The groups of people in Omo valley, are facing the worst declining of the biodiversity and of indigenous practices, where the higher threat being man-made. Irrigation schemes for large-scale agriculture by the government like Kuraz Sugar Development Project (KSDP), with its planned 175,000 hectares of large-scale farmland and extensive implementation strategies is among the cause. United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) reported that it will have a profound impact on some of Ethiopia’s most important protected areas, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site, and the riparian forest along the Omo River. Besides, forced resettlement implementations are raised as the reason for human rights abuse in the area; most of the resettlement place doesn’t bear fertile agriculture and pastures as it is degraded and covered by invasive plant species. Hence ethnobotanical study and documentation of medicinal and wild edible plants used currently or in the recent past by the people of lower Omo valley, became our main objective, planned to collect ethnobotanical data of traditional knowledge of medicinal and wild edible plants, to conduct taxonomic identification and deposit samples of the claimed medicinal and wild edible plants in the National Herbarium of Addis Ababa University, to identify the threats and opportunities of indigenous knowledge and ecological conservation.

I’ m interested in exploring and underscoring hominin behaviours in relation to food procurement strategies in the past, stone tools manufacture and the synergetic links between hominin-environmental interactions, cognition abilities and subsistence systems. Specifically, I uses phytolith analysis in combination with archaeological and plant micro-remains data in order to reflect the nature and type of environments that were occupied by early humans and the plant environments surrounding their habitats during the Pleistocene-Holocene epochs.

Mes recherches portent sur l’évolution des communautés de petits mammifères d’Afrique depuis la fin du Pliocène jusqu’à aujourd’hui. J’aborde plus particulièrement des questions concernant la taxinomie des rongeurs, et l’utilisation des assemblages fossiles à des fins de reconstruction paléoenvironnementale et d’outil biochronologique.

Pour y répondre, j’utilise différentes approches combinant mes connaissances en paléontologie, en anatomie et en écologie, ainsi que des outils de morphométrie géométrique et de machine learning.

Les assemblages que j’étudie proviennent principalement d’Afrique du Sud et du Botswana, et j’aimerais prochainement comparer les structures et dynamiques des communautés d’Afrique australe avec celles d’Afrique du Nord et de l’Est.

The Great African Rift includes several linguistic areas belonging to the four major language families of the continent (Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Kongo, Nilo-Saharan and Khoesan). The linguistic diversity of this area is the result of migrations and contacts, sometimes very ancient, between populations of hunter-gatherers, pastoralists and farmers. The comparison between languages suggests several migratory phases and contacts that have repeatedly modified the linguistic landscape. Some languages like Sandawe and Hadza spoken in Tanzania have similar sounds, clicks, to those of the Khoesan family found in Botswana and Namibia.

The sound systems of the Rift languages have particular sound types, some of which are not common in the world’s languages. The case of non-pulmonic consonants such as ejectives, implosives, and clicks is particularly notable. Hadza and Sandawe have sound systems with clicks, ejectives and prenasals. Iraqw, a South Cushitic language (Afroasiatic family) spoken in the Manyara and Arusha regions of Tanzania has a consonantal system that includes a contrast between modal and labialized consonants, a long series of unvoiced fricative consonants and a series of ejective consonants. Maasai, a Nilotic language, has a complete set of implosives in its phonological system, a complete system of vowels [+/- ATR], and tones. In our project, the focus is on several languages from different linguistic families to explore the phoneme production mechanisms of these languages.

I conducted my MA thesis on the coservational challenges of world heritage site of konso cultural landscape which is found in the great rift valley. I presented this on the 3rd GDR colloquium.

However for in the future i have a plan to do the same assessment on the Lower Omo Valley and Lower Awash Valley archaeological and paleontological world heritage sites.

I want to inquire conservational challenges of these to site.

Lower Valley of Awash paleo-anthropological site covers 150km2 where ‘Lucy’ or “ድንቅነሽ” Australopithecus Afarensis (3.2mya) and ‘Ardi’ (4.4mya) are found. It is inscribed by UNESCO in 1980.

Lower Valley of Omo paleontological site covers 165km2 where different human and animals fossil found. The site inscribed by UNESCO in 1980.

Research themes: Late Pleistocene and early Holocene hunter-gatherer societies in Africa. I am interested in the organization of hunter-gatherer lithic technology, especially stone procurement. My research explores how technological organization can be studied to understand the major evolutionary and demographic changes of the last hundred-thousand years in Africa.

Christine Adongo is currently an early stage researcher doing PhD at l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS – Paris), and a member of Institut Interdisciplinaire d’Anthropologie du Contemporaire (IIAC). She attained both her bachelors and Masters degrees in Environmental science at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya. Broadly, her research interests encompass environment, natural resources, local landscapes, pastoral socio-ecological transition and livelihoods. More specifically, she has worked on natural resources conservation and livelihoods, focusing on the Kenya coastal sacred Kaya forests, and pastoral futures in northern Kenya in so far as climate change adaptation and WASH management at the local level in concerned. Her most work focuses on ‘green’ projects’ implementation (geothermal energy project in Kenya) and their socio-ecological and livelihood implications on the resilience of local pastoral landscape. Christine will use the mobility funds from GDR as a post-doctoral undertaking, to advance her fieldwork and facilitate the dissemination of her work on the contested futures of geothermal in the greater Olkaria geothermal area in Kenya’s rift valley.

Currently working as curator at the National Museum of Ethiopia in paleoanthropology, in Addis Ababa, and PhD student in PACEA lab in Bordeaux for African hominin fossils study, especially dental material.

Currently, I am a Ph.D. student at the University of Poitiers. My research interest focuses in exploring the relationships between morphology and dietary behavior of megaherbivores (proboscidean; elephants, and their relatives) revealed from hominid bearing sites of the Afar Rift Valley (e.g., Middle Awash and Hadar) and the Turkana Depression in Ethiopia (Shungura Formation) and Kenya. For the study, I will use multiproxy approaches such as dental wear analyses (dental microwear texture analysis and mesowear) as well as stable isotope study for a better understanding of their responses to various environmental contexts and changes.

This research will contribute to understand the impact of Late Miocene to Middle Pleistocene environments on the habitats of megafauna, which were shared with many other animals including hominins.