On 6 and 7 December 2018, the first out of a series of Female Academic Career Workshops was held in Dakar (under the aegis of GHI Paris). Among 120 applications, 16 scholars from Senegal (8), Cameroon (4), Côte d’Ivoire (1), Togo (1), Algeria (1) and Morocco (1) were selected. The workshop consisted of two parts: (a) a public round table on ‘Female academic career development in African academic environments” and (b) a non-public coaching seminar which was conducted by Folashade Soule-Kohndou (University of Oxford).

“Whenever Africa is mentioned in a global setting, it’s not for its progressive contributions...but as a continent that should be helped through technocratic interventions”

This was one of many powerful calls from Dr. Kwesi Aning (Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Accra Ghana) to rethink how Africa is seen by the world during his lecture on "African Agency in R2P: Interventions by African Union and ECOWAS in Mali, Cote d’Ivoire and Libya" at the University of Freiburg, 23rd Oct. 2018.

The Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) has held its inaugural conference at the University of Ghana. Under the theme “Africa’s Institutions for Sustainable Governance” the event spanned between Thursday, 27th and Friday, 28th of September, 2018. The conference was attended by over 300 scholars from universities in Germany and across Africa. Participants were enlightened on topics in the areas of Gender, Democracy, Sustainable Energy, Agriculture, Elections and Peace during keynote addresses and plenary sessions.