Featured series 
Tag: Africa
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Nation & World
Botswana: One Woman’s Story
Though there are signs that the Botswana AIDS epidemic is slowing, the disease remains the top cause of death in the southern African nation. HIV infection rates are down nationwide to 24 percent, while life expectancy, which had fallen from 64 in 1990 to 40, rose to 50 in 1997.
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Nation & World
Turning on the lights
Like much of Africa, Liberia relies on ineffective, dirty sources of energy. Coming off a fellowship at Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, Richard Fahey has one big goal: to transform the country’s electrical grid from the bottom up.
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Nation & World
South Africa: Valley of 1,000 Hills
One of the continent’s richest nations, South Africa also has one of the world’s highest HIV infection rates and is home to the world’s biggest population of HIV-infected people, an estimated 5.5 million.
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Nation & World
Lesotho: The Pilots
The tiny African nation of Lesotho is among those hardest hit by the raging twin epidemics of ADIS and tuberculosis. Harvard faculty members are advising the government and helping to revamp clinics and treat patients in the far-flung mountain regions of this poor country.
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Health
Plotting the demise of malaria
Authorities on malaria from around the world came to Harvard Medical School to participate in a forum discussing a change in strategy in the battle against malaria, moving from control to eradication.
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Nation & World
Congo: Rape as Strategy
Researchers from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative have been working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for several years examining the roots of the violence against women that has plagued this war-torn region.
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Health
Seeing double
By comparing the DNA of modern elephants from Africa and Asia to DNA extracted from two extinct species, the woolly mammoth and the mastodon, researchers have concluded that Africa has two — not one — species of elephant. Now that we know the forest and savanna elephants are two very different animals, the forest elephant…
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Health
Sick to death
Harvard School of Public Health researchers are mounting a major study of chronic disease in four African nations, which organizers hope will provide a foundation for understanding and treating chronic ailments like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
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Nation & World
Italy and Africa, entwined
Students in Giuliana Minghelli’s new course on cultural migrations between Italy and Africa get an up-close view of the colonial era, witnessing a performance by one of the assigned authors and developing their own creative responses.
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Nation & World
The outlook for Africa
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice argued that the United States’ continued involvement in African affairs is good for international stability and for the American idea in “The National Interest, Africa, and the African Diaspora: Does U.S. Foreign Policy Connect the Dots?” — the first of three W.E.B. Du Bois lectures on the black experience…
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Campus & Community
‘Africa in Motion’
A two-day celebration of African studies at Harvard highlighted cultural elements such as dance and artwork, study and travel on the continent, and scholarly discussions of Africa’s status today.
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Arts & Culture
Looking past the plantation
Archaeologists examining the African-American past are broadening their focus to include a greater understanding of Africa, according to Christopher Fennell, who spoke at the Harvard African Seminar.
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Nation & World
Documenting a colonial past
A Harvard doctoral student and two recent graduates worked in Kenya this summer with Harvard history professor Caroline Elkins to lay the foundation for a collaboration with Kenyan scholars to record the African nation’s experience gaining independence from Britain.
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Arts & Culture
Saturday Is for Funerals
Max Essex, the Mary Woodard Lasker Professor of Health Sciences, and Unity Dow track the Botswana HIV/AIDS crisis through heartrending narratives of those affected by the disease — an estimated one out of four adults.
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Nation & World
A higher profile for African studies
Harvard’s Committee on African Studies has received designation as a National Resource Center by the U.S. Department of Education, raising the profile of African studies at Harvard and gaining federal funding for programs and student efforts.
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Nation & World
Basic science
A Harvard chemist and two graduate students from Harvard and MIT traveled to Liberia in June to conduct a workshop on science teaching for professors and students in the war-torn nation.
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Campus & Community
Marie-Ange Bunga of HKS starts Congo Initiative at Harvard
Outgoing Harvard Kennedy School student Marie-Ange Bunga started the Congo Initiative at Harvard, aiming to increase awareness about the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and hopes her cause will live on in the next generation of concerned students.
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Arts & Culture
Hip-hop’s global reach
A two-day conference explores the global reach of hip-hop and examines how teachers can use it in the classroom to convey important lessons about art, culture, language, and society.
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Nation & World
Reducing malnutrition
The world is going to fall well short of achieving the Millennium Development Goals to reduce malnutrition, and child and maternal mortality, by 2015.
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Nation & World
Out of Africa
Harvard Africa Focus opens series of panels, lectures, and performances highlighting the continent’s life and culture.
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Campus & Community
Hard look at harsh times
History professor Caroline Elkins, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her book outlining British colonial abuses during Kenya’s Mau Mau uprising, is working to build ties with Kenyan institutions.
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Nation & World
A bridge to somewhere
Bady Balde, a learned émigré from Guinea, uses Harvard’s Bridge Program to go from Dining Services worker to bank teller to Harvard Kennedy School graduate student.
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Nation & World
Wanted: Doctors for Africa
Esther Mwaikambo is used to starting small. Until her teaching hospital was started in 1997, there was only one medical school in Tanzania, graduating 25 to 40 doctors annually.
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Nation & World
Faust hosts African students
Harvard President Drew Faust hosts students from African countries to solicit their input and advice in advance of her November trip to South Africa and Botswana.
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Nation & World
Odinga optimistic about Africa’s democratic future
Kenya Prime Minister Raila Odinga expresses optimism about Kenya’s democratic future.
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Nation & World
Bringing science back to Liberian classrooms
Adam Cohen, assistant professor in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Ben Rapoport, a student at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are bringing science to war-torn Liberia.
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Campus & Community
Andover’s Rousmaniere teaches soccer in Africa
For Andover’s Adam Rousmaniere, life simply has a different meaning now. “When I got home, everything seemed different,” he said. “It was difficult to readapt. You look at things here and you think, how can you get upset over that? How does that bother you? Readapting to life in the United States was quite an…
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Science & Tech
Social pressure keeps African AIDS patients in treatment
One of the surprises of the global AIDS epidemic has been the high level of adherence to antiretroviral drug treatment in sub-Saharan Africa.
