October 25, 1990

The college hosted a conference on the “Crisis in the African Economy” in the Villard Room. Under Secretary General of the United Nations His Excellency Adebayo Adedeji, the Nigerian former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, gave the keynote address. Othe speakers included Dr. Dunstan Wai, a former Sudanese government official who was at the time working with the World Bank; Kenyan political scientist Professor Mahmood Mamdani; Dr. Shelia Smith, a UN official dealing with economic restructuring programs; Claude Ake, an African political scientist with the Brookings Institution; the Senegalese head of the UN High Commission for Refugees, Marie-Angélique Savané and South African political scientist and anthropologist from University of Connecticut, Bernard Magubane. The conference addressed such issues as the effects of imperialism in Africa, the place of women in the structural adjustment of power and the role of the World Bank in Africa.

In a letter to the editor published in The Miscellany News, David E. Burns ’91 reminded the college that “one of the first steps in confronting any political problem is understanding it and conducting open discourse on possible solutions,” and that the conference was “an excellent opportunity for all to become more informed about the current conditions of the African political-economy and their historic origins.”

—The Miscellany News