Johnson brings African culture to university
Special to The Colonnade
Bringing a little bit of Africa to Milledgeville, the Africana Studies Program of GC&SU has invited IMF representative and Sierra Leone born Dr. Omotunde E.G. Johnson to deliver a lecture on “Improving the Economic Performance of African Countries: Fundamental Challenges.”
Johnson will be speaking at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, March 8, 2006 at the Arts & Sciences Auditorium.
“He will be reviewing those factors (both internal and external) that have so far hindered Africa’s development, and making suggestions as to how those problems can be resolved,” said Dr. Eustace Palmer, coordinator of the Africana Studies Program.
Johnson’s credentials span a Bachelor, a Master of Arts and a Doctorate from the University of California in Los Angeles, Ca.
A distinguished scholar, Johnson has mostly worked with the IMF, “one of the world’s two leading financial bodies (the other being the World Bank), but he has also taught at universities in Africa and the United States, has been a visiting Fellow at Oxford University in England and has published over forty articles. He was the Resident IMF Representative in Ghana from 1987 to 1990,” Palmer said.
More recently, Johnson has been consulting on Economic Governance and Management and Socio-Economic Governance to the African Peer Review Secretariat of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. His work has followed him, among others, to Budapest, Vienna, Singapore, Kazakhstan, and Bangkok; and more recently to Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.
“I think the entire GC&SU and Milledgeville community is fortunate in having a speaker of Johnson’s caliber who is very knowledgeable about Africa’s problems and can give them accurate information about Africa and insights into some of the problems and challenges facing the continent,” Palmer said.
The lecture is primarily sponsored by the Africana Studies Program; co-sponsors include the GCSU Office of Multicultural Affairs, the International Education Center, and the J. Whitney Bunting School of Business.
The interdisciplinary Africana Studies Program, which was launched in the fall of 2004, incorporates the African and Black Studies Minors. The program supports the university’s liberal arts curriculum by encouraging the broadening of student horizons and knowledge of the African nation.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Mar 3 2006. Filed under News.
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