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Browsing School of Languages by Subject "Africa"
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Item Making West African languages relevant in the development process(2016-09-16) Omoniyi, T.; Amfo, N.B.A.Africa is home to over one-third of the world’s languages, i.e. 2000+ languages. Africa also plays ‘home’ to indigenised varieties of major European languages. Launching her Lordina Foundation in the US recently, the FLOTROG said ‘There is a direct link between poverty and lack of education’. I say, there is a direct link between non-exploration and mobilisation of indigenous values and knowledges conveyed through indigenous languages and snail-speed development or regression. My aim in this presentation is to demonstrate that a renaissance of indigenous languages is unfolding on the African continent. I shall draw illustrations from Tanzania, Malawi, Nigeria and Ghana policy debates, popular culture (Ghana’s Most Beautiful – tokenism?), film industries, and development in information technology. I shall propose that national politics and governance are in dire need of infusion exploration in order to transform the current 'democracy of the elite' in most of our countries to mass participatory and inclusive democracy.Item Publish and Perish: Exploring Issues of Predatory Outlets among African Researchers(2016-04-28) Andoh, H.; Amfo, N.A.The dependence of academic evaluation on one’s publications has resulted in the popularity of the expression “Publish or Perish” in academic institutions, over the decades. The expression is, in some sense, intended to serve as an impetus for young researchers to publish the findings of their research, and thus increase the research outputs of their respective institutions. In addition, the policy of most major universities in Africa and world is to increase their publications for a number of reasons, including the possibility of gaining favourable world university rankings. However, in most researchers’ quest to increase their publications, especially after their doctoral studies, they look for journals and other outlets with quicker and easier review processes than the traditional publishers. This has caused the emergence of predatory publishers. The number of “Predatory Publishers” increased from just five (5) in 2009 to over nine hundred in 2016. Their activities possess a great danger to young researchers and the research systems of African universities. In this presentation, I will report on my recent study which highlighted the extent of predatory publishing among Ghanaian researchers. Out of a total number of 600 publications by 30 Ghanaian researchers, over 60 articles were published in predatory journals. Also, of the 30 researchers only 7 had no publications from a predatory publisher in their list of articles and other research outputs. The outcome of this study provides the basis for informing researchers that, in spite of the need to publish to avoid perishing, one can actually publish and still perish if care is not taken to ensure that the processes and consequent outputs are credible. Thus the presentation will create awareness on the emergency of predatory publishers, how they can be identified and why their activities possess a great danger to the overall research system in African universities.