African Mathematics

This is the first comprehensive text on African Mathematics that can be used to address some of the problematic issues in this area. These issues include attitudes, curriculum development, educational change, academic achievement, standardized and other tests, performance factors, student characteristics, cross-cultural differences and studies, literacy, native speakers, social class and differences, equal education, teaching methods, knowledge level, educational guidelines and policies, transitional schools, comparative education, other subjects such as physics and social studies, surveys, talent, educational research, teacher education and qualifications, academic standards, teacher effectiveness, lesson plans and modules, teacher characteristics, instructional materials, program effectiveness, program evaluation, African culture, African history, Black studies, class activities, educational games, number systems, cognitive ability, foreign influence, and fundamental concepts. What unifies the chapters in this book can appear rather banal, but many mathematical insights are so obvious and so fundamental that they are difficult to absorb, appreciate, and express with fresh clarity. Some of the more basic insights are isolated by accounts of investigators who have earned their contemporaries' respect.
Winner of the 2012 Cecil B. Currey Book Award.

Abdul Karim Bangura is a researcher-in-residence of Abrahamic Connections and Islamic Peace Studies at the Center for Global Peace at American University and the director of The African Institution, both in Washington DC. He is also a visiting graduate professor of Regional Integration at the University of Cabo Verde as well as director of the Institute and senior doctoral dissertations mentor of the CODESRIA College of Mentors in Dakar (Senegal). Bangura is also a member of many scholarly organizations, has served as President and then United Nations Ambassador of the Association of Third World Studies, and is a Special Envoy of the African Union Peace and Security Council. He has recently been awarded the Special United States Congressional Award for "outstanding and invaluable service to the international community."

Chapter 1: General Introduction Chapter 2: Beginnings: Mathematics of Bones Chapter 3: Geometry South of the Sahara Chapter 4: Numbers Chapter 5: Beginning of Written Mathematics: Egypt Chapter 6: The Maghrebian Tradition Chapter 7: Combinatorics and African Applications Chapter 8: Vector Calculus and African Applications Chapter 9: The Fourier Transform and African Applications Chapter 10: Mathematical Tiling/Tesselation and African Applications Chapter 11: Bifurcations and African Applications Chapter 12: Fractals Chapter 13: African-centered Automated Generation of Metadata Chapter 14: General Conclusion: Access to Mathematics versus Access to the Language of Power: Lessons from the Struggle in South African Multilingual Mathematics Classrooms Chapter 15 Bibliography