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The inspiration for this paper was given birth by a suggestion from the referees of a paper titled "Generating Metadata to Study and Teach about African Issues" in Information Technology and People (2014) Faleh Alshameri and I wrote. We had mentioned and briefly discussed the Ubuntugogy paradigm in that paper, which prompted the referees to suggest that we write another paper dealing with how metadata applications can be utilized to advance the paradigm. This paper is the outgrowth of their suggestion, without Alshameri who did not show much interest in doing so. The paper is divided into three major sections and a conclusion. The first section introduces the subject being examined. The second section entails a summary of the presuppositions and requirements for Ubuntugogy as illustrated in my works on the subject for those readers who may not be familiar with the paradigm. The third section proposes metadata applications to advance the paradigm. The paper is important because as Alshameri and I have demonstrated, the capabilities of generating and collecting data have been increasing rapidly. The computerization of many business and government transactions with the attendant advances in data collection tools has provided huge amounts of data. Millions of databases have been employed in business management, government administration, scientific and engineering management, and many other applications. This explosive growth in data and databases has generated an urgent need for new techniques and tools that can intelligently and automatically transform the processed data into useful information and knowledge. An Ubuntugogy metadata mining approach can therefore prove to be quite useful in advancing African-centered Internet literacy.
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1 researcher-in-residence of Abrahamic Connections and Islamic Peace Studies at the Center for Global Peace in the School of International Service at American University and the director of The African Institution, all in Washington DC; a visiting graduate professor of Regional Integration at the University of Cabo Verde in Praia, Cabo Verde; an external reader of Research Methodology and Municipal Government at the Plekhanov Russian University in Moscow; an inaugural peace professor for the International Summer School in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Peshawar in Pakistan; a senior doctoral dissertations mentor of the CODESRIA College of Mentors in Dakar, Senegal; and the international director and adviser of the Centro Cultural Guanin in Santo Domingo Este, Dominican Republic. He holds five PhDs in Political Science, Development Economics, Linguistics, Computer Science, and Mathematics. He is the author of more than 90 books and more than 600 scholarly articles. The winner of more than 50 prestigious scholarly and community service awards, among Bangura's most recent awards are the Cecil B. Curry Book Award for his African Mathematics: From Bones to Computers, which has also been selected by the African American Success Foundation's Book Committee as one of the 21 most significant books ever written by African Americans in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), and listed by the California News Reel and Amazon.com as one of the 47 books that comprise the great African contributions to global civilizations; the Diopian Institute for Scholarly Advancement's Miriam Ma'at Ka Re Award for his article titled "Domesticating Mathematics in the African Mother Tongue" published in the Journal of Pan African Studies; the Special United States Congressional Award for "outstanding and invaluable service to the international community;" the International Center for Ethno-Religious Mediation's Award for his scholarly work on ethnic and religious conflict resolution and peacebuilding, and promotion of peace and conflict resolution in conflict areas; the Moscow Government Department of Multicultural Policy and Integrational Cooperation Award for the scientific and practical nature of his work on peaceful interethnic and interreligious relations; and The Ronald E. McNair Shirt for the stellar research methodologist who has mentored the largest number of research scholars across the academic disciplines published in professionally refereed journals and books and won the most best paper awards two years in a row-2015 and 2016. He is fluent in about a dozen African and six European languages, and studying to increase his proficiency in Arabic, Hebrew, and Hieroglyphics. Bangura was among the group of first four scholars to address the United Nations General Assembly. He 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. URL: http://theafricaninstitut.wixsite.com/abdulkarimbangura