Dr. Obadele Kambon 2013 UG-Legon Vice Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Thesis - Humanities

Comments from the external examiner:
The main findings of the research point to the fact that (a) An overwhelming majority (98%) of Full Lexicalized-Integrated SVCs have nominal counterparts; 2% do not; (b) Only 3% of Partial Lexicalized-Integrated SVCs have nominal counterparts; 97% do not; (c) Clause Chaining Serial Constructions appear to nominalize haphazardly and/or unsystematically as frozen sentences or figures of speech (idioms, proverbs, etc.; (d) The primary function of such forms, he identified, were what Charles Morris (1971) calls denotata and designata; Full Lexicalized-Integrated SVCs behave as lexicalized idioms and because of this, four criteria of idiomaticity namely -- collocability, familiarity, flexibility and compositionality -- are applied to them; and (g) There is systematicity in the pattern of nominalization behavior of serial verb nominals across the main Akan dialects.
This work recapitulates and substantially extends work already done on Akan SVCs by Osam (1994), Agyeman (2002) and others. A major contribution of the dissertation is the detailed discussion and exemplification of issues relating to nominalization of SVCs. This is the first attempt at such a detailed discussion and exemplification and the candidate deserves commendation. His categorizations are original as is his attention to scholarly detail and to showing the relationship between and among the three major Akan dialects. One could conveniently argue that this is one of the strongest points of the dissertation.
Very little has been done on Akan nominalization in general and little to nothing on SVC nominalization in particular, so this study is a trailblazer or a path-finder! Syntacticians and semanticists will cite this work and continue with the discussion and issues it raises for the next couple of decades. I am impressed with the details and both the candidate and his advisors must be commended for the high degree of systematicity employed in the synthesis and analyses done in the study.
The candidate drew his conclusions based on the actual data collected and on the results (synthesis and analysis of the data) thereby making the analytical claims have functional validity and protecting them from standing insulated from public scrutiny. This is, again, commendable.
The recommendations for future research, especially, his call for comparing SVNs with other types of nominalizations, is in the right direction more especially due to the scantiness and dearth of knowledge about nominalizations in general about Akan and other West African languages in particular.
The dissertation is very well written and I am willing to pass it without any reservation whatsoever. The content is excellent as is its rendition.

Comments from the internal examiner:

The study does a good job of relating the data and findings to broader theoretical debates in the Functional/cognitive linguistic literature. For example, study results suggest that, at least in the Akan data examined, higher degrees of semantic integration in complex forms correlate with lower degrees of iconicity. Further, the subtype categories of serial verb constructions identified by Osam (1994) are "fuzzy" categories in terms of ability to undergo nominalization. This supports the prototype approach to categorization, rather than a classical "sharp-boundary" approach to categorization.
Though the author does not particularly draw it out rhetorically, the study sits squarely within the linguistic sub-field of Lexicography: the study is a detailed investigation of speakers' lexical knowledge of nouns formed (either historically or productively possibly in the moment of speaking) from serial verb constructions. In my view, the lexicographic work, bringing out native-speaker knowledge about the complex forms including in some cases how this may have changed across time and may vary by dialect, may be one of the most enduring contributions of the study. Many of the item-by-item findings could, for example, largely be incorporated into an etymological dictionary of Akan.
The study contributes new information to understanding the cross-linguistic and Akan-internal typology of nominalizations of serial verb constructions. The minute detail on dialect variation is valuable for sociolinguistic variationist studies.

Obadele Kambon, PhD - The Importance of Repatriation - pt. 1; Sustaining Oneself/How To Make It On Afrikan Soil - pt. 2

message from Dr. Kamau Kambon

⁣Mengistu Haile Mariam Interview - ⁣MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour [1990]

Regenerative agriculture is an effective way to restore biodiversity and stabilize the climate, but what exactly is it? This video explores three different regenerative practices that have great potential both in food production and in healing the land.

Sources:

Organic Agriculture does more harm than goodSearchinger et al., Assessing the efficiency of changes in land use for mitigating climate change, 2018.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0757-z

Bacteria Converts Ammonium into Nitrite and Nitrate:Jeff Lowenfels & Wayne Lewis, Teaming with Microbes, 2006, 48.Myceilium brings water to plants:Ibid, 57.Worms increase water absorption and allow plant roots to penetrate deeper:Ibid, 89.Fertilizer leeches into water:Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, 2005.http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/en....glish/engineer/facts

Regenerative grazing can sequester carbon:Sanderman et al., Impacts of Rotational Grazing on Soil Carbon in Native Grass-Based Pastures in Southern Australia, 2015.https://journals.plos.org/plos....one/article%3Fid%3D1

Regenerative grazing can build soil and reverse desertification:Allan Savory, Holistic Management, 1999, 244.The growth of grass:Global Rangelands, Basics of Grass Growthhttps://globalrangelands.org/t....opics/rangeland-ecol

Julius Ruechel, The Daily Pasture Rotation, 2009.https://www.grass-fed-solution....s.com/pasture-rotati

Overgrazing leads to erosion, drought, and desertification:Ibanez et al., Desertification due to overgrazing in a dynamic commercial livestock–grass–soil system, 2007.https://www.sciencedirect.com/....science/article/pii/ forests consist of 7 layers:Toby Hemenway, Gaia's Garden, 2001, 172.

Ira Pastor, ideaXme life sciences ambassador interviews Dr. Paul Elvis Tangem the Coordinator for the GGWSSI at the African Union Commission, in the executive/administrative branch of the AU, headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Desertification is a type of land degradation in dry-lands in which biological productivity is lost due to natural processes, or induced by human activities, whereby fertile areas become increasingly arid, and may be caused by a variety of factors, such as climate change and over exploitation of soil.

One of the countermeasures for mitigating or reversing the effects of desertification is reforestation and in 2007 the African Union (AU) started the Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWSSI) Africa project in order to combat desertification in 20 countries across the Sahel and Sahara regions. The wall is projected to be 8,000 km wide, stretching across the entire width of the continent and has US$8 billion dollars in support so far. To date, the project has restored 36 million hectares of land, and by 2030, the initiative plans to restore a total of 100 million hectares. The Great Green Wall has created many job opportunities for the participating countries, with over 20,000 jobs created in Nigeria alone.

Dr. Paul Elvis Tangem is the Coordinator for the GGWSSI at the African Union Commission, in the executive/administrative branch of the AU, headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Before joining the African Union Commission, Dr. Tangem worked as Regional Enterprise Development Manager for Tree Aid International, a UK based international development charity. He also worked with The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UN-FAO) as Technical adviser for the programs to promote different groups engaged in forest products based enterprises. He has also served with other organizations including Centre in Scotland, Environmental Justice Foundation, London, and the Watershed Task Group in Cameroon. He is also a mentor and coach, and is behind the establishment of well known start-ups in Cameroon, West Africa.

Dr. Tangem holds a BSc from University of Dschang - Cameroon, MSc in Ecology & Management University of Edinburgh, an Executive MBA from PGSM Paris, and PH.D in Business Administration, and several other certificates and diplomas. He is a member of several professional networks including Junior Chambers International where is a Senator, and a pioneer member of World Greening Alliance created by World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and Elion Group in China.

On this episode we will hear from Dr. Tangem about -

His background - how he developed an interest in ecology, the environment, and his path towards managing the GGWSSI project at the AU

An overview of the Great Green Wall Initiative project

The technological steps involved in the de-desertification processes, including managing water, biomass, and rebuilding soils

- Benefits of the GGWSSI (i.e. food, non-food crops, wealth, carbon capture) as well as challenges (i.e. terrorism, country specific interests)

Future focus and plans for expansion of the GGWSSI in other parts of Africa, as well as for dealing with coastal deserts / salt water agriculture / aquaculture opportunities

Nelson Mandela was given an honorary doctoral degree from Harvard University in a special fall convocation on September 18, 1998. Introduced by former University President Neil L. Rudenstine, Mandela delivered an address in the Tercentenary Theatre of Harvard Yard.

Dr. Wangari Maathai is a Kenyan environmental, political activist and elected member of Parliament. She founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 2004 she became the first African woman, and the first environmentalist, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.

The world-renowned environmentalist shared her vision of change. She inspired students with stories of personal sacrifice and stressed that every single person can make a difference.

Maathais lecture was presented by the Concordia Student Union (CSU) in association with the Sustainability Action Fund, the Arts and Science Federation of Associations, the university and the Yves Rocher Foundation.

Find out more about the Green Belt Movement, Maathais forest conservation effort based in Nairobi, by visiting:

http://greenbeltmovement.org.

For information about the CSU Speaker Series, visit:

http://life.csu.qc.ca.

The video of the lecture was produced by Concordia University Television, Canada's oldest student-run television station:

http://cutv.concordia.ca/
http://www.youtube.com/cutv

When a deadly new virus appeared in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, few would have imagined its wide-ranging effects. Within weeks COVID-19 was spreading around the world; within a year it had killed one a half million people and hospitalised tens of millions more, forcing nation after nation into lockdown and bringing many economies to a juddering halt.

As international travel stalled in the face of movement restrictions, the consequences were sometimes calamitous - even in places more normally adrift from events elsewhere.

One such place was Samburu, deep in the heart of Kenya, where people reliant on wildlife safari tourism were left struggling to survive.

This thought-provoking episode of People & Power, from filmmaker Andreas Knausenberger, is a salutary reminder of the coronavirus pandemic's unexpected effects on remote communities far from the glare of the global spotlight.

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We investigate allegations that despite its new democratic institutions, police torture continues in Tunisia.

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