Sociocultural Aspects of Development
Tackling Food Insecurity in Cabo Verde Islands: The Nutritional, Agricultural and Environmental Values of the Legume Species
Abstract:
Legume species are important food sources to reduce hunger and deal with malnutrition; they also play a crucial role in sustainable agriculture in the tropical dry islands of Cabo Verde. To improve the knowledge of the heritage of plant genetic resources in this Middle Income Country, Tackling food insecurity in Cabo Verde Islands: the nutritional, agricultural and environmental values of the legume species had three main goals: (i) to provide a checklist of food legumes; (ii) to investigate which species are traded in local markets and, based on field surveys, to compare species for their chemical, phenolic, antioxidant, and nutritional composition; and (iii) to discuss the agronomic value and contribution to food security in this archipelago. Our results revealed that 15 species are used as food and 5 of them are locally traded (Cajanus cajan, Lablab purpureus, Phaseolus lunatus, Phaseolus vulgaris, and Vigna unguiculata). The role of these species as sources of important minerals, antioxidants, and nutritional components for food security is highlighted, and the native ones (Lablab purpureus and Vigna unguiculata) stand-out as particularly well-adapted to the climate of these islands, which are already experiencing the adverse effects of climate change. We conclude that the sustainable use of these genetic resources can contribute to the reduction of hunger and poverty, thus meeting some challenges of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Quotation:
Brilhante, M., Varela, E., Essoh, A.P, Fortes, A., Maria Cristina Duarte, M.C., Monteiro, F., Ferreira, V., Correia, A. M., Duarte, M.P; Romeiras, M. M (2021). Tackling food insecurity in Cabo Verde Islands: the nutritional, agricultural and environmental values of the legume species. Nutrients, 13. MDPI. Pag. 17. https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/10/2/206
Common causes in grassroot development: a case for community-based and community-driven response in the postpandemic era
Abstract:
The purpose of Common causes in grassroot development: a case for community-based and community-driven response in the postpandemic era is to determine the impact of community-based and driven approaches during the lockdowns and early periods of the pandemic. The study examines the impact and perceptions of the state-led intervention. This would help to discover a better approach for postpandemic interventions and policy responses. This article used the inductive method and gathered its data from surveys. In search of global opinions on COVID-19 responses received in communities, two countries in each continent with high COVID-19 infection per 100,000 during the peak period were chosen for study. In total, 13 community workers, leaders and members per continent were sampled. The simple percentile method was chosen for analysis. The simple interpretation was used to discuss the results. The study showed that poor publicity of community-based interventions affected awareness and fame as most were mistaken for government interventions. The study found that most respondents preferred state interventions but preferred many communities or local assessments of projects and interventions while the projects were ongoing to adjust the project and intervention as they progressed. However, many preferred community-based and driven interventions.
Quotation:
Patrick-Agulonye, U.V. (2021). “Common causes in grassroot development: a case for community-based and community-driven response in the postpandemic era” Fulbright Review of Economics and Policy, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 186-204. https://doi.org/10.1108/FREP-09-2021-0056
State of the Art About COVID-19’s Impact on Santiago University, Cape Verde
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has become a critical challenge for the higher education sector worldwide. Under such a circumstance, the exploration of the capacity of this sector to adapt to such a state of uncertainty has become of huge importance. In this chapter, State of the art about COVID-19 impact in Santiago University – Cape Verde, the authors critically reflect on the Cape Verdean teaching experience during the early COVID-19 lockdown. This is an exploratory case study based on a qualitative approach with an aim to reflect on new practices of teaching under a pandemic emergency. Based on the teaching experience of teaching in Santiago University, they explain how this university has changed from a face-to-face to an online teaching system and stress the challenges and opportunities that appear from this transition process. This chapter concludes that this strategy has become an opportunity to the university since it consistently raised the number of international students cooperating with them and also that the more adaptive and resilient approaches to online teaching were also a success.
Quotation:
Sarmento, E., Monteiro, J. (2021). Capítulo 16: State of the art about COVID-19 impact in Santiago University – Cape Verde. In Loureiro, Sandra & Guerreiro, João (eds.) Handbook of Research on Developing a Post-Pandemic Paradigm for Virtual Technologies in Higher Education. ISBN13: 9781799869634; ISBN10: 1799869636. IGI Global (Q2, SJR:0,338)
Jovens, processos identitários e sociedades em movimento
Abstract:
The Republic of Cape Verde gained independence in 1975 and embraced liberal democracy in 1991, which was regarded as an example in Africa of democracy and good governance. Still, taking advantage of the post-2008 global winds of protest, various types of public protests began to emerge in the country’s capital, with urban youth as the main protagonists. These protests coincided with a set of situations denounced by various reports and academic studies: situations of strangulation of civil society resulting from the bi-partisanship of social life; perception of urban insecurity and a generalized wave of corruption; citizens’ distrust of public and political institutions; commercialization of the vote; ambiguous relationship between political party activists and armed youth groups during elections; accusations of funding of political parties by national drug trafficking factions, etc. Jovens, processos identitários e sociedades em movimento: um olhar alternativo sobre os movimentos sociais urbanos emergentes na cidade da Praia – Cabo Verde, based on a set of ethnographic works developed since 2008 in the urban youth context of Praia, intends to analyse the context of the emergence of these new types of social and political protests organized in youth groups who call themselves sons and grandsons of Amílcar Cabral, supported by counter-colonial discourses, calling for a second liberation and (re)Africanization of the spirit and minds.
Quotation:
Lima, R.W. (2020). “Jovens, processos identitários e sociedades em movimento: um olhar alternativo sobre os movimentos sociais urbanos emergentes na cidade da Praia – Cabo Verde”. In: Jesus, L.S.B.; Barros, M.; Filice, R.C.G. (Orgs.), Tecendo redes antirracistas II: contracolonização e soberania intelectual. Fortaleza: Imprensa Universitária, p. 116-136.
Covid-19 and Human Rights in a fragile state : Guinea-Bissau
Abstract:
COVID-19 and Human Rights in a Fragile State: Guinea-Bissau aims to study the situation of Human Rights during the Covid-19 pandemic in Guinea-Bissau, between January 2020 and January 2022. The research organized an inquiry to families, another to companies and another to market/street sellers about the effects of the pandemic and the measures enacted by the Government and Presidency to contain it. A public hearing was also organized, with various entities from the High Commissioner to trade unions, journalists, students, women associations, and the Public Order Police, for information on how each institution saw its situation and action in this period. The conclusions of the analysis of all these qualitative and quantitative data allow us to affirm a) the social actors agreed with the main measures the authorities took to contain the disease; b) the must referred complaint was the lack of any support from the authorities to households, companies and sellers: c) the fragility of Guinea-Bissau has such a social weight that a disease that killed fewer people than malaria, diarrhea, or tuberculosis, did not overcome the problems of human rights stemming from poverty, institutional fragility, and low incomes in general.
Quotation:
Sangreman, C., Faria, R. T., & Turé, B. (2022). COVID-19 and Human Rights in a Fragile State: Guinea-Bissau. In P. Andrade, & M. Martins (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Urban Tourism, Viral Society, and the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic (pp. 341-360). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-3369-0.ch018
Guiné-Bissau – Notas sobre o presente e o futuro
Abstract:
The idea of publishing the book Notas sobre o presente e o futuro of Guinea-Bissau arose from the need to get to know the country better and to think about its recent past, which will inevitably contribute to its near future. The aim was to collect existing texts that were revised and updated and to ask some authors to reflect on themes based on the motto “Guinea-Bissau, notes on the present and the future”. These texts are published at a special moment in the country. After a period of a government appointed by the military that took power in 2012, elections were held in 2014 and a round table was held in Brussels where the country received a great deal of encouragement from its international partners – institutions and countries – in support of a government and a president that everyone had hoped would provide a more stable and successful evolution such as there had not been until then. But these expectations came up against a conflict between sovereign bodies, which frustrated this support and threw the country into a four-year period of instability that began to end with the legislative elections on 10 March 2019 but is only expected to return to normal institutional functioning with the presidential elections in November of the same year.
Quotation:
Sangreman, Carlos, Fátima Proença, Luís Vaz Martins, Mamadu Alfa Djau, Pedro Rosa Mendes e Rui Jorge Semedo Guiné-Bissau – Notas sobre o presente e o futuro, com, ISBN 978-989-20-9932-3, CESA-ISEG/ULisboa, 2019, Lisboa.
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
A Rede Cáritas em Portugal e a Resposta à Covid-19
Resumo:
A Rede Cáritas em Portugal e a Resposta à Covid-19 analyzes the importance of the social action of the Cáritas Network in Portugal in an unexpected and health emergency context, by documenting the organization’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. An analysis is made of the continuity actions, but also of the innovations that emerged during the first year of the pandemic. With a presence that covers all the districts of Mainland Portugal and Islands, the Cáritas Network in Portugal developed, for the first time, a National Program of direct support to families in the form of goods and food stamps, as well as occasional and urgent financial support intended for payment of basic needs such as rent, health and electricity expenses, to a considerable number of beneficiaries (10,444 people, 3,205 families). The study shows that the Cáritas Network in Portugal was able to continue the food support activities and occasional support that it was already developing, given a greater demand from families: 60% of people who sought support from Cáritas in this period had never resorted to this kind of help.
Citação:
Pais Bernardo, Luís, Ana Luísa Silva, Renata Vieira de Assis e Luís Mah (Coord.). 2021. “A Rede Cáritas em Portugal e a Resposta à Covid-19”. Estudo Cáritas / CEsA-ISEG. Lisboa: Cáritas Portuguesa. Agosto.
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
Access the article here.
Brief Paper 3/1999: Identidades Estratégicas para o Desenvolvimento na África Subsahariana: O género
Abstract:
In the current context of globalisation, the African continent is seriously marginalised, which makes it necessary to reflect on development problems in order to question and identify analytical instruments capable of dealing with the complex dynamics of identities and processes that are currently interacting in African I-markets. The process of globalisation has made visible realities, ways of being and acting which until recently were only vaguely recognised in restricted contexts or even ignored through indifference. The emergence of phenomena with a global dimension, such as environmental threats or major pandemics, has given renewed importance to diversity, both biological and cultural, not only because diversity itself is the basis of life, but because in the face of global threats, action must also be global and based on cooperation. This situation calls for the need to develop a more open way of managing difference, taking advantage of it rather than seeing it as an obstacle. If we consider that one of the major barriers to global action are the difficulties of communication between different systems, which act and think differently and even assign different meanings to the same actions and identical reasoning, then we have to introduce variables in our work that help to make some of these disparities intelligible and thus reduce the noise and improve or even provide communication. In this context, interculturality becomes compulsory and enables a joint approach to identity phenomena apparently as disparate as gender and race, because in both cases we are dealing with groups that have historically assumed a peripheral role and a vulnerable position in terms of the correlation of forces with other dominant groups, sharing biological specificities and specific patterns of behaviour and meaning attribution. Identidades Estratégicas para o Desenvolvimento na África Subsahariana: O género (Strategic identities for development in Sub-Saharan Africa: gender) was presented at the 1st Portugal – China Congress organised by the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro in Vila Real, 19-23 April 1999.
Quotation:
Grassi, Marzia. 1999. “Identidades estratégicas para o desenvolvimento na África Subsahariana : o género”. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão – CEsA Brief papers nº 3-1999.
