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Preparations for the 7th OSSREA Congress
The 7th Congress of OSSREA will focus on the theme of “The Quest for Social Peace in Africa: Transformation, Democracy and Public Policy”. The call for papers was made at the beginning of the year and the announcement disseminated through posters, brochures, the OSSREA Newsletter and website. The response to the call for papers has been very encouraging as a total of 128 abstracts were submitted to the Secretariat. The abstracts of papers proposed for the 7th OSSREA Congress have already been screened by officers of the OSSREA Secretariat and the selection of those to be presented has been finalised. A total of 37 abstracts from 14 Eastern and Southern African countries and one from the USA have been selected using specific criteria such as originality of topic, relevance and scope, methodology and presentation quality, institutional/geographic representation and OSSREA membership. All the authors have been informed of the status of their proposals. The authors of the selected abstracts are expected to produce a paper not exceeding 25 pages, plus a summary of not more than five pages, both in hard and soft copies, and submit these to the Secretariat before the expiry of the deadline, which is 21st October 2002. The summary will be published and presented to the participants while the main paper will be posted on the OSSREA website (http://www.ossrea.net) prior to the Congress.
The venue selected for the Congress is the Grand Villa Hotel in Khartoum, Sudan. A Local Organising Committee composed of Dr. Idris Salim ElHassan, Dr. Mustafa Babiker, Dr. Mohammed Abdel Gadir, Mr. Abdul Hameed Elias, and Mrs. Intisar Abdel Hameed, has been formed and meeting regularly to facilitate the Congress. On 20th August 2002, the Local Organizing Committee held its meeting in Khartoum, Sudan. The meeting was attended by the Executive Secretary, Prof. Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed, who chaired the meeting. The meeting addressed the issues of hotel reservation, entry visas for the participants, formation of the secretariat of the Congress, budget, a tentative programme and other business. At the meeting the Executive Secretary informed the Committee members that the date and venue of the Congress have been fixed. Accordingly, the Congress will be held from 15 – 19 December 2002. The programme will be posted on the OSSREA website as soon as the exact titles of the final papers have been known.