The Claude Ak lecture delivered by Mahmood Mamdani offers an African perspective on 9/11, arguing that the roots of the terrorism so widely promulgated are in America (the 'democratic empire') and the Cold War. Mamdani underlines the aspect of terrorism he terms 'culture talk' - the language of contemporary globalisation. Samir Amin provides a critical overview and exploration of the alternatives to neoliberal globalisation, imperialism and militarism. Fatou Sow stresses the need to rethink development from positions that have regard for gender, and casts doubt on the slow pace of the integration of women into various spheres, despite women having acquired the 'right to have rights'. The fourth lecture, also delivered by Fatou Sow, is a critical tribute to Lopold Sedar Senghor, the Senegalese 'Poet-President', commenting in particular on his attitudes to African languages and ngritude, and includes the texts of his most beautiful poems dedicated to African women.

A landmark and long-awaited translation into French of Engendering African Social Sciences (Codesria 1997), this was one of the most pioneering works in the field of gender and social sciences in the African context, and remains an authoritative text. It is an extensively researched and forcefully argued study offering a critique and directions for gendering the social sciences in Africa. The sixteen chapters cover methodological and epistemological questions and substantive issues in the various social science disciplines, ranging from economics, politics, and history, to sociology and anthropology. Thirteen scholars contribute, including the three distinguished women editors. The translation, which is edited from the English and newly introduced by the renowned feminist scholar Fatou Sow, is an achievement itself, an incursion into the notorious difficulties of translating what are notably Anglo-Saxon concepts of sex and gender into the French language and distinctive academic environment; of interpreting western concepts of feminism within the African environment; as well as being an opportunity to revisit what deserves to become a classic text and reach a wider audience. In French.