The African-Caribbean Institute (ACI) is a small research organization specializing in environment, global health and human rights issues. In the last decade ACI has concentrated much of its work on contemporary issues surrounding human rights, witchcraft, and witch-hunting violence in Africa.

The Institute was established in 1983 by Norman Miller, then a part-time professor at the Dartmouth Medical School and a correspondent in East Africa for the American Universities Field Staff. It was established with matching funds from a Ruth Miller and William Earl Brown bequest. Its mission is to increase cross-cultural understanding of these two regions through research, development of educational materials, publications, and the production of films.

Projects in the 1980s and 1990s included work in environment and natural resources through an African fellowship program (Ford Foundation), and resulted in a new film for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) entitled “Forgotten Farmers: Women and Food Security” (28 minutes). For the UN Habitat and USAID projects, films and videotapes were made on issues of shelter, housing, and environmental issues. A parallel project for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) included a major survey for its information program INFOTERRA in ten nations.

Between 1988 and 2000, the ACI managed an HIV/AIDS prevention and education program that worked in 28 countries under grants from the World Bank, UNDP, WHO, UNAIDS, Ford Foundation, and the US Department of Defense.

In recent years, the ACI has supported summer interns and professional staff to develop this website, and the larger Norman Miller Collection, a set of physical resources at the Smithsonian Institution and Michigan State University.

Publications

“Encounters with Witchcraft: Field Notes from Africa” by Norman Miller, SUNY Press and African Caribbean Institute, 2012.

“Wild Life, Wild Death: Policy Issues of Land Use and Wildlife in Eastern Africa” by Rodger Yeager and Norman Miller, SUNY Press and African Caribbean Institute, 1986.

“Environmental Information: The International Dimension” by Norman Miller and Inger McEwen, African Caribbean Institute, 1985. (Funded by the UNEP Programme)

“The Forgotten Farmers: Women and Food Security” (28 minutes). Producer Norman N. Miller. Rome: FAO of the United Nations, 1985.

“Women in a Changing World” (48 minutes). Producer Norman N. Miller. American Universities Field Staff Films and USAID, 1975.

Trustees

The founding trustees and original advisory board of the African-Caribbean Institute included a number of distinguished Africanists, among them: James Shiroya Okete, Simeon Mesaki, Fred Burke, Goran Hyden, J. Gus Liebenow, and Rodger Yeager.