The current state of global knowledge production raises the importance of building research and an educational platform for Africans and Africanists to compete with the needs and demands of the 21 century is paramount. The necessity for critical thinking, creative collaboration, communication, and the production of indigenous knowledge to benefit Africa is becoming more prominent. We strongly believe that appropriate publishing has the potential to transform society. This can only be achieved by publishing impactful research through books and journals.
In light of the above, Cradle aims to revive and strengthen Africa’s research and publishing capacity in the global knowledge economy. It is, therefore, embarking on a new publishing endeavour through research. With an aim of becoming part of this knowledge production, our high-quality publications and materials are believed to serve citizens, researchers (at all levels) and policy providers. Moreover, as an aspiring research and training organisation, Cradle is enthusiastic about supporting and facilitating new knowledge production and dissemination for the benefit of Africa and the Global South at large. In this regard, it will work closely with universities, researchers and other institutions that are interested in the production and dissemination of research findings.
Cradle is represented in the editorial boards of international peer reviewed journals through Professor Abebe Zegeye, the Co-director of Cradle, and collaborates with other publishers. It also works in the development of capacities of academic staffs of higher learning institutions. Cradle is in the process of publishing a book series entitled ‘Global Ethiopia: Contemporary Trends in Heritage and History’.
Membership in editorial boards of international peer reviewed journals
Cradle is represented as a member of the editorial board of the following journals:
- THIRD WORLD-QUARTERLY
- SOCIAL IDENTITIES
- JOURNAL OF DEVELOPING SOCIETIES (SAGE):
- JOURNAL OF AFROASIATIC LANGUAGES, HISTORY AND CULTURE (JAAL)
Collaborations with other publishers
Africa World Press, Inc. & The Red Sea Press, Inc. http://africaworldpressbooks.com/
Capacity development for academic staff in higher learning institutions in Ethiopia and abroad
Cradle has Organized a seminar on how to publish where prospective authors drawn from five Universities in Ethiopia and other Universities from Kenya, Uganda, South Africa participated.
Book Series
Cradle is excited to announce that it is in the process of publishing a book series entitled ‘Global Ethiopia: Contemporary Trends in Heritage and History’. The General Editors are Angela Raven Roberts, International Gender Studies at Lady Margaret Hall; and Centre for Comparative and International Education, Department of Education, Oxford University; and Abebe Zegeye, Co-Director Cradle. The series will be published by Africa World Press Inc. and Red Sea Press Inc., based in New Jersey in the United States. The publishers were founded in 1983 and specialise in high-quality literature on the history, culture, and politics of Africa and the African Diaspora.
The book series intends to cover Ethiopia’s transition and transformation. It will showcase cutting edge work that is being produced by the new generation of writers from the many universities in Ethiopia, and from the Ethiopian diaspora.
Proposed Book Series
Author: Anannia Admassu Sahle
The author explores how childhood among the Argobba communities in north-east Ethiopia is shaped by local social and cultural attitudes and some aspects of political changes and globalisation. By investigating children’s perspectives with regard to their roles in households and communities, it examines what influences children and adults’ perceptions and practices concerning children’s education and migration. Given the importance of generational relations among various ethnic groups in Ethiopia, the research asked how children and young people react to cultural contexts and societal values and examined whether existing generational relationships and cultural context have shown changes over time.
2. State and Society in Agaw Meder, 1935–2005
Author: Ayenew Mamo Seyum
This study is a preliminary attempt to reconstruct a history of the relations between state and society in Agaw Meder Awrajja from 1935 to 2005. 1935 is a turning point in the history of the Awrajja because it was the period of the Italian invasion and the beginning of the resistance movement, whereas the year 2005 is a landmark in the history of Ethiopia, due to the general election period that involved several parties. Based on relevant archival, oral sources, personal papers as well as secondary sources, the dissertation focuses on reconstructing the history of Agaw Meder from1935 to 2005.
Author: Brightman Gebremichael Ganta
The author examines the extent of legal protection afforded peasants’ and pastoralists’ secure land tenure in post-1991 Ethiopia. To this end, I analyse constitutions, laws, policy documents, judicial decisions, constitutional interpretations as well as the literature, critically. The prevailing premise in academic discourse is that land tenure security is realised when the landholder is granted an adequate number of rights in land; with longer duration; deprivation of land rights for greater societal interest occurs only in terms of due process of law and upon payment of adequate compensation; enforcement of land rights through an independent judiciary is affordable, and there is participatory and low-cost registration and certification of rights. I argue instead that the components of tenure security are not formulated comprehensively and clearly nor defined contextualised to different land holding systems.
4. The Impact of Migration and Remittances on Home Communities in Ethiopia
Author: Girmachew Zewdu
The money that migrants send, both individually and collectively, and other transnational engagements have become an area of increasing research and policy interest, although little studied in Ethiopia. This thesis investigates the social and economic impacts of migration and remittances on families and communities left behind in Ethiopia. A mixed methods approach is adopted involving the collection of both quantitative and qualitative information including a survey of 544 migrant households in Gondar, a northern Ethiopian city which has been an important source of emigrants since the late 1970s. For comparison, the study also examines the pattern of migration and remittances in the Hadiya and Kembata villages in South Ethiopia, an emerging emigrant community that sends migrants predominantly to South Africa.
Author: Sibuh Gebeyaw Tareke
Historically, but also more recently, various strains of federalism have sought to be valuable tools for nation-building and managing inter and intra-ethnic conflicts in multiethnic societies. After the overthrow of the Marxist-Leninist military regime in Ethiopia in 1991, the 1995 FDRE (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia) Constitution established an ethnic-based federal state that fully recognised ethnic autonomy within a unitary state.
Academic debate on the working of ethnic federalism in Ethiopia has focused on delineating ethnic identity, political power contestation, resource competition, and disputed territorial boundaries to explore the nature of ethnic conflicts in Ethiopia. Deploying empirical and qualitative information supported by the case study, this study uses the Amhara National Regional State to investigate whether ethnic federalism has been a cause of, or solution to, ethnic conflicts.