VCU

     The VCU French West Africa Project began as a grant funded by the U.S. Department of Education and its Title VI program in Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language program. The project has as an overarching goal to promote U.S. –Africa relations.   VCU’s project focused on Mali, both the modern country and the medieval Kingdom of Mali, which includes part of 9 modern African states. VCU's West Africa project faculty interacted with public school teachers in foreign languages and social studies, and students and faculty presented new pedagogical materials at conferences targeting Virginia's French and social studies teachers. VCU researchers in language, literature, anthropology, history, psychology, health care, business, and various fields of international studies did much to advance a body of knowledge on West Africa in general and on Mali and the Ivory Coast in particular.

 

     Peace and economic prosperity are goals of VCU's community partners, and activities have focused on peace, education, and both local and regional economic development in West Africa. Mali is of special strategic importance in the fight against Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and Ivory Coast is an economic leader within the region.  They represent two very different West African cultures despite significant overlap, and VCU continues to develop special expertise and collaboration with these countries.  VCU research in West Africa is making a difference, and faculty initiatives have grown out of the initial grant project to include language and international studies faculty collaboration with colleagues in business, education, engineering, medicine, and homeland security.

 

    VCU’s French West Africa Project consortium partner was Northern Virginia Community College.  The grant encouraged their articulation with VCU for Northern Virginia Community Collegeand gave incentives for NOVA students who had advanced skills in French and a desire to teach French so that they would take VCU French courses.  The grant also provided transportation and other support for NOVA students to participate in the 2013 Women, War and Peace in Africa conference workshops and programs with VCU students in Richmond. NOVA faculty and administrators engaged with African partners from the Institut National Polytechnique-Houphouët-Boigny in the United States in 2015, and there began plans for INP-HB to build the Ivory Coast's first two-year campus as part of the 2016-20 strategic plan. 

 

     In addition to NOVA, the project’s other official partners include Virginia Friends of Mali, the Université des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Bamako (Mali,) Epes-Mandala Consulting, MERLOT (Media Resources for Online Teaching.)  These partners contributed significantly to grant activities, including the Women, War, and Peace in Africa Conference (September 20-21, 2013.)  The conference hosted over 800 attendees, including many students as well as peace practitioners and scholars and nonprofits from three continents as well as movies focused on peace building in Africa.

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Grant faculty Dr. Patricia Cummins andDr. Robin Edward Poulton served as conference Co-Chairs, and they edited the conference proceedings. The grant faculty's research resulted in a variety of books, articles, conference presentations, and workshops.

 

     Four grant faculty members, Drs. Robin and Michelle Poulton, Dr. Patricia Cummins, and Dr. Christopher Brooks were also involved with the VCU Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant project involving clinical trials with HIV-Positive Malian Women. There was significant overlap of research projects for the two grants for all four of them.  Collectively they produced three books and several articles.

     Contacts made by grant faculty in the Ivory Coast led to other projects that continued after grant funding ended.  The Institut National Polytechnique-Houphouët-Boigny sent a researcher to VCU's School of Engineering where he became involved with other Gates Foundation and Clinton Foundation grants that supported low-cost drug development for AIDS and malaria.  Another INP-HB researcher was expected to help in the development of the pharmaceutical industry in West Africa by assisting with the commercial and legal questions involved in patents and technology transfer.  Students who went to the Ivory Coast in 2014 did a translation of a West African author's novel that highlighted female genital mutilation, and that author as well as two others were integrated in a 2016 social justice course where students and authors held dialogues over Google Hangout.  Three West African authors will be the subject of a VCU panel at the 2016 African Studies Association annual meeting.

 

Plans for a Richmond House in Ségou, Mali grew out of this grant’s activities. Gates funding, contributions by private individuals, foundations, and government agencies all have been proposed or requested.  It was anticipated that VCU researchers would be actively involved in research in Mali in future projects, but threats of terrorism put this plan on hold.

 

     In 2015 the Institut National Polytechnique - Houphouët-Boigny (INP-HB) invited VCU faculty and students to their campus with a combination of grant and other funding. The Université des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Bamako (ULSHB) sent a visiting professor to the VCU French program for three weeks in Fall 2015.  In 2015-16 the INP-HB worked with VCU Business and French faculty on a cocoa project and even appeared on conference panels together. For 2016-17, INP-HB administrators developed with VCU French West Africa Project faculty plans to make their institution a bilingual campus by 2020. The opportunities for student and faculty mobility are expected to flourish in 2016-17 and beyond.