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Newsletter
Tuesday August 21st 2007
International Institute for Advanced Studies
Vol. 1
_______Inaugural Lecture______
"Slave Routes, Slave Roots and
Nation-Building: Ghana,
Ghanaians Abroad and the African
Diaspora in the 21st Century."
tter, both print and
electronic print, conta
, translated, digitize ins copyright materi
al
d and distributed with
out prior permission
. Africa is seen as the last frontier of development, a continent rich in natural resources and ready for
external and internal investment. Programs such as the Millennium Development Goals seek to build the
human potential of developing continents such as Africa, to ensure that the 21st century is an African one.
As multinational corporations explore sites of production that give them competitive advantage, many
reckon that it is only a matter of time before Africa becomes the focus of international investment.
The proliferation of African transnational communities within Africa, Asia, Europe and North America
underpins the building of capital and skills among transnational Africans, making them an important
engine of growth for African economies. The overlap between African transnationals and the older African
diaspora has forged extensive networks that can be deployed in the development of Africa. The
intensification of globalization and the revolution in information technology have created expanded social
imaginaries with shared aspirations and expectations around the world.
The 21st century, in short, is an exciting time for Africa, and it is important that Africans seize the mantle and
define the future of their continent. The Internet has bridged gaps of knowledge. Capital moves globally.
“Best practices” are held up as models across the globe. Technology is being indigenized in innovative
ways all around the world. The International Institute for Advanced Studies represents an opportunity to
harmonize these possibilities and guide development in Africa in a distinctly African way. To bring history
and culture to bear on contemporary issues, to adopt the longue durée perspective and underscore how
history can sometimes be cyclical, to interrogate institutions past and present with an eye to institutional
strengthening, reform and rehabilitation; these are the avenues, the possibilities that excite me about IIAS.
Africans have been instrumental in building distinguished African studies programs in Africa and outside of
Africa. The pendulum has swung to the West, and today the study of Africa thrives more in the West than in
Africa. Indeed, Harvard University, perhaps, teaches more African languages than most African universities.
It is time to encourage and site centers of academic excellence in Africa, to create loci where Africans
and Africanists interact on equal and meaningful terms. We need to center African voices in the study of
Africa again, to unite the expertise of Africans in Africa and Africans abroad, to correct the anomaly of
Africa as the continent about which more “scientific” knowledge exists outside than within Africa. And for
me, IIAS is an opportunity to do all this.
Post Office Box Ct5734,Cantonments. Accra. Ghana.
Tel: +233-21-501521,Fax: +233-21-70120560 / -232927
Email: administration@interias.com Emmanuel K. Akyeampong
Website: www.interias.com FGA Harvard College Professor and IIAS co-founder
I am privileged to have had a diverse experience in academia spanning 44 years as a student, Many expect African economists to devote most of their time
researcher, professor and Head of African Studies at the University of Ghana. I have been even more and resources to studying poverty and income distribution
privileged to have been involved in policymaking at different levels especially in the Judiciary, in the matters only, because they are perceived to be the biggest
Chieftaincy institution and in religious bodies. My most exciting experiences are, however, in my forays development challenges facing the region. Others expect Dr. Ama de-Graft Aikins
into entrepreneurship-fishing, farming, trading. My long history of working with academics, who are African economists to research mostly in the areas of agriculture Social Psychology and Health
over-worked and underpaid, and who have little research resources and with policymakers who have and industrialization, because that is where many want to see University of Cambridge
gathered a lot of practical policy level experiences that are not recorded and shared have partly the most change. The result is that seldom does an academic
IIAS Fellow
crystallized into this institute. economics researcher in Africa devote all of his or her time to
only one set of issues, and that is characteristic of my own work
The challenges of academics; the frustrations of policymakers with limited opportunities to Professor Irene Odotei and where it will go in future. I am interested in the way everyday experiences of chronic
share their rich learning; and the daily struggles of the majority of Ghanaians and Africans to University of Ghana I have devoted the last two decades to exploring a number physical and mental illnesses are shaped by the complex
get through bureaucratic and administrative hurdles in order to make a living and grow their IIAS Founder of different issues that I have judged to be relevant at a interplay between self, family, community and health
initiatives, enterprises and businesses have a commonality. The commonality is first that they particular point in time. While I spent quite a bit of my early institutions. How does the chronically ill individual cope with,
research years working on the mobilization of domestic or transcend, the physical, psychological and financial
are all isolated and not interacting and secondly, they all need one another in order to change the institutional structures demands of long-term illness? Does the experience change
that work to all of their disadvantage. My interest in directing this Institute lies in the unique niche that my various academic resources for financing development, with a strong
emphasis on informal finance, I have since then moved on their identity and roles in society? Do significant others
and other interests have created. A niche where academia, policy making and entrepreneurship will deal with their imposed understand the nature and implications of the illness and can
voicelessness, interact, be mutually reinforcing and flourish. The institute creates the space for this: a space where African to look at the development experiences of East Asia and
their relevance for Africa, as well as spent a bit of time on they (or do they) provide support? Does the condition evoke
and Africanist scholars and policymakers will discover, create, share and use knowledge for the advancement of the stigma and in what ways is this experienced by both sufferers
Continent. The institute will not be limited to Africa. It envisages linkages and partnerships with similar institutes on other the implications of recent trends in globalization for African
development. Studying the African growth experience has and significant others? What health systems does the
continents in order to ensure that our experiences and knowledge resources will draw on the global and also have global chronically ill individual believe in and use and to what extent
reach and effect. allowed me to explore more fully the economic history of the
region, looking closely at the political economy of do these provide the right interventions for their condition?
development. My more recent work looks at the conditions Do health policymakers and their development partners
Growing up in rural Ghana, I encountered, not as recognize the condition and do they allocate appropriate
an idea or a concept, but intimately and in their that will allow for shared growth in Africa. Now I am paying
more attention to the household situation as we work for symbolic and material resources for it? These questions move
profound reality, the numerous challenges faced by understandings of chronic illness experience beyond the
human beings as they struggle to survive day to day. faster economic growth.
Ato Quayson, FGA Professor of narrow biophysical confines of medical science into the
In working with my colleagues at IIAS I am hoping to launch a
English and Diaspora Studies, realms of culture, history, religion, economics and politics.
My work with a development office before my platform for exploring these themes even further. It is my
They underscore the need for a multifaceted - ie
University of Toronto. University studies and my time in law school expectation that we will transcend the usual divisions of
multidisciplinary - approach to designing both research and
IIAS co-founder illuminated for me, and for the very first time, the economics into macroeconomics and microeconomics. We
interventions. I envisage IIAS as a dynamic space where I can
critical role of the law in setting normative standards, should be focusing a lot more on the institutions that will allow
discuss ideas and develop long-term partnerships with
establishing and monitoring political systems, macroeconomic policies to better reflect the conditions of micro
historians, anthropologists, economists and legal experts who
It has always been evident to me since childhood that the word ensuring order, facilitating economic growth, ensure entities. The interface between institutional development, policy
are intellectually and politically committed to Africa and
"culture" has several complex ramifications. From the social progress and so on. re-orientation and individual benefits should be a major force
Africans. By drawing on our respective areas of expertise we
anthropological definitions of culture, to culture as a tool of behind our research and IIAS provides an environment for
can develop robust research and interventions that are
political and economic management, to its deployment as a Since law school, and in the context of my work as a generating the needed collaboration to make this successful.
culturally, psychologically and economically appropriate, that
contested site for identity formation, culture has always held a practitioner with a Law and Development fundamentally recognize the inseparable link between health
special interest for me. For example as far back as I can Organisation-the Legal Resources Centre-Ghana, and human development and that, crucially, reach
remember I have been interested in urban myths and legends. and as a researcher and academic during graduate communities in need.
studies at Harvard and teaching law at the Law
Many of these have to do with the doings of the political classes, Faculty, University of Ghana, I have explored day-to- Professor Ernest Aryeetey
but it is only recently that I came to understand that the stories day the broad area of the multiple intersections of University of Ghana and ISSER
had certain repeated patterns that could be discerned elsewhere "Law" and "Development". IIAS Fellow
across the continent. Thus urban myths and legends are useful
not just for entertainment, which is normally how they are I come to the Institute with a heavy and confused set Mr. William Baah Boateng
circulated and understood, but as a fascinating way for of experiences in practising and teaching aspects of University of Ghana
understanding specific cultural matrices that straddle the divides Law and Development, Human Rights and IIAS Fellow
between tradition and modernity, and the local in the global. Institutionalism in order to find the space to reflect I see culture and development as bed fellows. In simple terms, one could refer to culture as a way of life of a group of people.
deeply on them and contribute to the literature on The inherent dynamism of culture makes it an important tool in analyzing developmental challenges of a country. Analysts and
For me then the IIAS will provide a lively venue for taking culture the ways in which institutions spawned by the law, or social commentators are often quick to compare the state of development of the Ghanaian economy with that of Malaysia
seriously in all its senses. More than that it will also offer a existing in spite of the law, evolve and operate and and Singapore among others. However, they often ignore the cultural differences between these countries and Ghana.As a
platform through which to explore larger issues of cultural and how historical institutionalism may hold deep graduate student of Economics at the University of Ghana in the 1990s, I struggled to find answers to the question of why
intellectual property rights, something which may start from the answers to some of the policy and developmental Africa and for that matter Ghana continues to lag behind other parts of the world in terms of development. During my study
collection and glossing of our apparently innocent urban legends questions that baffle us as a continent. stay at Harvard, and through interactions with colleague from other parts of the world, I came to the realization that the state
to the much more charged area of documenting our varied of development of any economy is influenced largely by the culture of the people and institutional arrangements of the
cultural symbols and artefacts. country. The attitude of people at the work place and in their everyday lives is undoubtedly shaped by their culture. Many
development policies in Africa have not worked as expected because we often ignore the importance of culture and history in
Ultimately my hope is to see the Institute as one of the best of its Dr. Raymond Atuguba
shaping the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of systems or institutions. My association with the IIAS will provide me with a
kind in Africa and the rest of the world, attracting like-minded University of Ghana platform to work closely with seasoned scholars in History, Culture, Law, Psychology and Economics to understand and
scholars to engage seriously with the new cross-disciplinary IIAS Fellow appreciate the developmental challenges of Ghana in particular and Africa in general beyond my specialized field of
intellectual agendas that will form the core of the Institute's Economics. I look forward to seeing IIAS develop as one of the best institutes that will serve as home for serious research-
efforts. minded scholars across disciplines.