Academic literature on the topic 'Short stories, West African'

Some literary discussions on Islam in West Africa argue that African Muslims owe allegiance more to Arab race and culture since the religion has an Arab origin while owing less to indigenous and therefore “authentic” African cultures. Most notably, in his famous quarrel with Ali Mazrui, the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka wrenches race to serve a tendentious historicism about African Muslims as racially Arab and therefore foreign to African culture. In their fiction, two new West African writers, Mohammed Naseehu Ali and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, allegorize African Islamic identity as tied to Arab race and culture as madness, lunacy and even death. In particular, Ali’s short story “The Prophet of Zongo Street” engages with this obsessive dialectic between African Islamic identity and Arab race. Although not explicitly thematizing Islamic identity as tied to Arab race or culture, three other stories by the same authors, Ali’s story “Mallam Sile” and Ibrahim’s stories “The Whispering Trees” and “Closure,” gender the dialectic between race and Islamic identity. Ali and Ibrahim show African Muslim women’s abilities to effect change in difficult situations and relationships—marriage, romance, legal provisions on inheritance, prayer and honor. In so doing, I argue, these authors reflect a potential solution to the difficult debate in African literary criticism on Islamic identity and Arab race and culture.

Cerpen “Perempuan dalam Perang” merupakan salah satu cerpen yang terdapat dalam Kumpulan Cerpen Afrika: Kenapa Tidak Kau Pahat Binatang Lain. Kumpulan cerpen terbit tahun 2005 dan diterjemahkan oleh Sapardi Djoko Damono. Cerpen ini menceritakan masa keterpurukan Negara Afrika yang menjadi sorotan para kolonialis untuk menjajahnya. Masyarakat Afrika diperlakukan sebagai golongan inferior di tanah mereka oleh pihak Barat, akibat konflik yang terjadi berkenaan dengan sosiologis dan psikologis penderitaan wanita pribumi dalam kolonialisme. Salah satu penderitaan psikologis yang dialami oleh masyarakat pribumi, yaitu perubahan ideologi yang menuju kemerosotan moral. Banyak dari mereka yang berpindah tempat, berpindah pola pikir, dan berubah dalam tindakan. Metode yang digunakan adalah close reading, dengan menggunakan pendekatan teori poskolonialisme yang akan dihubungkan dengan prespektif feminisme karena dalam cerita ini terkandung isu gender yang cukup kental. Yang terjadi dalam cerpen “Perempuan dalam Perang” adalah perubahan pola pikir seorang wanita yang berjuang melawan penjajah, berubah menjadi seorang yang berjuang untuk dirinya. Wanita itu berusaha memertahankan hidupnya dengan menjual harga dirinya. Isu gender juga melekat dalam cerpen ini. Dilihat dari sudut pandang feminisme, ada hal-hal yang dibenarkan dalam pola pikir feminis dan ada penyimpangan-penyimpangan yang mengakibatkan perspektif feminis tidak dihargai.Abstract:The short story of “Perempuan dalam Perang” is one of the short stories in Kumpulan Cerpen Afrika (A collection of African short stories) entitled Kenapa Tidak Kau Pahat Binatang Lain. The collection of the short stories published in 2005 and translated by Sapardi Djoko Damono. The story told us about the downturn of African countries that became the attraction of imperialism to colonize them. African society is treated as an inferior class of their own land by the West, due to the conflict regarding the sociological and psychological suffering of native women in colonialism. One of the psychological suffering experienced by the native is the change in ideology leading to moral degradation. Many of them change their mindset and action.The applied method is close reading, using a theoretical approach post-colonialism linked to the perspective of feminism because this story contained the strong gender issue. What happened in the story was a change in a woman mindset who fought against the colonialist, turned into a struggle for herself. She was trying to survive by selling her own esteem. The gender issues are also inherent in this short story. From feminism point of view, there are things justified in feminist mindset and there are deviations resulting in a feminist perspective that is not appreciated.

This article attempts to cross-examine African Literature and African costumary, Islamic and inherited colonial laws. It opens a new topic in the study of African literature by showing how legal discourses are inscribed in certain African narratives and how these discourses link the narratives to the overall context of their production.

The thesis begins with an introduction, followed by six short stories. The stories that follow span three or four regions of the American landscape and three or four decades of the twentieth century. What drives each story is the isolation of both narrator and main character (when these are not the same) from the world of the story. In each story, there is either a sense of wanting to belong or an urge to escape, or both. The paradox--also the writer's paradox--is that if one belongs, one has no need to escape; if one escapes, one can never belong.

Most current studies on 'African' and/or 'Black' literature in South Africa appear to ignore the contradictions underlying the valuative concepts 'African' and 'Black'. This (Jamesonian) unconsciousness has led, primarily, to a situation where writers and critics assume generally that the concepts 'African' and 'Black' are synonymous and interchangeable. This study argues that such an attitude either unconsciously represses an awareness of the distinctive aspects of the worldview connotations of these concepts or deliberately suppresses them. The theoretical and pragmatic approach which this study adopts to explore the distinctive aspects of the worldview connotations of these concepts takes the form, initially, of a critique of such assumptions and their connotations. It is argued that any misconceptions about the relations between the concepts 'African' and 'Black' can only be elucidated through a rigorous and distinct definition of each of these concepts and the respective world views embodied in them. Each of the variables of these definitions is also examined thoroughly through an application of, inter alia, Frederick Jameson's 'dialectical' theory of textual criticism, Pierre Macherey's 'theory of literary production' and also through the post-colonial notions of 'hybridity' and 'syncreticity' propounded by Bill Ashcroft et.al (eds). In this way the study examines the dialectical interplay between, for instance, such oppositional notions as 'African' and 'Western' (place-conscious), 'Black' and 'White' (race-conscious), and other forms of ideological 'dominance' and 'marginality' reflected in the 'African' and/or 'Black' writers' motivations for the acquisition, appropriation and uses of the language of the 'other' (i.e. English) and its literary discourse in South Africa, Africa and elsewhere in the world. A close textual reading of the stories in Mothobi Mutloatse's (ed) Forced Landing, Mbulelo Mzamane's (ed) Hungry Flames underlies an examination of the processes of anthologisation and their implications of aesthetic collectivism, reconstruction and world view monolithicism which repress the distinctive world outlooks of the stories in these anthologies. The notions of aesthetic monolithicism implicit in each of these anthologies are interrogated via the editors' truistic assumptions about the organic nature of the relations between the concepts 'African' and 'Black'. The notion of a monolithic 'African' and 'Black' aesthetic is further decentred through a close textual reading of the uses of the 'African' and 'Black' valuative concepts in the short story collections The Living and the Dead and In Corner B by Es'kia (formerly Ezekiel) Mphahlele. The humanistic pronouncements in Mphahlele' s critical and short story texts suggest various ways of resolving the racial demarcations in both the 'Black' and 'White' South African literary formations. According to Mphahlele, a predominant racial consciousness inherent in the racial capitalist mode of economic production has deprived South African literature and culture an opportunity of creating a national humanistic and 'Afrocentric' form of aesthetic consciousness. The logical consequence of such a deprivation has been that the racial impediments toward the formation of a single national literature will have to be dismantled before the vision of a humanistic and 'Afrocentric' aesthetic can be realised in South Africa. The dismantling of both the 'Black' and 'White' monolithic forms of consciousness may pave the way toward the attainment of a synthetic and place-centred humanistic aesthetic. Such a dismantling of racial monolithicism will, hopefully, stimulate a debate on the question of an equally humanistic economic mode of production.

Mestrado em Estudos Ingleses
This work focuses on and responds to selected short stories by contemporary South African women writers, namely Bessie Head, Sindiwe Magona and Farida Karodia. My readings will foreground the way these writers draw attention to the "ordinary" in contrast to the "spectacle" as defined by the writer and critic Njabulo Ndebele in South African Liferature and Culture: Rediscovery of the Ordinary (1991), as well as show how a pattern of both postcolonial and feminist issues and concerns are introduced and developed in the stories. The engagement with issues of relevance to the future of South Africa reveals the challenging content and the need to approach the past as imperative to the dismantling of oppressive structures. The shift away from the powerful binarisms of the past to the addressing of the voids and absences, to a great extent, allows for valuable reflection and re-evaluation. Bessie Head's Tales of Tenderness and Power (1989) is a collection of short fiction ranging from the 60's to the 80's and written both in South Africa and in Botswana. Her work, from as early as the 1960's, echoes contemporary concerns related to the break up of family life, the upsurge of violence, a corrupt political leadership and a broadening or inclusive definition of humanity. In the next chapter we read Living, Loving and Lying wake at Nighf (1992) by Sindiwe Magona. This collection of short stories follows up on the work of Bessie Head both in the issues of women's position in their communities, most specifically that of the black woman, and the undeniable stress on hope for the future. Interwoven are problematic issues of contemporary South African society linked to a wide range of social, economic and political aspects. She points to the empowerment of women and to the relevance of constructing the present by never allowing the past to fade from memory. In Farida Karodia's Against an African Sky and other stories (1 995) we once again return to the importance of coming to terms with the past. Her settings and characters are intended to present the South African community in all its multivaried shades, beliefs and backgrounds. The differences between human beings, even if problematic, allow tolerance as well as critique and in that they display their richness. In their transgressive nature the characters of these short stories more often than not urge for active engagement with others in the communicative matrix that may shape present and future relationships.
Este estudo refere-se aos contos de autoras Sul-africanas contemporâneas nomeadamente Bessie Head, Sindiwe Magona e Farida Karodia. Esta leitura concentra-se, em parte, no conceito de "quotidiano" contrapondo este conceito ao de "espectáculo" nos termos definidos pelo escritor e crítico literário Njabulo Ndebele na sua obra Soufh African Liferafure and Culfure: Rediscovery of fhe Ordinary (1991). A perspectiva póscolonial e feminista reveste-se de grande relevância neste trabalho dado que integram a dinâmica destes textos. Adoptando uma perspectiva de conexão com temas relevantes no plano do futuro da África do Sul, estes textos revelam o seu carácter de desafio, sob ponto de vista temático, e ainda uma abordagem tendo como ponto de partida a reflexão sobre o passado demonstrando eficazmente que este se reveste de uma importância inestimável, pois ao ser reavaliado, permite maior consciência e maior conhecimento necessário ao desmantelamento de estruturas opressivas enraizadas na sociedade. Depreende-se assim uma perspectiva não redutora, nem imprisionada nas posições binárias características do passado, antes se revela um quadro de reflexão e reavaliação fundamentado na abordagem das ausências e silêncios de inúmeras vozes. 0s contos da Bessie Head: Tales of Tenderness and Power (1989) foram escritos nas decadas de 1960 a 1980 quer na África do Sul quer no Botswana. Não obstante alguns textos datarem dos anos 60 estes revestem-se de uma extraordinaria visão das preocupações mais pertinentes na África do Sul hoje. Assim estabelece-se uma preocupação constante com os problemas da dissolução da vida familiar, da violência, da corrução ao nivel politico e denota-se um conceito abrangente de humanidade. No capitulo seguinte encontramos os contos de Sindiwe Magona Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night (1992). A complexidade da posiq2io da mulher, de modo particular da mulher negra, na comunidade e a inegável esperança no futuro constituem pontos de ligação com temáticas abordadas tambem por Bessie Head. 0s factores de natureza politica, económica e social encontram-se invariavelmente presentes nos referidos contos. Apontam assim para o poder da mulher e para a construção do presente sem no entanto permitir o esquecimento das atrocidades do passado. Relativamente ao capítulo subsequente constitui um voltar a problematica da memória como essential na reconstrução e redefinição no presente e no futuro. 0s contos de Farida Karodia encontram-se no volume entitulado Against an African Sky and other stories (1995). As histórias apresentam personagens inseridas ou não nas suas comunidades ou multiplicidade de comunidades com as suas várias cores, crenças e experiências passadas. As diferenças entre as pessoas, se bem que problemáticas, permitem uma reeducação na qua1 é admitida a critica mas tambem e exigida a tolerância e é nessa vertente que encontramos a sua riqueza. A natureza transgressora das personagens presentes nestes contos determinam a necessidade de uma interacção activa com o outro de modo que a comunicação e o diálogo possam definir as relações humanas no presente e no futuro.

Really, Daddy is a collection of twelve stories that explore the dynamics of racial, intra-racial, gender, and religious power clashes. In narratives that range from realistic to postmodern, characters move through conflicts on a path to self-realization. Ostensibly the responsible ones, the protagonists’ identities are elucidated in the context of the burdens that they carry. At the center of this collection are women and fathers in crisis, as they attempt to save their families or to nourish their own spirits. Whether the character is an African-American Muslim mother shocked into indecision when the Qur’an doesn’t lead her family in its crisis, or an enslaved woman torturing other slaves out of anger over losing her female love, fabulist techniques are combined with realism to unfold the haunting and humorous tales of the imposition of family responsibilities on the lives of the most vulnerable. Here, the reader will find the lapsed Catholic and her wife seeking help from African religion devotees who don’t approve of lesbian relationships, the maid who sacrifices her daughter to a lecherous boss so the rest of her family can eat, and the gay Muslim brother and his lesbian sister in conflict over what to do with his baby. Reflecting the contemporary world in which people live in overlapping marginal spaces of society, these are the stories of America’s forgotten subcultures.
Master of Fine Arts

This study investigates short stories published in South Africa and in Zimbabwe before the turn of the twenty-first century. The short story as a genre provides a more accessible and shorter means of viewing literary trends after the official end of the hostilities of apartheid and colonialism. Because of their brevity and specific focus, these short stories from many voices allow a glimpse of different arenas affecting contemporary reality. Post-independence stories reveal that in the process of navigating or directing hope after independence, people are sometimes left bereft as disenchantment with politics sets in, leaving people to search for hope in areas of their everyday lives such as marriage, birth and friendship. But because their lives are also fraught with conflict, hate and betrayal, hope may remain uncertain and prospects frightening. Chapter One embarks on a brief historical and political background of South Africa and Zimbabwe. This chapter also conceptualizes the issues of hope and disillusionment in the South African and Zimbabwean socio-historical contexts. Chapters Two and Three analyze selected stories from South Africa and Zimbabwe, respectively, focusing on issues with which the writers are preoccupied, especially how they explore hope and disillusionment. The analyses of the stories in these two chapters are structured chronologically depicting events in the stories. Thus the study creates its own narrative of South African and Zimbabwean life towards the new millennium. These two chapters discuss how meanings, significances and ramifications of the post-colonial community are negotiated and re-negotiated in selected stories, highlighting the challenges and engagements with hope and disillusionment dramatized in short prose fiction. Chapter Four will undertake to conclude with comparisons of the selected stories, discussing the implications of the study for South African and Zimbabwean contemporary societies at the turn of the twenty-first century. Granted, it is always difficult to generalize about a society from such highly individual, personal stories. But my study suggests that at the turn of the twenty-first century in South Africa, disillusionment is beginning to displace the heady expectation many felt at the 1994 election. And perhaps even more unlikely, given the current crisis, Zimbabwean stories from recent years show people hopefully waiting for the new millennium, a dawning of new, unpredictable possibilities.

My stories are set around the themes of family, animals and outer space -- which leads to other themes like religion, loneliness, romance, eating animals, growing up and longing for the past. Most of the stories have non-linear structures. Some use gradual shiftings of narrator voice; in others the narrative is flat, lacking plot. I favour repetition over plot-based climaxes to create coherency and narrative flow. I also favour free indirect discourse over dialogue or description as a means to characterize.

AbstractThe day after the election night, on October 5th of 2020, several thousand Kyrgyz citizens poured in the direction of the main square of the capital Bishkek to denounce fraudulent elections. An estimated 1,250 people were injured, and one young person died. This third violent change of government in Kyrgyzstan’s short history of independence can be best understood as a combination of three distinct stories coming together under an unprecedented external shock produced by the coronavirus. First, a genuine citizen mobilization was triggered by the pandemic-related economic decline and rigged elections. Second, the initial peaceful protest was hijacked, to the surprise of the many, by a populist leader capitalizing on long-existing societal polarization. Third, the spectacular unfolding of the intra-opposition struggle downplays an important process of oligarchization, underlying the shaky grounds of patronal presidentialism in pluralist systems.

This chapter focuses on the veranda in Rhys’s writing as an architectural space that opens onto multiple stories, its material history embedded within five centuries of imperial conquest and conflict, the slave trade, the Middle Passage, the plantation, and the plantation’s legacies in city spaces of early 20^th-century Europe. As a creolized architectural form, the veranda speaks also to global circuits stretching from its origins in West Africa and India through Europe and the Americas, with the Caribbean as a central point of transit. I analyse the veranda in Rhys’s writing – including several of the short stories and the novels Wide Sargasso Sea, Voyage in the Dark, and Good Morning, Midnight – as framing key characters, conflicts, and events within the transcontinental reach of this deep history. The layering of time and space, as built into the veranda, situates also the experimental prose of Rhys’s Caribbean modernism.

In September 2015, Ghana along all UN member states endorsed the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the cardinal agenda towards achieving a prosperous global future. The SDGs are strongly interdependent, making progress in all goals essential for a country’s achievement of sustainable development. While Ghana and other West African nations have exhibited significant economic and democratic development post-independence. The judiciary system and related legal frameworks, as well as the lack of rule law and political will for safeguarding the human rights of its citizens, falls short of considering violations against minorities. Will Ghana be able to localize human rights related SDGs, given that West African governments historically tended to promote internal security and stability at the expense of universal human rights? This paper focuses on evaluating the commitments made by Ghana towards achieving Agenda 2030, with a particular focus on the SDGs 10 and 16 relating to the promotion of reduced inequalities, peace, justice and accountable institutions. Moreover, this paper also analyzes legal instruments and state laws put in place post Ghana’s democratization in 1992 for the purpose of preventing discrimination and human rights violations in the nation. The article aims to highlight how Ghana’s post-independence political experience, the lack of rule of law, flaws in the judiciary system, and the weak public access to justice are obstacles to its effective localization of human rights SGDs. Those obstacles to Ghana’s compliance with SDGs 10 and 16 are outlined in this paper through a consideration of human rights violations faced by the Ghanaian Muslim and HIV minorities, poor prison conditions, limited public access to justice and the country’s failure to commit to international treaties on human rights. Keywords: Ghana, human rights, rule of law, security, Agenda 2030

This report maps the African landscape of Open Science – with a focus on Open Data as a sub-set of Open Science. Data to inform the landscape study were collected through a variety of methods, including surveys, desk research, engagement with a community of practice, networking with stakeholders, participation in conferences, case study presentations, and workshops hosted. Although the majority of African countries (35 of 54) demonstrates commitment to science through its investment in research and development (R&D), academies of science, ministries of science and technology, policies, recognition of research, and participation in the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI), the following countries demonstrate the highest commitment and political willingness to invest in science: Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. In addition to existing policies in Science, Technology and Innovation (STI), the following countries have made progress towards Open Data policies: Botswana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, South Africa and Uganda. Only two African countries (Kenya and South Africa) at this stage contribute 0.8% of its GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to R&D (Research and Development), which is the closest to the AU’s (African Union’s) suggested 1%. Countries such as Lesotho and Madagascar ranked as 0%, while the R&D expenditure for 24 African countries is unknown. In addition to this, science globally has become fully dependent on stable ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) infrastructure, which includes connectivity/bandwidth, high performance computing facilities and data services. This is especially applicable since countries globally are finding themselves in the midst of the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), which is not only “about” data, but which “is” data. According to an article1 by Alan Marcus (2015) (Senior Director, Head of Information Technology and Telecommunications Industries, World Economic Forum), “At its core, data represents a post-industrial opportunity. Its uses have unprecedented complexity, velocity and global reach. As digital communications become ubiquitous, data will rule in a world where nearly everyone and everything is connected in real time. That will require a highly reliable, secure and available infrastructure at its core, and innovation at the edge.” Every industry is affected as part of this revolution – also science. An important component of the digital transformation is “trust” – people must be able to trust that governments and all other industries (including the science sector), adequately handle and protect their data. This requires accountability on a global level, and digital industries must embrace the change and go for a higher standard of protection. “This will reassure consumers and citizens, benefitting the whole digital economy”, says Marcus. A stable and secure information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure – currently provided by the National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) – is key to advance collaboration in science. The AfricaConnect2 project (AfricaConnect (2012–2014) and AfricaConnect2 (2016–2018)) through establishing connectivity between National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), is planning to roll out AfricaConnect3 by the end of 2019. The concern however is that selected African governments (with the exception of a few countries such as South Africa, Mozambique, Ethiopia and others) have low awareness of the impact the Internet has today on all societal levels, how much ICT (and the 4th Industrial Revolution) have affected research, and the added value an NREN can bring to higher education and research in addressing the respective needs, which is far more complex than simply providing connectivity. Apart from more commitment and investment in R&D, African governments – to become and remain part of the 4th Industrial Revolution – have no option other than to acknowledge and commit to the role NRENs play in advancing science towards addressing the SDG (Sustainable Development Goals). For successful collaboration and direction, it is fundamental that policies within one country are aligned with one another. Alignment on continental level is crucial for the future Pan-African African Open Science Platform to be successful. Both the HIPSSA ((Harmonization of ICT Policies in Sub-Saharan Africa)3 project and WATRA (the West Africa Telecommunications Regulators Assembly)4, have made progress towards the regulation of the telecom sector, and in particular of bottlenecks which curb the development of competition among ISPs. A study under HIPSSA identified potential bottlenecks in access at an affordable price to the international capacity of submarine cables and suggested means and tools used by regulators to remedy them. Work on the recommended measures and making them operational continues in collaboration with WATRA. In addition to sufficient bandwidth and connectivity, high-performance computing facilities and services in support of data sharing are also required. The South African National Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System5 (NICIS) has made great progress in planning and setting up a cyberinfrastructure ecosystem in support of collaborative science and data sharing. The regional Southern African Development Community6 (SADC) Cyber-infrastructure Framework provides a valuable roadmap towards high-speed Internet, developing human capacity and skills in ICT technologies, high- performance computing and more. The following countries have been identified as having high-performance computing facilities, some as a result of the Square Kilometre Array7 (SKA) partnership: Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, Tunisia, and Zambia. More and more NRENs – especially the Level 6 NRENs 8 (Algeria, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, and recently Zambia) – are exploring offering additional services; also in support of data sharing and transfer. The following NRENs already allow for running data-intensive applications and sharing of high-end computing assets, bio-modelling and computation on high-performance/ supercomputers: KENET (Kenya), TENET (South Africa), RENU (Uganda), ZAMREN (Zambia), EUN (Egypt) and ARN (Algeria). Fifteen higher education training institutions from eight African countries (Botswana, Benin, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, and Tanzania) have been identified as offering formal courses on data science. In addition to formal degrees, a number of international short courses have been developed and free international online courses are also available as an option to build capacity and integrate as part of curricula. The small number of higher education or research intensive institutions offering data science is however insufficient, and there is a desperate need for more training in data science. The CODATA-RDA Schools of Research Data Science aim at addressing the continental need for foundational data skills across all disciplines, along with training conducted by The Carpentries 9 programme (specifically Data Carpentry 10 ). Thus far, CODATA-RDA schools in collaboration with AOSP, integrating content from Data Carpentry, were presented in Rwanda (in 2018), and during17-29 June 2019, in Ethiopia. Awareness regarding Open Science (including Open Data) is evident through the 12 Open Science-related Open Access/Open Data/Open Science declarations and agreements endorsed or signed by African governments; 200 Open Access journals from Africa registered on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ); 174 Open Access institutional research repositories registered on openDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories); 33 Open Access/Open Science policies registered on ROARMAP (Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies); 24 data repositories registered with the Registry of Data Repositories (re3data.org) (although the pilot project identified 66 research data repositories); and one data repository assigned the CoreTrustSeal. Although this is a start, far more needs to be done to align African data curation and research practices with global standards. Funding to conduct research remains a challenge. African researchers mostly fund their own research, and there are little incentives for them to make their research and accompanying data sets openly accessible. Funding and peer recognition, along with an enabling research environment conducive for research, are regarded as major incentives. The landscape report concludes with a number of concerns towards sharing research data openly, as well as challenges in terms of Open Data policy, ICT infrastructure supportive of data sharing, capacity building, lack of skills, and the need for incentives. Although great progress has been made in terms of Open Science and Open Data practices, more awareness needs to be created and further advocacy efforts are required for buy-in from African governments. A federated African Open Science Platform (AOSP) will not only encourage more collaboration among researchers in addressing the SDGs, but it will also benefit the many stakeholders identified as part of the pilot phase. The time is now, for governments in Africa, to acknowledge the important role of science in general, but specifically Open Science and Open Data, through developing and aligning the relevant policies, investing in an ICT infrastructure conducive for data sharing through committing funding to making NRENs financially sustainable, incentivising open research practices by scientists, and creating opportunities for more scientists and stakeholders across all disciplines to be trained in data management.