Article written by Maggie Ritchie – free-lance journalist who joined the Glasgow delegation traveling to Lira, Uganda in February 2019 for the 3rd SFA Annual Symposium. While in Uganda, she had the opportunity to meet with the communities involved in SFA activities through two partners: Apala Widows and Orphanage Centre (AWOC) and ECOaction.

The University of Botswana’s Department of Adult Education led an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Sustainable Futures in Africa (SFA) Network for a workshop on human-wildlife interactions at the Mmadinare Main Kgotla on August 14, 2018. The Patriot on Sunday, a Botswana national Sunday newspaper, has featured the Sustainable Futures in Africa’s research trial, community event and community partnerships in a recent article discussing wildlife management:

By DrTwine Hannington Bananuka, Dr Alex Okot and Dr Mia Perry 

Sustainable Futures in Africa (SFA) hubs in Scotland and Uganda partnered together to publish in The Daily Monitor to celebrate World Environment Day.  The article discusses research conducted by SFA Ugandan hub in partnership with partners ECOaction and the community members of  both Apala and Albertine region.

By Dr Mia Perry and Dr Deepa Pullanikkatil

Since the 1940s major world powers like the US, the UK and the United Nations have made moves to spread their scientific, economic, industrial, and human rights progress to countries and regions that are seen as less developed, vulnerable or deprived in one way or another.

And yet from where we stand as individual researchers, with funding and passion to share, we see an unsettling and consistent characteristic of this development history. The global north has experienced a gradual increase of economic strength and environmental protection, through jobs, career development, cheap goods and services.

Meanwhile, the global south has undergone a sustained degradation of autonomy, fertile land, food security and cultural literacies. All this has occurred through an imposition of foreign ideas, materials, ideologies and knowledge systems. That’s why we’re trying to do things differently.

Read a recent publication by Sustainable Futures in Africa’s Co-Directors Dr Mia Perry and Deepa Pullanikkatil in The Conversation on why beating poverty needs partnerships and collaboration – not just money …

Nigeria recently surpassed India to become the country with the highest number of people living in extreme poverty: 87 million. Nigeria is oil rich and boasts Africa’s fastest growing economy. Yet six of its people fall into extreme poverty every minute.

Read a recent publication by Sustainable Futures in Africa’s Coordinators Dr Mia Perry and Deepa Pullanikkatil in The Conversation on why beating poverty needs partnerships and collaboration – not just money …

by Dr Mia Perry

If you have £10 in your pocket and you want to do some good for the world, what is the best way to spend the money? Is it more helpful to donate to an international charity, or pay steep prices for local produce over cheaper, often more accessible products, that have been imported from Africa?

I ask myself this question frequently. My work takes me to places far removed from my home to ‘help,’ to ‘develop,’ to ‘solve problems.’ What makes me think that my good 
intentions, my money, my version of developed/sustainable/happy have any relevance to communities in Malawi or Uganda? How can I make choices at home that create a positive impact?

In the name of “development” and “aid” billions of pounds have been spent from the Global North on challenges materialising in the Global South: from poverty to environmental protection, from gender equality to health. Countless academics, development workers, and administrators have focused on innovation, intervention, programmes and practices on supporting development in the “developing world”.

In the name of #Development #GCRF @SF_Africa https://t.co/mjDU1uvtz1

— Molly Gilmour (@MVGilmour) April 12, 2018

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The Sustainable Futures in Africa Network (sustainablefuturesglobal.org), a consortium I lead, 
is a collective of researchers, educators, development workers, and communities that spans the UK (primarily the University of Glasgow) and countries across Africa (Malawi, Uganda, Botswana, and Nigeria in particular).

We work across diverse areas of expertise, sectors, and geographies to address the social, cultural, and ecological aspects of sustainable development. Together, we focus on questions about how to rethink the development research status quo for more positive future outcomes.

The flow of aid money and resources, coupled with increasing global morality and mobility is broadening pipelines between the Global North and South, yet there is an unsettling current to development trends.

In reality, the Global North (albeit an ever-decreasing section of the Global North) becomes ever more powerful and prosperous, and more resilient to climate change; while the Global South addresses an ever-decreasing area of fertile land, a growing population of people living in poverty, and an increasing threat of food security. For all of our good intentions and promises of funding and expertise, global inequalities and development challenges persist – in many areas increase.

The Sustainable Futures in Africa Network has grown out of questioning this type of development and development-related research.

The Sustainable Futures in Africa Network has grown out of questioning this type of development and development-related research. We are convinced that there are fundamental oversights in the practices, processes and natures of collaborations.

Unless we make decisive changes to the ways we collaborate, across the vastly different settings of our homes, cultures, and disciplines then substantial resources will continue to be spent at a rapid pace; but the trajectory of change and development in the world will remain consistent with that of the past 50 years. The north gets richer, the south gets poorer. Why would we expect anything different if we continue as normal?

Global challenges relating to poverty and environmental sustainability in the Global South require engagement with multiple disciplines, knowledge, and stakeholders.

The challenge goes beyond working across science, society, and culture. It encompasses working across very different perspectives and lived experiences.

We cannot genuinely support positive change or sustainability without ways to communicate and collaborate across these differences. As we do so, we find that no one alone has the solution, no one knows ‘best,’ but together we discover directions and possibilities that make sense (and often surprise) all involved.

As I give, donate, or purchase to 
create positive change, I am 
making a difference to others and also to myself. I am accountable for the giving, but also for the impact of the giving. I am mindful of the consequences of my donation or contribution; conscious that I do not want to contribute to the same systems of global inequality that I am trying to alleviate.

So, I choose to spend my £10… in exchange for a product or cause that I am engaged with and understand. This might look like a fair-trade purchase from a market in my neighbourhood instead of a cheaper 
version at the large chain supermarket, or choosing to purchase a locally produced or second-hand shirt rather than the cheaper new one from a brand-name company who source labour and materials from resource-poor countries such as Bangladesh. Positive influence in the world must be based on fair exchange and self-awareness, not simply good intention or aid.

Bananuka, T., Perry, M., & Kadoma, A. (2023). Researching Without “Methods”: An Experiment in Socio-Ecological Sustainability Research With Rural Communities. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 22. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069231179159

Abstract

This article describes an improvisatory or ‘no method’ research approach in socio-ecological sustainability in two rural Ugandan communities. A team of multidisciplinary researchers purposed to understand how rural community members make sense of their role in, and relationship with, the environment. In addition, they sought to unsettle pre-existing assumptions, categories of knowledge, and methods of knowledge generation, through a practical and conceptual exploration of community-academy collaboration in research. The authors present an account of the research process as an experiment towards a decolonial, context-specific, and post-qualitative practice of inquiry and collaboration. The paper describes the context of the Ugandan communities involved and the socio-ecological issues that impact their lives. Related methodological practices are discussed to support the description and discussion of the improvised methods employed in this study. The methodological findings that conclude this paper have implications for global sustainability research, partnership, and action.

Abstract

Partnership is not a benign practice; it is culturally and ethically loaded. The way in which partnerships are construed in international research determines its design, ethics and impacts. Despite this, and the growing assumption of partnership practice in our field, the concept has become increasingly abstract and the practice under-analysed. This article provides critical perspectives of current understandings of partnership in international development research from three angles: the motivations behind partnership working; an epistemological perspective in relation to epistemic justice and the agency of language; and finally, the systems that mediate partnerships, and the range of resources that guide them.

Mia Perry. 2020. Pluriversal Literacies: Affect and Relationality in Vulnerable Times. International Literacy Association – Reading Research Quarterly. 0(0). pp 1-17 | doi:10.1002/rrq.312

Abstract

Through a consideration of literacies in theory and international policy, this article pushes at the edges of existing frameworks of functional and sociocultural literacies. In critique of existing policy directives, the author explores an approach to literacy that engages in the affective and posthuman relationality of human and environment and in the plurality of literacies globally that are overshadowed in prevailing models of literacy education. The author was motivated by a commitment to literacy education responsive to a world that is unsustainable in its current practices, to a world that faces increasing fragmentation and vulnerability (socially and ecologically) while certain types of expertise, technologies, and global infrastructures continue to proliferate. As a mainstay of education and a tool of social change, literacies are inseparable from policy and practices of sustainability, equity, and development. Pluriversality is a concept emerging from decolonial theory that provides a counternarrative to contemporary Northern assumptions of the universal. Building on a history of ideas around pluriversality gives sociopolitical and ecological momentum to affect and relationality in literacy studies. The author challenges normative constructions of literacy education as Eurocentric and neocolonial, effectively supporting a pedagogy that normalizes certain practices and people and, by extension, sustains inequity and environmental degradation. Through interwoven research projects, the author highlights the contentious aspects of functional and sociocultural approaches to literacy and the possibilities of moving beyond them. In doing so, the author describes and demonstrates the practical and political implications of affect theory and relationality in literacies education in a plural anthropocenic world.

It is a paper that I have been working on for over a year and our very own Dr Alex Okot is quoted, EcoAction is featured and the Sustainable Future in Africa Network acknowledged throughout for the immense influence this network has had on my work in literacies

– Dr Mia Perry

By Dr Mia Perry and Dr Deepa Pullanikkatil

A great article written by our Co-Directors and entitled “Transforming international development” was recently published in the Impact publication (IMPACT Volume 2019, Numero 1 – February).

This piece was produced by Science Impact to help the SFA network communicate the objectives and work of the project in a more easily understandable and accessible language to a wider audience of stakeholders, enabling widespread dissemination.

** The article can be downloaded in a pdf format.

ABSTRACT

THE SUSTAINABLE FUTURES IN AFRICA (SFA) NETWORK The Sustainable Futures in Africa (SFA) Network is an interdisciplinary collective that brings together researchers, educators, and communities of practice that acknowledge the situated and complex nature of practices and conceptions of sustainability. The Network aims to build understanding, research, and practice in socio-ecological sustainability in Africa. Specifically, the Network includes the participation of researchers (from geography and earth sciences, community and adult education, applied social arts, health sciences, and engineering); third-sector organisations (working with environmental and social sustainability, with arts and cultural practice, and with community engagement in African contexts); and community stake-holders (living and working in areas of focus). Participants currently span the Uganda, Botswana, Nigeria, Malawi, and the UK, and the reach of the network continues to expand. THE NETWORK’S AIMS ARE: To address the relationship between social, cultural, and ecological factors in sustainability in Africa through interdisciplinary research initiatives To discover opportunities in the disparities between ontologies of the global north and the global south inherent in international collaborations and global endeavours To shape and support new opportunities for impact and inquiry that address locally-articulated, socio-ecological challenges The Network’s current infrastructure includes a website (https://sustainablefuturesinafrica.com/) and social media platforms; a growing base of research, funding to support knowledge sharing and capacity strengthening (ESRC, EPSRC & SFC); and a core group of scholars, practitioners, and support staff who are providing the leadership and administration of this initiative.

Three SFA partners – Dr Deepa Pullanikkatil (Co-Director), Dr Boyson Moyo (Malawi hub Director) and Dr Brian Barrett (Glasgow hub Director) co-authored this open access article as part of SFA (published in the Journal of Maps in March 2019).

ABSTRACT

This paper outlines a project drawing together an artist working on creative GIS, a geomatics scholar, an NGO leader, a rural geographer and soil scientist, an environmental geochemist, and a political geographer. With a shared interest in the social and physical processes affecting people’s lives in Malawi, and the possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration, the team engaged in practice-based mapping of our data sources and respective methodologies. The project relates to two sites in Malawi: Tikondwe Freedom Gardens and the Likangala River. The paper details our practices as we shared, debated, and repurposed our data as a means of situating these practices and data. Using paper and pen, whiteboard, PowerPoint, and web-design software, we note here our effort to map a ‘space of experimentation’ highlighting, and reflecting on, our diverse disciplinary orientations, training, instrumentation, recording, and reporting procedures, as well as bodily practices that enable and give animation to these factors.

Koehn, D., Steiner, A. and Aanyu, K. (2018). Modelling of extension and dyking-induced collapse faults and fissures in rifts. Journal of Structural Geology, 118, pp.21-31.

This publication is an output of the research conducted by SFA researchers in Uganda on ‘Understanding the structure, permeability and activity of faults in and around the Rwenzori mountains, Albertine rift system’

HIGHLIGHTS

• This contribution presents modelling of fissures and faults in rifts induced by extension and dyking.
• Faults nucleate as hybrid shear surfaces and migrate upwards as fissures and downwards as shear fractures.
• Dyking tends to localize faults on top of dykes and produces narrow vertical collapse structures.
• Collapse structures are rhomboid blocks that form along conjugate fault sets and move down with normal and reverse sense.
• The most localized collapse structures develop on top of thin and shallowly intruding dykes.

The SFA Botswana Hub conducted a trial study titled Unearthing the Dynamics of Human and Wildlife Interactions: The Case of Mmadinare Community in the Central Region of Botswana. From this study a journal paper was extracted and submitted to Wildlife Interactions Journal. It is exciting to announce that finally the paper entitled “Toward Sustainable Conservation and Management of Human-Wildlife Interactions in the Mmadinare Region of Botswana: Villagers’ Perceptions on Challenges and Prospects” has been published.

Perry, M.  (2018) Unpacking the imaginary in literacies of globality. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education,(doi:10.1080/01596306.2018.1515064)

As global mobility and communications proliferate, ever-increasing exchanges and influences occur across cultures, geographies, politics, and positions. This paper addresses the practice of literacy education in this context, and in particular the nature of engagement across difference and the role of the imaginary in literacies of globality. Grounded in a theorisation of difference and the imaginary in spaces of learning and inquiry, the paper proposes a methodological framework for working across difference that acknowledges and engages with the inevitable but enigmatic resource of often conflicting imaginaries in literacy practices.