Today in my Gender and Development class we took a field trip to AAWORD (Association of African Women for Research and Development) which is an organization that was formed by African women in order to "decolonize" the research that is often conducted by Western researchers, funded by Western sources, and reflects Western values in its analysis, thus perpetuating the coloniser influence on African development. We met with a women who works for the organization and were able to ask her many questions about their work and where it has lead them. What stuck out the most to me though was the recurrent problem I have noticed here about the dissemination of information. The research that AAWORD and other African based organizations are conducting is really quality literature. But as I have experienced at Colgate University, it is really difficult to find research articles that are written by people who originate from the communities they study and therefore understand the hidden dynamics, values, and desires of the people they are researching. This is the kind of research that when applied will benefit the recipients the most, but it is hard to find these resources outside of the area in which they were written. We recieved many publications and anthologies of the research conducted by AAWORD today and I felt like I was in heaven in their library full of local knowledge.
I want to share that wealth with the rest of you by directing you to AAWORD's website where you can find PDFs of a lot of their work. Another great website I learned about since being here is CODESRIA's website (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa). Both of them provide lots of valuable information. I encourage you to check them out and to pass the word on to others who you think might be interested.
Click the links below to be directed to the document centers:
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