Slide 1

Bekeh Ukelina, Ph.D.

A professor of history, Bekeh Ukelina is the Director of the Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies at the State University of New York, Cortland.

His research areas are African development, global migrations, displacements, and African cultural heritage. Ukelina's primary research examines development as ideology-and state-directed interventions in Africa, south of the Sahara. It investigates ideologies that shape the planners and the planning processes and how these translate into actual practices and interventions. He is interestd in understanding how the complex and interlocking layers of exploitation in the colonial and post-political independence periods have shaped African nations and their economic relations with the Global North.

Bekeh is the Managing Editor of Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's and Gender Studies and the President of the New York African Studies Association. He is an active member of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) where he leads the Task Team on localizing and nationalizing the SDGs and Cultural Heritage. Bekeh is also a member of the International Scientific Committee on Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites (ICIP).

Ukelina's book, The Second Colonial Occupation: Development Planning, Agriculture and the Legacies of British Rule in Nigeria is an essential monograph in colonial development history. It won the NYASA 2018 book award. Bekeh's work is policy relevent and has practical implications. It enables policy makers and international organizations identify and avoid some of the pitfalls during the planning processes, thus leading to better outcomes and a better life for the inhabitants of Africa, who often live in terrible conditions partly because of development failures.

Slide 1

Why in spite of Africa’s abundant natural and human resources its people are still poor
The independence of African countries from their European colonizers in the late 1950s and 1960s marked a shift in the continent's political leadership. Nevertheless, the economies of African nations remained tied to those of their former colonies, raising questions of resource control and the sovereignty of these nation-states.

Who Owns Africa? addresses the role of foreign actors in Africa and their competing interests in exploiting the resources of Africa and its people. An interdisciplinary team of scholars examines the concept of colonialism from a historical and socio-political perspective. They show how the language of investment, development aid, mutual interest, or philanthropy is used to cloak the virulent forms of exploitation on the continent, thereby perpetuating a state of neocolonialism that has left many African people poor and in the margins.

previous arrow
next arrow

Latest Blogs

Celebrating Juneteenth

As we celebrate Juneteenth, it is important that we continue to reflect on the history and place of Black People in America Black people built

Read More »

Follow Me

Twitter feed is not available at the moment.