Project Partners: The National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, Sudan; Mallinson Architects; University of Cambridge Department of Archaeology. 

The Aliph-funded WSCM Phase II project is designed to have maximum impact in post-conflict Sudan through promoting cultural heritage as a force for peace in three museums: Nyala in Darfur, El Obeid in Kordofan, and Omdurman, Khartoum. It builds on the success of the British Council Heritage Protection funded, phase I of the project which began to restore the three museums. Phase II sees the completion of high-level security, display cases and exhibitions (including production and delivery of bespoke, international-standard display cabinets), and the development and implementation of a conservation and management plan for the collections at each of the museums. See https://www.facebook.com/WSCMSudan for more information and live updates.

European Research Council funded five year project beginning in July 2021. Led by Dr Jonathan Silver, University of Sheffield the project will be the first comprehensive, social science study of this new global, urban geography of Corridor Urbanization through an agenda-setting programme of research to respond to the immense changes to urban life these visions, plans, and investments are likely to impose and the gaps in knowledges addressing this phenomenon. The aim of GlobalCORRIDOR is to address the challenge of how we understand Corridor Urbanization and to assess how these infrastructure led transformations are shaping urban inequality, as an everyday experience of techno-social differentiation. The East African region will form one of three global case studies on this phenomena.

• Dr Jonathan Silver (PI), University of Sheffield, UK
• Dr Prince Guma, Urban Institute – University of Sheffield, UK

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/urban-institute/interrogations/infrastructures-action/global-corridors 

https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/947779 

Publications

Guma P.K. 2021. “Rethinking Smart Urbanism: City-Making and the Spread of Digital Infrastructures in Nairobi” (Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht University). Published as: Eburon Academic Publishers. ISBN: 978-94-6301-302-4.

Guma, P.K. 2021. Recasting provisional urban worlds in the global South: Shacks, shanties and micro-stalls. Planning Theory and Practice. DOI: 10.1080/14649357.2021.1894348

Guma P.K. 2021. “Localising the smart city? A view of urban plans and technologies in Nairobi,” In, Jochen M., de Bercegol R. and Bon B. Translating the Networked City: Urban Infrastructures in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Routledge Studies in Urbanism and the City.

Guma, P.K. 2020. Incompleteness of urban infrastructures in transition: scenarios from the mobile age in Nairobi. Social Studies of Science, 50(5), 728-750

Guma, P.K. & Monstadt, J. 2020. Smart city making? The spread of ICT-driven plans and infrastructures in Nairobi. Urban Geography. DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2020.1715050

Guma P.K. 2020. “Situating urban smartness: ICTs and infrastructure in Nairobi’s informal areas.” Ed. Aurigi A. and Odendaal N. Shaping Smart for Better Cities: Rethinking and Shaping Relationships between Urban Space and Digital Technologies. Academic Press.

Global and national initiatives to adopt smart technologies in local governments, with the claim that opportunities presented by digitalisation will resolve the challenges of urbanisation – are now literally automating regional futures. This project will conduct the first comprehensive South-South investigation of the dynamics of digitalisation-as-urbanisation – the transition to automated planning processes in metropolitan regions, and its impacts on regional urbanisation. The project will conduct research in peri-urban municipalities of three rapidly growing metropolitan regions where municipal digitalisation is directed towards strategic regional planning. These municipalities face major challenges with transforming paper-based colonial and postcolonial bureaucracies into automated planning processes within highly unequal contexts, and therefore represent the wider experience of digitalisation-as-urbanisation in the global south.

THEMES

Digitalising state

• How is the ‘digitalising state’ assembled in the municipal scale?
• How does the digitalising state automate urbanisation?

More details here: https://biea.ac.uk/regional-futures/ 

The MAEASaM project is working to identify and document endangered archaeological heritage sites across eight African countries, dated from the Palaeolithic/Early Stone Age to the 20th century, then share this information to help protect them.

Using a combination of remote sensing, records-based research and selective archaeological surveys, the team is building comprehensive and up-to-date records of site types and distributions, which will be made available in an open access Arches geospatial relational database tailored for different interest groups and stakeholders.

Past, present and potential future threats to these sites will be identified and assessed, and approaches to enhancing long-term site protection measures and new management policies will be developed with the project’s Africa-based partners and collaborators.

Project aims:

1) Collating, digitising and synthesising existing national archaeological site inventory records and published data on archaeological and cultural heritage sites;

2) Using remote sensing, historical maps and automated site detection methods to identify and document previously unidentified archaeological and cultural heritage sites with particular emphasis on identifying sites under threat from urban growth, conflict, sea-level change, and infrastructural development; and,

3) Undertaking, in collaboration with relevant national authorities and other in-country heritage managers, targeted field assessments of a sample of threatened sites to assess the reliability and accuracy of remote sensing methods for site detection, and provide suitable training for site detection, recording, database entry and for ensuring database sustainability.

All the data collected during this project will be assembled in an Open Access relational database utilising the Arches version 5.0 platform. The nature of current and past threats to these heritage resources will be compiled to reconstruct the sequence of changes to heritage sites and landscapes over the last several decades, and predict potential future threats. The collated and analysed data will be used to develop country-specific recommendations for future research priorities and management and mitigation strategies.

Two Research Fellows, Dr Pamela Ochungo, and Ms Angela Kabiru, are employed by the BIEA to work on this project.

• Rationale for the project
• Project philosophy and approach
• Cross-fertilisation and dissemination

https://maeasam.org/ 

For more information please see: https://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/about/overview

Remote Sensing for Biocultural Heritage Preservation in an African Semi-Arid Region: A Case Study of Indigenous Wells in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia

The region of Southern Ethiopia (Borana) and Northern Kenya (Marsabit) is characterised by erratic rainfall, limited surface water, aridity, and frequent droughts. An important adaptive response to these conditions, of uncertain antiquity, has been the hand-excavation of a sequence of deep wells at key locations often along seasonal riverbeds and valley bottoms where subterranean aquifers can be tapped. Sophisticated indigenous water management systems have developed to ensure equitable access to these critical water resources, and these are part of well-defined customary institutional leadership structures that govern the community giving rise to a distinctive form of biocultural heritage. These systems, and the wells themselves, are increasingly under threat, however, from climate change, demographic growth, and socio-economic development… https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/14/2/314/htm

Prosperity Co-Lab (PROCOL) Kenya is an innovative collaborative research programme seeking to broaden the discussion of what constitutes prosperity in Africa. Led by the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London in close collaboration with local partners, our research harnesses cutting edge science, community knowledge, astute policy development and participatory research methods to develop smarter, localised understandings of prosperity that can be tailored to communities across Africa. Find out more on the  PROCOL Kenya Website.

The BIEA endeavours to build relationships with organisations who are working to advance research excellence in Eastern Africa. We work with many of our partners to deliver seminar series and special events both in the region and globally.

The BIEA works with the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA)r, Collaborative Research Center (CRC), Refugees Research Centre (RSC) and the Rift Valley Institute (RVI), and some of our events are co-organised with these institutes. The BIEA has also partnered with the DirtPol Project.

The Station is run by Mr Timothy Kipkeu (Director) and Ms Helena Chepto (Assistant Director), alongside a well-trained team of local research assistants. The Marakwet research team are highly experienced in interview and oral historical research, audio-recording, photography and filming, GPS mapping, and translation and transcription. Research assistants regularly work independently and can communicate with external researchers via local mobile and 3G internet networks. To date the research team have worked independently on a wide range of topics including mapping of landscape features (field systems, land-tenure, irrigation features), issues of cropping and farming practice, mapping of social and ceremonial landscapes, recording of oral histories, recording of ceremonies and public events, recording of political events and speeches, surveys of market trends, and arrangement of interviews and focus groups.

In addition to research assistants and guides the Station can provide a research base, local cooks and some logistical equipment on arrangement. The Station can also advise on appropriate local research strategies, goals, aims and objectives, as well as local sensibilities, standard rates of pay/remuneration, and logistics.

The Station is able to support research projects who would like to operate in the Marakwet region and further information can be gathered by contacting Janet Njoroge ([email protected]) in the first instance.