Kusow, Abdi

Reducing the global diseases burden requires effective diagnosis and treatment. In the developing world, accurate diagnosis can be the most expensive and time-consuming aspect of health care. Healthcare cost can, however, be reduced by use of affordable rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs). In the developed world, low-cost RDTs are being developed in many research laboratories; however, they are not being equally adopted in the developing countries. This disconnect points to a gap in the design philosophy, where parameterization of design variables ignores the most critical component of the system, the point-of-use stakeholders (e.g., doctors, nurses and patients). Herein, we demonstrated that a general focus on reducing cost (i.e., “low-cost”), rather than efficiency and reliability is misguided by the assumption that poverty reduces the value individuals place on their well-being. A case study of clinicians in Kenya showed that “zero-cost” is a low-weight parameter for point-of-use stakeholders, while reliability and standardization are crucial. We therefore argue that a user-driven, value-addition systems-engineering approach is needed for the design of RDTs to enhance adoption and translation into the field.

Based on in-depth oral interviews carried out in Mogadishu, Somalia, and countries neighboring Somalia in 2009 and 2013, our purpose in this study is to map the nature of prejudice and hate discourse used by Somalis against the Bantu Jareer and the Yibir, Gabooye, and Tumaal communities in Somalia. The hate discourse used against the Yibir, Gabooye, and Tumal outcast communities is premised on assumptions of their supposed unholy origin and their engagement in occupations and social activities that are despised by the so-called Somali noble groups. The prejudice and hate discourse against the Bantu Jareer Somalis is derived from their African origin and alleged African-like physical characteristics in comparison with the features of other Somalis.

The social issue of immigrants’ dual loyalty figures prominently in the 2016 U.S. presidential primaries, yet little is known about Americans’ views on the subject. Drawing on data from a nationally representative telephone survey, the authors specifically explored nonimmigrant Americans’ attitudes toward immigrants’ dual loyalty. The results show that attitudes toward this dual loyalty are informed by multiple boundary-making processes, including the extent to which respondents strongly believe that immigrants should celebrate American values and traditions and share their vision of America, that immigration should be restricted as much as possible, and that American influence in the world is important.

Since Anderson’s now classic, Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City, an increasing number of researchers have found a significant association between the code of the street and antisocial behavior. Less researched, however, is the relationship between the code of the street and cognate psychological factors. Building on the hypothesis that the code of the street is simply a reflection of elements of the population who exhibit antisocial traits, our aim in this study is to empirically test whether the observed association between the code of the street and antisocial behavior can withstand psychological confounds among a sample of institutionalized juvenile delinquents. Negative binomial regression models show that the code of the street remained a significant predictor of antisocial behavior despite the specification of psychopathy and temperamental traits and other controls. Moreover, as theorized, differential effects were found for African American delinquents compared to non-African American delinquents. We discuss theoretical and practical implications.

For more than half a century, an extensive literature has consistently reported that first-and second-generation black immigrants are more educated and economically successful than African Americans. This literature has also suggested that black immigrants are benefiting from affirmative action more so than African Americans without having been the direct objects of slavery and historical discrimination. An important shortcoming of this literature, however, is that it presumes an undifferentiated black immigrant success story and obscures important differences across black immigrants from different countries of origin. Using data from the three census years (1980, 1990, and 2000), I examine the extent to which the black immigrant success story is directly relevant to African immigrants from different countries of origin in the United States. The findings of the study reveal that African immigrants are represented in the entire continuum of the American class structure, and therefore, any representation of a uniform experience is not empirically defensible. Empirical and theoretical implications of affirmative action are also discussed.

More than half a century ago, Frantz Fanon made two pivotal observations about cataclysmic convulsions that would engulf Central and Eastern Africa. The first referred to his prescient observation that the African continent resembles a revolver, and Zaire is the trigger (Fanon, 1966 [2005]). His clairvoyant statement eerily prefigures what political commentators have, since the 1990s, characterized as the potential starting point of Africa’s First World War (Williams, 2013). After the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Seko, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly known as Zaire) became the site where warring armies from more than four neighboring countries came to battle one another, presumably to defend the legitimate existence of a proxy group in the country. Zimbabwean and Angolan forces were aligned with the regime of Laurent Kabila, while Rwanda and Uganda—the original patrons of Laurent Kabila and his putsch-were now his sworn enemies. Fanon’s second observation warned against the ramifications and implications of a Somali-Ethiopian war whose foundation was nationalistic (Fanon, 1969). This warning came with devastating consequences. The resulting political, social, and economic landscape of Somalia compels us to examine the contours of both the centripetal and centrifugal forces that still animate social upheavals. This requires a bold reexamination of analytic categories, and the ability to envision new ones to cope with the new reality. In this essay, I confine myself to the new reality in the Horn of Africa. I will engage in a comparative analysis by telescoping a panoramic view of regional history. This new telescoping and reality must be understood, not from the vantage point of national disintegration by way of political conflict, but through the perspective that social transformation and migration work as the ultimate engine of social change (Richerson and Boyd, 2008).