with older people. Findings: Three themes emerged from the data analysis: perceptions about working with older people, preparation to work with older people, and advice for improving education. Findings from this study showed that nursing students’ perceptions of working with older people were influenced by their clinical learning environment, past experiences, and theory courses that generally concentrate on adults as opposed to older people. Conclusion: There is a need for faculties to commit to providing more resources for a rich educational experience related to older people. Addressing ageist perspectives, in addition to how students learn and the learning environment in which they learn, will better prepare graduates for the future of nursing and positively impact the quality of the care older people receive. Implications for Nursing Practice: Enhancing the gerontology content within the nursing curriculum and the clinical environment could help increase the perception, willingness, and competence of graduating nursing students to contribute to positive health outcomes for older people

Tensile properties of as-received and surface-treated coir fibres and composites

The primary aim of this research project was to characterise and to determine the tensile properties of as-received and surface-treated coir fibres prior to use in composites. The term “as-received” is defined here as where the coir fibres that were received from the supplier was cleaned using a vacuum device, washed thoroughly in tap water for 30 minutes and dries at 80 oC for two hours. The surface treatment of the as-received coir fibres in sodium hydroxide involved immersion at specified concentrations of 1, 5 and 20 % for 24, 48 and 72 hours at 30, 50 and 80 oC. The silanes used were (3-aminopropyl) trimethoxy silane and (3- glycidyloxopropyl) trimethoxy silane, where the NaOH concentrations studied were 0.5, 1 and 1.5 % in distilled water. The heat treatment temperature was of particular interest because it is known that lignin can cross-link above 140 oC: it was anticipated that this would lead to an increase in the Young’s modulus. The heat treatment was carried out at 40, 60, 80, 120, 160, 180 and 200 oC in a vacuum oven and tube furnace in air. The vacuum oven was used to investigate the effect of temperature in the absence of air. A brief study was undertaken to investigate the effect of lateral compaction of the fibres on the tensile properties. This was undertaken to determine if the compaction of the intrinsic porosity in the fibres would influence the apparent tensile properties. Variability in the diameter of coir fibre along the length of randomly selected fibres was observed. The tensile strength was found to decrease as a function of the coir fibre diameter. Similar to the findings on the influence of diameter on the tensile properties, a steady decrease in the tensile strength but an increase in the Young’s modulus of coir as the gauge length increased was observed. However, heat treatment of coir fibre in the absence of air led to a reduction in the tensile strength of the fibres especially above heat treatment temperature of 160 oC. A reduction of 12 to 27% in strength was observed for the vacuum oven heat-treated coir fibres and a reduction of 28 to 88% observed in the tube furnace (with air) treated fibres. Unidirectional arrays of coir fibres were hybridized with spread E-glass to manufacture a new class of hybrid composites. An improved tensile property was recorded for the E-glass hybridized coir fibres such as has not been reported in the literature