Professors and students hope to create portable device that could test for contaminants immediately, reports The Daily Bruin.

Ghislaine Lydon, the new chair of the African Studies interdepartmental program, will travel to Mauritania in December to collaborate on an article and a documentary film about the last women caravanners in the western Sahara Desert.

Nearly 1,000 middle and high school students came to campus on May 30 for the Teach Africa Youth Forum, the last and largest event in a yearlong collaborative effort carried out in Southern California schools to increase awareness about Africa and its place in global affairs.

In a forum on Saturday, speakers addressed several topics to break stereotypes of life in Africa, The Daily Bruin reports.

For the last half-century the United States has undermined itself in Africa by failing to distinguish itself from Europe and the colonial legacy, says Haskell Sears Ward, one of the first to graduate from UCLA with an interdisciplinary master's degree in African studies.

Haskell Sears Ward, an expert on development and one of the first UCLA graduate students in African Studies, will focus his Thursday afternoon talk on what Africa and the United States have meant to one another for the past 50 years.

From UCLA African Studies Center Director - Allen F. Roberts

In a public talk Louis Mazel, director of the U.S. Department of State Office of African Regional and Security Affairs, discusses current and potential security issues across the continent, including the uncertain future of South Sudan.

Organizers offered practical ways for the nearly 200 teachers to move beyond stereotypes about African disease, poverty, and chaos on the one hand, and safari animals and exotic customs on the other.

Veteran journalist Stephen Kinzer talks about his latest book, on President Paul Kagame's role in the amazing rise of Rwanda.

Teach Africa advocates more and better teaching about the continent in the schools. The launch event brought distinguished guests to UCLA along with high-schoolers and teachers back from a Ugandan trip.

UCLA partners with government, nonprofits on Teach Africa. To jump-start the Southern California launch, the sponsors hosted a group of three high school students and three public school teachers on a trip to Uganda this month.

Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje is an international expert on things she once snubbed, with articles on gospel and spirituals and a new book on fiddling, "Fiddling in West Africa: Touching the Spirit in Fulbe, Hausa, and Dagbamba Cultures."

This Fowler Museum exhibition runs from Dec. 9 through April 27, 2008.

Antonio Mascarenhas Monteiro, who served two five-year terms as Cape Verde's first president elected under a multiparty system, tells a UCLA audience that Africa is no lost cause, but a continent striving towards peace and democracy. He discusses Cape Verde's relations with China and other emerging powers.

Amy Futa remembers friend and colleague Gregory A. Cherry.

From UCLA African Studies Center Director

For Ghislaine Lydon, 2006 was the year of travel.

UFAHAMU, A Journal of African Studies

Visiting humanities professor to lecture on African activism, literature, and liberties