The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Oxford University

  • ‘Economic Recovery and Growth Plan means investing in Nigerians’

    Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo says investing in Nigerians is a major pillar of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).

    Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Office of the Vice-President Laolu Akande said that Osinbajo spoke on Friday in a lecture at Oxford University, UK.

    In the lecture entitled: “The Challenges of Human Development in 21st Century Africa’’ the vice-president said that Human Capital Development must be a priority of public policy of governments across Africa.

    According to him, this will effectively tackle multidimensional poverty and improve long-term development on the continent.

    He highlighted ongoing investments, efforts and plans of the Nigerian government and the progress it had made in improving the country’s Human Capital Development indices and investment climate.

    He said that the National Social Investment Programmes (N-SIP) had also made huge impact, calling on African governments to unlock other opportunities to significantly achieve improved standards of living.

    “All over Africa, the political will to better the lot of our restive populations is evident, innovative ideas are also in abundance.

    “If we keep our focus, especially on good governance, the next two decades may truly be the African decades.

    “Governments are also best placed to deploy the public policy tools required to bring about synergy between growth objectives and social needs,’’ Osinbajo said.

    The vice-president also said that the administration’s N-SIP would continue to make policies and initiatives to improve Human Capital Development in Nigeria.

    “The major plank of the Federal Government’s approach to empowerment is to improve financial inclusion.

    “Our Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) is an important tool for financially empowering small businesses, artisans, market women, petty traders and table top traders.

    “Over the past two years, through the N-Power Programme, the largest post tertiary employment programme in Africa, we have been able to offer skills development programmes digitally to more than 500,000 young citizens between the ages of 18 years and 35 years.

    “We have set a target of skilling 10 million Nigerians by 2023’’, he said.

    Osinbajo said that by the end of the year, two million petty traders nationwide were expected to benefit from the TraderMoni, which provided them collateral and interest-free N10, 000 loans.

    He added that a total of N55 billion had been disbursed to 250,000 farmers on the platform of  the administration’s Anchor Borrowers’ Programme scheme, which provided subsidized credit to small holder farmers.

    At the event, Osinbajo also inaugurated the International Advisory Board of Oxford University’s African Studies Centre in the School of Global and Area Studies.

    NAN

  • Anti-depressants do work: study

    Anti-depressants do work: study

    Anti-depressants do help lift people’s mood, although their effects vary, according to a recent study published in the London-based medical journal The Lancet.

    The study, which analysed data from 522 trials involving 21 common anti-depressants, found that all tested drugs were effective in treating depression.

    Drugs were deemed effective if symptoms were reduced in at least half of patients over two months.

    Lead author Dr. Andrea Cipriani said he was “very excited” about the findings, which he said provided a “final answer” to the controversy over the effectiveness of the drugs.

    The study also gives a comparison of the 21 types of anti-depressants.

    It says that agomelatine, amitriptyline, escitalopram, mirtazapine and paroxetine were the most effective anti-depressants among the ones that were tested.

    Meanwhile, the well-known brand Prozac, or fluoxetine, was one of the least effective ones.

    Led by Oxford University, the study hopes to settle doubts and debates over anti-depressants, which has been described by some people as conspiracies of big firms or no more effective than placebos.

    WHO says depression is a common illness worldwide, with more than 300 million people affected.

    The world health body said depression is different from usual mood fluctuations and short-lived emotional responses to challenges in everyday life.

    WHO also said close to 800 000 people die due to suicide every year. Suicide is the second leading cause of death in 15 to 29-year-olds.

    The UN organisation also warned that the burden of depression and other mental health conditions is on the rise globally.

    A World Health Assembly resolution passed in May 2013 has called for a comprehensive, coordinated response to mental disorders at country level.

    Xinhua/NAN

  • Malala excited after winning place at Oxford University

    Malala excited after winning place at Oxford University

    Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai said on Thursday she was “excited” after winning a place to study at Oxford University.

    Yousafzai, the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize when she was 17, said she had been accepted at Oxford to study Politics, Philosophy, and Economics.

    She joined thousands of other students in Britain in discovering where they will go to university after getting their final school results.

    Others to have studied the same course at Oxford, one of the world’s top universities, include former British Prime Minister David Cameron and late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

    Yousafzai, now 20, came to prominence when a Taliban gunman shot her in the head in 2012, after she was targeted for her campaign against efforts by the Taliban to deny women education.

    She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

    “So excited to go to Oxford!! Well done to all A-level students, the hardest year. Best wishes for life ahead!” she said in a tweet.

    A-levels are final year exams for school students.

    After recovering from the Taliban attack, she has attended school in England.

    Early figures showed a fall in the number of places allocated by universities, although the proportion of students scoring top grades rose.

    University admissions service UCAS said on its website the decrease in the number of university acceptances had been driven by a fall in acceptances from older students and fewer students from the European Union.

    UCAS said 416,310 people had been accepted to degree courses on A-level results day, down two percent compared to 2016.

    Over one in four of the grades was an A or A*, the best ratings, up 0.5 percentage points in 2016.

  • Nigerian scholar Adebanwi named Rhodes Professor at Oxford University

    Nigerian scholar Adebanwi named Rhodes Professor at Oxford University

    Wale Adebanwi, a Nigerian scholar, has been appointed to the prestigious Rhodes Professorship in Race Relations in the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
    Adebanwi, who is a professor at the University of California, Davis, United States, will also be a Fellow of St Anthony’s College, Oxford, effective July 1 and the next Director of the African Studies Centre of Britain’s oldest university.
    The Rhodes Professorship in Race Relations is named for Cecil Rhodes, British businessman, mining magnate and politician in South Africa who served as Prime Minister of Cape Colony from 1890-1896. The professorship was established by the Rhodesian Selection Trust Mining Company in 1954.
    Based on the position announcement, the Rhodes Professor is adjudged “a scholar of international distinction with an outstanding record of research publications in the field of African (sub Saharan) Studies and a proven track record of leadership in research and teaching.”
    Adebanwi, 47, is the first black African scholar to be appointed to the endowed Chair since it was created more than 60 years ago. His predecessors are Professor Kenneth Kirkwood, who occupied the chair for 32 years, Professor Terence Ranger, and Professor William Beinart, who retired from the position in 2015.
    Adebanwi holds a BSc in mass communication from the University of Lagos, M.Sc and Ph. D. in political science from the University of Ibadan, as well as MPhil and Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge.
    Recently, Dr Adebanwi was one of four former Gates Scholars whose “amazing successes” were acknowledged by the Microsoft chief, Bill Gates, who funded his scholarship at Cambridge more than a decade ago. Gates’s acknowledgement of Adebanwi was part of the video message he sent to a gathering of current and former Gate Scholars at Cambridge University during the Gates Cambridge Biennial 2016.
    A prolific and versatile scholar, Adebanwi has published widely in the areas of nationalism and ethnic Studies, media and communication, corruption and politics, democracy and democratization, cultural politics, spatial politics, urban studies, and social theory and social thought. In his most recent book Nation as Grand Narrative: The Nigerian Press and the Politics of Meaning, published in 2016, Adebanwi focuses his multi-disciplinary scholarship on salient issues in Nigeria’s troubled history, examining how debates in the newspaper press shaped the narratives as well as the configuration of power.
    His influential book, Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo and Corporate Agency was published by Cambridge University in 2014. His 2012 book Authority Stealing: Anti-corruption War and Democratic Politics in Post-Military Nigeria was selected as one of the three “Best Books on Africa in 2013” by the journal, Foreign Affairs.
    Author, editor or co-editor of 10 books, Adebanwi has also published book chapters and many articles in some of the most prestigious journals of social science and humanities scholarship. He has served as co-editor of Journal of Contemporary African Studies and is currently co-editor of Africa: Journal of the International African Institute.
    The new Rhodes Professor, formerly a lecturer in political science at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, is a visiting professor at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. He has held visiting fellowships at St Anthony’s College, Oxford, and the Centre for African Studies in Leiden, The Netherlands, and was awarded a Rockefeller fellowship for Academic Writing Residency at its Bellagio Centre, Italy. In 2005, he was a co-winner of a $100, 000 MacArthur Foundation Research grant.