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When European powers partitioned Africa, individuals of otherwise homogeneous communities were divided and found themselves randomly assigned to one coloniser. This provides for a natural experiment: applying a border discontinuity analysis to Ghana and Togo, we test what impact coloniser’s policies really made. Using a new data set of men recruited to the Ghana colonial army 1908-1955, we find literacy and religious beliefs to diverge between British and French mandated part of Togoland as...

The endemic, monotypic freshwater crab species Seychellum alluaudi was used as a template to examine the initial colonisation and evolutionary history among the major islands in the Seychelles Archipelago. Five of the “inner” islands in the Seychelles Archipelago including Mahé, Praslin, Silhouette, La Digue and Frégate were sampled. Two partial mtDNA fragments, 16S rRNA and cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) was sequenced for 83 specimens of S. alluaudi. Evolutionary relationships between...

[1] We have analysed high-spatial-resolution and high-temporal-resolution temperature measurements of the active lava lake at Erta'Ale volcano, Ethiopia, to derive requirements for measuring eruption temperatures at Io's volcanoes. Lava lakes are particularly attractive targets because they are persistent in activity and large, often with ongoing lava fountain activity that exposes lava at near-eruption temperature. Using infrared thermography, we find that extracting useful temperature...

We undertook this study to assess the prevalence of obesity and overweight in children enrolled in government primary schools in the city of Rabat, Morocco. Twenty three schools were randomly selected. A cross-sectional study was conducted between April 2010 and June 2010. The survey was conducted on the basis of two questionnaires for both parents and children. The references used are those of the WHO (2007). Our study involved a sample of 1570 children with an average age of 9.7 ± 0.95...

Abstract Senegal has a complex multilingual set-up where there is interaction between 25 distinct indigenous languages and French, the language of the former colonial power. Throughout colonial rule the French language was imposed and the indigenous languages were marginalised and stigmatised. When Senegal gained independence from France, the postcolonial authorities who took over power were not able to redress the situation and promote their own languages. As a result, more than half a...

There has been a rigorous debate during the 2000s about the recovery of the African Sahel from the long-lasting drought. To examine the situation in Sudan, this paper develops the standardized anomaly indices (SAIs) of mean annual temperature and annual rainfall, and accordingly, establishes the Pedj drought index (PDI) since the 1940s to 2008 for 14 stations spread over the country. There has been a drastic increase in temperatures (maximum, minimum, and mean) over the whole country in line...

Global circulation models (GCMs) have become the main tools for the simulation of future climate change and their projections are being used extensively in the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). GCMs rely on the laws of physics to describe the response of the Earth system to enhanced levels of greenhouse gas concentrations, as well as to other types of anthropogenic forcing.

This paper is about the effect of climate change on Sub-Sahara African (SSA) agricultural production in a post-colonial setting. While agricultural production certainly is the result of a multi-dimensional process (influenced by diverse branches of politics, by technology, and also by trade patters and violent conflicts, among others), already the partial analysis of the most obvious factors of influence is certainly valuable in the African case. Since agriculture is not only the single most...

This article presents a brief history of the disability movement in East Africa and is the first study of its kind in Kenya. The study aimed to determine the physical activity levels of disabled and non-disabled children at schools in selected provinces in Kenya. A cross-sectional study was conducted with children in three high schools offering inclusive education and in three government boarding high schools. Thirty-six per cent of the disabled children were physically active compared with...

The current study considered the influence of the 2008 presidential election on the racial identity of African American college students (M(age) = 19.3 years; 26.3% male). The design of the study consisted of 2 components: longitudinal and daily. The longitudinal component assessed 3 dimensions of racial identity (centrality, private regard, and public regard) 2 weeks before and 5 months after the election, and the daily diary component assessed racial identity and identity exploration on...

The purpose of this study was to examine correlates of being at expected grade level in reading in the third grade. Participants for this study were a nationally representative sample of African American children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K). Multilevel modeling was conducted to determine significant predictors of academic achievement. Results suggest that modifiable individual and teacher classroom level constructs are related to African American achievement....

The demand for university education in Kenya has significantly increased and continues to swell. Many secondary school graduates and the working class look for opportunities to pursue university education. Universities being accountable to the public as stakeholders need to guarantee that they offer quality teaching, research and community service to its students. With the increasing numbers of students seeking places in public universities, the question of quality is critical and requires...

This paper examines the vulnerability of African countries to climate change, for which they are not responsible. It is based on an index of structural or physical vulnerability to climate change at the country level, denominated below by the acronym PVCCI. This index has been created recently by the authors, and has been made available on the FERDI website. The design of this index draws both on the environmental literature, and some principles used by the United Nations to measure...

This paper focuses on public spending in education in Uganda. In particular, we investigate the extent to which public spending/provision in the education sector has been pro-poor. The analysis draws for a large part on the Uganda National Household Survey of 2009/10 (UNHS IV). The survey is nationally representative and is conducted after every four year span. The survey has four core modules administered to all sampled households. The socio economic module collects basic social indicators...

Background: Egypt has experienced an increase in the prevalence of childhood overweight/obesity over last decades. Aim of study was to assess prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MS) and other metabolic features among obese Egyptian school students. Methods: Study included 462 obese students (body mass index > 95th percentile), 122 prepubertal and 340 pubertal, aged 7 - 18 years. Approved by Ethical Community, National Research Centre. Each subject was submitted to clinical, anthropometric and...

Geophysical Research LettersVolume 38, Issue 21 Solid EarthFree Access Helium isotopes at Rungwe Volcanic Province, Tanzania, and the origin of East African Plateaux D. R. Hilton, D. R. Hilton drhilton@ucsd.edu Fluids and Volatiles Laboratory, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USASearch for more papers by this authorS. A. Halldórsson, S. A. Halldórsson Fluids and Volatiles Laboratory, Scripps Institution of Oceanography,...