African Studies
Working Paper 194/2023: A Qualidade do Serviço e a Satisfação do Cliente: Estudo dos Clientes do Banco de Poupança e Crédito – Luanda (Angola)
Abstract:
Nowadays, a correct and profitable way of managing the issue of service quality is to listen to customers, both satisfied and dissatisfied, to improve the information obtained, improve experiences with them and thus achieve greater levels of loyalty and, naturally, results. In this context, A Qualidade do Serviço e a Satisfação do Cliente: Estudo dos Clientes do Banco de Poupança e Crédito – Luanda (Angola) sought to assess the degree of customer satisfaction regarding the provision of the quality of services offered by Banco de Poupança e Crédito, located in Luanda (Angola) in order to identify the level of customer satisfaction according to the variables demographic and socioeconomic factors inherent to the SERVQUAL model and determine the correct methods and techniques for satisfaction, taking into account the elements of quality, in order to make the institution profitable. During this study, a structured interview was carried out for the Marketing and Communication Department and a questionnaire of 15 questions was applied, resulting in only 80 valid questionnaires out of 150. The same were applied during working hours to assess the quality of the service provided by the bank. From a modern company, as with the Bank, it is expected that its main objective is to provide customer satisfaction, indiscriminately needing all the company’s employees and for this it is necessary that they are satisfied to adopt attitudes consistent with this objective. However, managing these factors well to achieve positive results is an essential condition for the company to overcome the challenges.
Quotation:
Sarmento, E. M. e Azevedo, S. C. (2023). “A Qualidade do Serviço e a Satisfação do Cliente: Estudo dos Clientes do Banco de Poupança e Crédito – Luanda (Angola)”. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão – CEsA/CGS – Documentos de trabalho nº 194/2023
África, o berço da modernidade: por uma visão pós-colonial da modernidade e do território
Abstract:
In África, o berço da modernidade: por uma visão pós-colonial da modernidade e do território. In Territórios, cidades e identidades africanas em movimento, the author starts by taking a brief look at what is conventionally called modernity and what constitutes the substratum on which the “West” anchors itself for a triumphant and universalist autonarrative. Various authors, mainly from the mid-eighties onwards, have sought to demystify the origins of Western civilisation and modernity, most notably the three volumes of Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (1987/1991/2006), by Martin Gardiner Bernal.2 Other authors have followed in Bernal’s footsteps to some extent, one of them being the philosopher and historian Enrique Dussel with his work Política de La Liberación: Historia Mundial y Crítica [Liberation Policy: World History and Critique] (2007): World History and Critique] (2007), in which, situated in the field of postcolonial theory, he argues that Hellenocentrism is the father of Eurocentrism and that, given that the so-called “Greek miracle” by the German Romantics of the eighteenth century does not exist, this means having to start “anew” the history of political philosophy. To this end, he considers it essential to redefine the beginning of modernity. It is worth pointing out that it is “postmodernity” – called the historical period that seeks to overcome, or surpasses, modernity – that will give rise, in Western academia and its satellites, not only to a debate about the “postmodern condition” – or about its being the “cultural logic of late capitalism” – but also about the “vision” of modernity itself. Although many prefer expressions other than “postmodern”, or change their preference -such as Zygmunt Bauman, who starts talking about “liquid modernity”, or Gilles Lipovetsky, who prefers the term “hypermodernity”, or others who talk about “incomplete modernity”, or “late modernity” or “alternative modernities”-, in essence they do not put the emphasis on a critical analysis of the hegemonic Anglo-Saxon periodisation of modernity.
Quotation:
Barros-Varela, O. (2022). África, o berço da modernidade: por uma visão pós-colonial da modernidade e do território. In Territórios, cidades e identidades africanas em movimento. Andréia Moassab, Marina Berthet (Orgs.), 11-31. Foz do Iguaçu: EDUNILA, 2022. ISBN: 978-65-86342-32-1
Working Paper 193/2023: Tourism Master Plan for the Island of Santiago, Cape Verde: 2020-2030 – Part 2
Abstract:
Cape Verde, a small insular development economy (SIDS), has been confronted and faces various economic, social and environmental constraints throughout its history that have been conditioning its growth strategy. In recent years, tourism has been growing and consolidating an important contribution to economic development, which is observable in the evolution of the number of nights spent in the country, revenue, number of guests, employment generation, and incentive to exports, among others. The gross added value of tourism currently has a weight that is already more than 20% of its GDP (excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period). Aware of this potential, the government created conditions for a greater use of its effects as a mobilizing factor in the economy, as reflected in various official supporting documents and strategic orientations, such as the Strategic Plan for Sustainable Development, and the Main Options of the Strategic Plan for Sustainable Development for the Tourism Activity. The Government decided that each island or region should develop its own strategic tourism plan (Masterplan). Tourism Master Plan For The Island Of Santiago, Cape Verde : 2020–2030 – Part 2 proposes several main strategic reflections about the Tourism Master Plan for the Island of Santiago in order to improve its competitiveness.
Quotation:
Sarmento, E. M. et al. (2023). “Tourism Master Plan For The Island Of Santiago, Cape Verde : 2020–2030 – Part 2”. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão – CEsA/CSG – Documentos de Trabalho nº 193/2023
Working Paper 192/2023: Tourism Master Plan for the Island of Santiago, Cape Verde: 2020-2030 – Part 1
Abstract:
Cape Verde, a small insular development economy (SIDS), has been confronted and faces various economic, social and environmental constraints throughout its history that have been conditioning its growth strategy. In recent years, tourism has been growing and consolidating an important contribution to economic development, which is observable in the evolution of the number of nights spent in the country, revenue, number of guests, employment generation, and incentive to export among others. The gross added value of tourism currently has a weight that is already more than 20% of its GDP (excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period). Aware of this potential, the Government created conditions for a greater use of its effects as a mobilizing factor in the economy. Accordingly, various official supporting documents and strategic orientations have been approved, such as the Strategic Plan for Sustainable Development and the Main Options of the Strategic Plan for Sustainable Development for the Tourism Activity. It was also decided that each island or region should develop its own strategic tourism plan (Masterplan). Tourism Master Plan For The Island Of Santiago, Cape Verde: 2020–2030 – Part 1 integrates the main strategic reflections regarding the Tourism Master Plan for the Island of Santiago. Revenue from tourism on the Island of Santiago, where the capital of Cape Verde is located, has been much less than the values of the main islands with a high volume of tourists – Sal and Boa Vista. However, the potential of Santiago is high, and therefore it is necessary to adopt the correct measures required to transform this potential into reality. Therefore, this paper presents a short, medium and long-term vision, with a proposal for strategic objectives that will constitute the anchor on which all operational strategic and objectives that will translate into specific lines of action will be based. In summary, this document proposes a strategy based on a diversified and differentiated touristic offer from the other islands of the country, which maximises its potential, counteracting regional asymmetries and preserving the historical and intangible heritage, as well as the natural resources, with the aim for the whole population to benefit from the resultant economic development, especially the most disadvantaged.
Quotation:
Sarmento, E. M. et al. (2023). “Tourism Master Plan For The Island Of Santiago, Cape Verde: 2020–2030 – Part 1”. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão – CEsA/CSG – Documentos de Trabalho nº 192/2023
De escravos a indígenas: O longo processo de instrumentalização dos africanos (séculos XV-XX)
Abstract:
De Escravos a Indígenas: o Longo Processo de Instrumentalização dos Africanos (Séculos XV-XX), which brings together a set of texts written over forty years and dispersed in publications of diverse nature, not always easily accessible, aims to contribute to a renewal of historiography on the relations between Portugal and Africa, in the specific field of the forms of instrumentalisation of Africans carried out by the Portuguese for almost five centuries. A long process, whose internal nature proved capable of metamorphosis and reconversion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ensuring the continuity of the violent ‘use’ of African populations, resorting to a new classificatory apparatus – savages, indigenous, assimilated – aimed at keeping Africans within the sphere of Portuguese domination, contributing to legitimising their enslavement and fixing distorting interpretations of History.
If a first line of study aims to review the history of slavery and slave trafficking and their ideologies in spaces of Portuguese ‘occupation’ like Angola, a second line of study privileges iconographic documents as historical sources, emphasizing their historical and informative dimension. Finally, the third line of this study seeks to highlight the evolution of the process of Portuguese instrumentalisation of Africans, which resorts to unprecedented classificatory categories – savage, indigenous, assimilated – and to practices that emerge from the slave labour of the past to ensure the colonial exploitation of African populations.
Value judgments, commodification, objectification, exploitation, ridiculing of African men fabricated Portuguese imaginaries that reduced the black/African to slavery, the savage/indigenous to lazy, thieving and drunk, the assimilated/’civilised’ to a ridiculous and negative copy of the white/Portuguese, enshrining the inferiorization of Africans, and in the same movement, glorifying the Portuguese ‘race’, hierarchizing the humanities and valuing the dimension and nature of the Portuguese actions, first slave-owning and then colonialist, that have left their mark on Portuguese society to this day.
Quotation:
Henriques, Isabel C., De Escravos a Indígenas: o Longo Processo de Instrumentalização dos Africanos (Séculos XV-XX), Lisboa, Ed. Caleidoscópio, 2019.
Navigating ontological (in)security in EU–Africa relations
Abstract:
When the first six members of the European Economic Community (EEC) took that initial step towards deeper integration that has culminated in what is now the European Union (EU), they also agreed “to associate with … the non-European countries and territories which have special relations with Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom”. Six decades on and several attempts to re-set EU-Africa relations, it is appropriate to take stock of the relationship especially in light of changes in both continents since 2000. This article draws on the idea of ontological security to understand the nature of changes and continuities in the EU’s engagement with Africa. It argues that EU-Africa relations that have relied on a coloniality of power have also been crucial to the EU’s ontological security. However, increasing African agency and new external actors like China in Africa are challenging this security. While challenges to the EU’s ontological security have been viewed as primarily internally constituted, external challenges within a specific context provides the opportunity to rethink what ontological security demands. Importantly, Navigating ontological (in)security in EU–Africa relations highlights why a partnership of equals is an urgent imperative for the future of EU-Africa relations, although it remains elusive.
Quotation:
Toni Haastrup, Niall Duggan & Luis Mah (2021) Navigating ontological (in)security in EU–Africa relations, Global Affairs, 7:4, 541-557, DOI: 10.1080/23340460.2021.1981144
Beyond Nationhood: Other ‘Declensions’ in African Literatures
Abstract:
In the last two decades, Portuguese-speaking African literature, as a field of critical inquiry and object of academic study,1 has been undergoing a great expansion, with numerous dissertations, monographs, conference proceedings, special issues of journals, and articles produced in several countries. The article Beyond Nationhood: Other ‘Declensions’ in African Literatures traces the evolution of the national perspective in the studies of Lusophone African Literatures from the 1980s to the present. Based on a selection of collective and individual publications, as well as highlighting impor tant academic events for the area, the article seeks to identify lines of continuity and moments of rupture in the approach of these literatures based on the idea of Nation as a critical category and unity of analysis, from the consolidation of the link between literature and national independence affirmed after decolonization until the reception of post-colonial theories which occurred in the mid-1990s. Also, the article looks at the theoretical and disciplinary articulations between African Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Indian Ocean Studies and Comparative Litera tures, to provide a possible mapping of the most recent approaches that seek to build new critical cartographies for the studies of these literatures.
Quotation:
Falconi, J. (2021). Beyond Nationhood: Other ‘Declensions’ in African Literatures. Abriu: Estudos De Textualidade Do Brasil, Galicia E Portugal, (10), 9–38. https://doi.org/10.1344/abriu2021.10.1
The Routledge Handbook of EU-Africa Relations
Abstract:
This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the changing dynamics in the relationship between the African continent and the EU, provided by leading experts in the field. Structured into five parts, the book provides an incisive look at the past, present and potential futures of EU-Africa relations. The cutting-edge chapters cover themes like multilateralism, development assistance, institutions, gender equality and science and technology, among others. Thoroughly researched, this book provides original reflections from a diversity of conceptual and theoretical perspectives, from experts in Africa, Europe and beyond. The handbook thus offers rich and comprehensive analyses of contemporary global politics as manifested in Africa and Europe. This handbook will be an essential reference for scholars, students, researchers, policy makers and practitioners interested and working in a range of fields within the (sub)disciplines of African and EU studies, European politics and international studies. The Routledge Handbook of EU-Africa Relations, by Luís Mah (researcher for the Centre for African and Development Studies), Nial Duggan and Toni Haastrup is part of the mini-series Europe in the World Handbooks examining EU-regional relations and established by Professor Wei Shen.
Quotation:
Mah, Luís, Duggan, Nial & Haastrup, Toni (2021). The Routledge Handbook of EU-Africa Relations. Routledge. ISBN 9781315170916.
Ebook – EJICPLP Africa: Science in Innovation in Africa
Abstract:
The Meeting of Young Researchers from CPLP on Africa is an inclusive space for debate and scientific dissemination in African studies and in Portuguese language, in an innovative, democratic and multicultural perspective. The success of this project began in 2021, when it was proposed to bring participation and protagonism to young people, as agents of change in a living community in permanent transformation. In this context, the 2nd Meeting was held in May 2022, in Lisbon, where the role of science in innovation in Africa was discussed, exceeding all expectations, whether in the quality of the debates, the excellence and diversity of the works presented, or the massive adhesion of the participants. The Meeting took place thanks to the work carried out by the Organising Committee, an International Scientific Council, with the collaboration of the Centre for African and Development Studies (CEsA), as the proponent entity. in addition to the support of other partner institutions, such as the CPLP, Lisbon City Council (CML), Higher Institute of Economics and Management (ISEG), Catholic University of Angola (UCAN), Union of Portuguese Speaking Capital Cities (UCCLA), Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM – Mozambique), Association of Municipalities for Sustainable Development of the Umbria Region (FELCOS – Italy). The 2º Encontro de Jovens Investigadores da CPLP sobre África – Livro de Resumos was only possible thanks to the collaboration of numerous people, in particular the Organizing Committee, the Scientific Council, the Speakers, the Institutional Partners, the Medias Partners, the Volunteers and the Scientific Community.
Quotation:
D’Abril, Cristina Molares [et al.] (2022). “2º Encontro de Jovens Investigadores da CPLP sobre África. Livro de Resumos”. ISBN: 978-989-54687-3-7
Observando direitos na Guiné-Bissau: educação, saúde, habitação, água, energia, justiça, igualdade de género
The Rights Observatory integrated in a structure such as Casa dos Direitos is an example of what civil society can do in fragile social contexts, but where power respects the Right to Opinion (even if at some times there is repression of media outlets such as radios and television and a climate of threat to critics of the situation at the time). The data collected on access to Economic and Social Human Rights, disseminated through books and exhibitions, in order to be used by activists and responsible authorities, has even been the basis for academic research at undergraduate, master’s and, this year, doctoral levels, especially in Portugal and Brazil.
Abstract:
The objective of Observando direitos na Guiné-Bissau: educação, saúde, habitação, água, energia, justiça, igualdade de género and the Observatório dos Direitos in 2019 was to continue the collection of data on access to Economic and Social Human Rights in Guinea-Bissau with data comparable to those of 2016, and to include two innovations: a new chapter on Women’s Rights or Equality of Gender and perform data collection also in the Bolama/ Bijagós region.
Quotation:
Sangreman, Carlos [et al.] (2020). Observando direitos na Guiné-Bissau : educação, saúde, habitação, água, energia, justiça, igualdade de género. Lisboa: ACEP, com LGDH e CEsA. URL: https://www.repository.utl.pt/handle/10400.5/20866
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