After a competitive application process, the APSA Africa Project Steering Committee has selected this year's workshop leaders. The US-based facilitators of the workshop are Parakh Hoon (Virginia Tech) and Lauren MacLean (Indiana University). Their Africa-based colleagues are Joseph Mbaiwa (Okavango Research Institute, University of Botswana, Maun Campus), Sethunya Mosime (University of Botswana, Gaborone Campus), and Lungisile Ntsebeza (University of Cape Town). The theme of this year's workshop is “Local Communities and the State in Africa.” The event will be held in July 2012 at the facilities of the University of Botswana in Gaborone.

The call for participant applications for the Botswana Workshop was issued in February. Following a competitive selection process, up to 26 qualified applicants (22 scholars from Africa and four North American doctoral students) will be invited to participate. During the workshop, the theme of “Local Communities and the State in Africa” will be analyzed over the course of three distinct sections. The first will be dedicated to empirical issues including rights and recognition, public goods and service provision, and decentralization/local empowerment. The second will examine various theoretical perspectives including structural, institutional, community-based, and comparative. The final section will discuss methodological challenges involved in the study of local communities and the state, including the value of empirical research and research design, politics of access and researcher positionality, and future trends in method, technology, level of conflict, and funding.

APSA's Africa Workshops are supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The inaugural workshop was held in Dakar, Senegal at the West African Research Center in 2008. Subsequent workshops have been hosted by the University of Ghana, the University of Dar es Salaam, and the University of Nairobi. Focusing on junior-level scholars working in Africa, the workshop program aims to enhance the capacities of political scientists in Africa and build lasting networks between African scholars and their colleagues in North America. The project will run through 2014.

To learn more about the 2012 workshop or for information on previous workshops and the overall APSA Africa Workshop program, please visit the project website at http://www.apsanet.org/~africaworkshops.