In 1999 (August 30 - September 2) the Pan African Anthropological Association (PAAA) marked the 10th anniversary of its creation by holding its 9th Annual Conference in Yaounde, Cameroon - the city and country of its birth. The conference, themed "The Anthropology of Africa: Challenges for the 21st Century", was attended by some seventy participants, mostly African. Among the international participants was Dr Sydel Silverman, President of the Wenner Gren Foundation at the time - a long term partner of the PAAA; she was present at the inaugural conference in 1988. The conference proceedings were initially published in 2000 with very limited circulation. Given the continued relevance of the papers presented, and in view of the call by the President of the PAAA for African anthropologists to reunite anthropological theory and practice in the teaching programmes of African universities, the PAAA is pleased to republish the proceedings of its landmark 9th Annual Conference. The book consists of forty three divided into eight parts, namely: i) teaching anthropology in the decades ahead; ii) Health Challenges: HIV/AIDS Anthropological Perspectives; iii) NGOS: Use and Misuse of Anthropology; iv) Anthropological Focus on Environment; v) Some Applied Issues in Anthropology; vi) The African Family in Crisis; vii) Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflicts; and viii) Population issues and anthropology: Fertility Crisis. Paul Nkwi concludes his introduction to the volume with these words: "The Anthropology of Africa will remain for a long time, fundamentally applied if it is to meet the challenges of the 21st Century."

The anthrax incidents following the 9/11 terrorist attacks put the spotlight on the nation's public health agencies, placing it under an unprecedented scrutiny that added new dimensions to the complex issues considered in this report. The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century reaffirms the vision of Healthy People 2010, and outlines a systems approach to assuring the nation's health in practice, research, and policy. This approach focuses on joining the unique resources and perspectives of diverse sectors and entities and challenges these groups to work in a concerted, strategic way to promote and protect the public's health. Focusing on diverse partnerships as the framework for public health, the book discusses: The need for a shift from an individual to a population-based approach in practice, research, policy, and community engagement. The status of the governmental public health infrastructure and what needs to be improved, including its interface with the health care delivery system. The roles nongovernment actors, such as academia, business, local communities and the media can play in creating a healthy nation. Providing an accessible analysis, this book will be important to public health policy-makers and practitioners, business and community leaders, health advocates, educators and journalists.

Journalism and Mass Communication in Africa provides the first in-depth analysis of the evolution of mass communication and the impact of new media technologies in Cameroon. Written and edited by African scholars, this volume maps out the changing media ecology of Cameroon and provides practical survey methods for communication research. The work details the impact mass public communication has had on the empowerment of Cameroon's 15 million people and the development of grassroots participatory democracy.

This book is on the re-imagination of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) and practices in 21st century Africa. Framed from an anti-colonial perspective, the book critically interrogates epistemological erasures and injustices meted against African IKS and practices. It magnifies the different contexts where African IKS were and continue to be used effectively for collective and personal benefit. Beyond the legitimate frustration and disheartenment expressed by the contributors to this volume over the systematic colonial efforts to render inferior and delegitimate African systems of knowing and knowledge production, the book makes an important contribution to the quest to correct misconceptions and misrepresentations by Eurocentric thinkers and practitioners about African indigenous knowledges. The book makes an informed claim that the future and vibrancy of African indigenous knowledge and practices lie in how well scholars of knowledge studies and decoloniality in and on Africa are able to join hands in articulating, debating and fronting their vitality and relevance in varied real-life situations. More importantly, the book provides a re-invigorated overview and nuanced analyses of the important role and continued relevance of African IKS and practices in the understanding, interpreting and tackling of the social unfoldings of everyday life and dynamism. Without romanticising African IKS and practices, the book provides added insights and pointers on policy and trends. It is an important addition to critical debates on knowledge studies across fields.

How do governments in Africa make decisions about language? What does language have to do with state-building, and what impact might it have on democracy? This manuscript provides a longue durée explanation for policies toward language in Africa, taking the reader through colonial, independence, and contemporary periods. It explains the growing trend toward the use of multiple languages in education as a result of new opportunities and incentives. The opportunities incorporate ideational relationships with former colonizers as well as the work of language NGOs on the ground. The incentives relate to the current requirements of democratic institutions, and the strategies leaders devise to win elections within these constraints. By contrasting the environment faced by African leaders with that faced by European state-builders, it explains the weakness of education and limited spread of standard languages on the continent. The work combines constructivist understanding about changing preferences with realist insights about the strategies leaders employ to maintain power.

Cameroon (officially regarded as the Republic of Cameroon) is a country with vast natural resources and a population of 22.8 million people. It is also culturally and geographically very diverse. Due to its geographical and cultural diversity, Cameroon is often referred to as Africa in miniature. This country is currently considered as a lower middle-income country by the World Bank through social indicators and levels of poverty, which are below those for comparing countries. However, the Government of Cameroon aims to achieve a state of higher middle-income by 2035. There exists a huge potential for economic growth and poverty reduction in Cameroon. Indeed, over the last decade, the country has been characterized by a positive economic growth, spurred by large public investments in infrastructure. However, to attain the higher middle-income status by 2035, growth needs to accelerate further. As the public sector alone cannot bring this about, much more private investments are necessary. Doing so also requires improvements in the business environment. However, despite more than a decade of economic growth, national poverty has remained almost unchanged. While Cameroon is urbanizing rapidly, poverty remains a rural phenomenon and is increasingly concentrated in northern Cameroon. The aim of the book is to provide an overview of the main issues, challenges, and prospects faced by Cameroon. The book is composed of conceptual and empirical studies of Cameroonian scholars gathered together in order to provide descriptions and explanations of the main issues as well as policy recommendations to support decisions-makers. These considerations are those of Cameroonians for Cameroon. The book is organized into two volumes. The first one, entitled Governance and Businesses, is devoted to issues relating to public governance, investment climate, insecurity, globalization, business development, and activities that are sources of employment in Cameroon. The second volume, entitled Environment and People, deals with issues concerning the management of cross cutting economic services, the conservation of forests, the sustainable development of agricultural activities, the role of women, the immobility of workers, problems of development and poverty alleviation, millennium development goals, the performance of microfinance institutions, multilingualism, and education in Cameroon.

This collection of essays interrogates the repositioning of Africa and its diasporas in the unfolding disruptive transformations of the early twenty-first century. It is divided into five parts focusing on America's racial dysfunctions, navigating global turbulence, Africa's political dramas, the continent's persistent mythologisation and disruptions in higher education. It closes with tributes to two towering African public intellectuals, Ali Mazrui and Thandika Mkandawire, who have since joined the ancestors.