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Information Bulletin on
the 10th General Assembly |
No. 1, 2002
Contents:
*Editorial Note:
This Information Bulletin is an innovation which
has been adopted by CODESRIA to keep all
members of the African social research community informed of every
aspect, and the different stages of the
Council’s preparation for the upcoming General Assembly scheduled for 10
– 12 December, 2002 in Kampala. In doing so,
the Bulletin is also designed to serve as a mobilisation tool as
the countdown begins in earnest to an event
which promises to be the biggest gathering of scholars on
the African continent this year and a true festival of ideas and
debate. As frequently as the need arises, the
CODESRIA Secretariat will issue this Information Bulletin right
up to the first week of December 2002. It is
hoped that you will find the Bulletin informative and useful.
Letter from the Executive
Secretary of CODESRIA:
Date: 01 September, 2002
Ref.: BSE/161/2002
Dear colleagues and friends,
Subject: Welcoming the CODESRIA Community to Kampala for
the 10th General Assembly
As you already know, the 10th General Assembly of
CODESRIA will be coming up from 08 to 12
December, 2002 in Kampala, Uganda on the theme Africa in the New
Millennium. It is an Assembly which carries a
great deal of historic significance. Apart from the fact that it marks a
milestone in its own right – after all, it is
the tenth General Assembly to be organised by the Council since its
founding in 1973 –there is also a widely-shared determination to
restore the gathering to what it was always
intended to be, namely, the major scientific festival of social
researchers held triennially in Africa.
Furthermore, this particular Assembly will have the added task of
studying the recommendations for governance
reform produced by the Governance Reform Committee set up by
a resolution of the 9th General Assembly.
The 10th General Assembly also
marks the first time in the history of the Council that the meeting will
be held outside of Senegal. This decision was taken by the
Executive Committee in line with its
resolution made in July 2001 that the Executive Secretariat should
re-build and strengthen the CODESRIA presence
and impact outside of the West Africa sub-region by selectively rotating
some of the Council’s major activities
outside of its headquarters in Senegal to other parts of the continent.
In the bid to give effect to this resolution, the Secretariat
held the CODESRIA Gender Symposium involving
about 100 scholars in Cairo, Egypt, in the second week of April 2002;
co-hosted a major conference, also involving
about 100 participants, on Africa
and the Development Challenges of the New
Millennium in Accra, Ghana in the
last week of April 2002; and scheduled the Afro-Asia dialogue
on State and Nation Building in Africa for Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia for September 2002. Other scientific
meetings, including those of multinational working groups, have been
similarly scheduled for different parts of the
continent in order to encourage the participation of local scholars.
We at the Executive Secretariat are very excited at the
challenge of hosting the 10th General Assembly
in Kampala and very much look forward to welcoming all members of the
community to that city. Apart from the large
and vibrant CODESRIA membership which is based in Uganda,
Kampala is once again rapidly re-establishing itself as an
important centre for scholarly debates in
Africa. Furthermore, the Council does have some knowledge of the
intellectual and conference terrain in
Kampala; some members of the community might recall that it is already
ten years now since the academic freedom
conference was held in that city and the Kampala Declaration produced.
Also, for a major event such as the General Assembly, Kampala
affords easy air transport access from all
over Africa and has no visa restrictions whatsoever on African visitors,
thereby improving the prospects for a
hitch-free meeting. Given the severe logistical difficulties which have
been encountered in moving researchers to
CODESRIA meetings in West and Central Africa on account of
the collapse of Air Afrique – and Senegal has been particularly
badly hit by that crisis – the easy
accessibility of Kampala to potential Assembly participants from all
parts of the continent and the relaxed visa
procedures operated by Uganda are important considerations which the
Secretariat has noted in its preliminary
planning process.
The Executive Secretariat pledges to do its utmost to
ensure that the 10th General Assembly is as
intellectually stimulating and rewarding as possible. Those of you who
sent in abstracts for the presentation of
papers at the Assembly would have already received a note acknowledging
receipt of your proposal. You will be kept
informed on the outcome of the evaluation of the abstract by the
independent committee that has been set up to review all the
proposals received.
I look forward very much to welcoming as many of you as
possible to Kampala and to the debates which
we will be having over the four days of the Assembly.
Yours sincerely,
Adebayo Olukoshi,
Executive Secretary.
The CODESRIA Web Site:
For those members of the research community who may not
yet be aware, CODESRIA has a new web site
which we would like to encourage you visit as up-to-date information on
the different activities of the Council,
including the upcoming General Assembly, are posted on the site. The
website address is: www.codesria.org
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