Challenges

Since the beginning of the the Statistics and Probability African Society, we face majors challenges. To hightlight them, we beging by describing the normal functioning of a Scholar Society.

Almost everywhere in the world and in some places in Africa, South Africa for example, there are a great number of national mathematical societies, for exemple American Mathematical Society, Socite Française de Statistiques (French Society of Statistics), Australian Mathematical Society, etc.. There also are regional and/or continental societies as : European Mathematical Society, Asian Mathematical Society, etc. As well, ew have succesful international societies and institutes The International Institute of Statistics, The Institute of Mathematical Statistique, The Bernoulli Society.

All these societies and institute are working rather well through the following activities at least

• Organizing of yearly general assembly
• Organizing annual meeting and workshop
• dissimating a new bullein
• honoring scholar through prizes
• publishing reputed journals
• playing a major role in the Sciences development via Reaserch activities
• promoting scholars in their universities

To work well, they may count, at least, on

• membership fees of members
• fundings from governements and eventually from funding organization
• dynamic participation of scholars in running them
• financial sharing in getting part in the physical scientific meetings

Ab contrarion, such success ralrely occur in Africa for the lach of the supports described above:

• Scholar are not well paid and then cannot pay regular membership fees, except in some countries
• A few goverments have the capacities of funding societies in a fair process
• Some Scholars are obliged to take extra-works to improve their imcomes
• Non-existence of funding in our universities in general

Resonse to the challenges in terms of governance

It is a fact that only a few of national societies in Africa have the means to run reglarly and continuously, as well all relations programs like annual meetings and journals and books publication. On the contiental level, the African Mathematical Union is working as gathering the national societies. It weaknesses are those these societies. Fortunately, the AMU is wirking and trying to push up all mathematics activities.

As a result of our remark below, it could not be expected that the SPASSPAS gets fundings from membership fees from African colleagues or from African goverments or institutes. The lack of financial involvement excluded de facto a governance based on elected council for ruling it. The only way left was the volunteering of engaged scholors to launch it and run it.

Actually, SPASSPAS, created in 1996 by Professor Gane Samb Lo, has been functioning until now as a non-profit organization. For 27 years, Prof Lo has been managing the SPASSPAS and all of its projects with the means provided by the Gaston Berger University (Saint-Louis, Senegal). He was accompmied by many colleagues from all Africa, each of them being active for some years. See our historySPAS for an acknowledgment of the support of these colleagues. Let us summarize the key elements of the governance of the SPASSPAS so far

1. SPASSPAS is ruled by Professor Gane Samb Lo [GSLO] as coordinator and chief-editors of all publications
2. Amost all the expenses [website hosting, travels] have been provided by GSLO
3. The Website designs, web development, databases are from him and member of his research team
4. The management of journals are under the care of GSLO
5. A lot of colleagues from Africa and the world have served as reviewers of our journals
6. UGB indirectly helped the society a lot through the office of GSLO [office, office supplies, ink, paper, etc]
7. SPASSPAS has collaborated with a great numbers of African Scholars from many countries on a variety of programs
8. SPASSPAS has solid ties with international societies
9. SPASSPAS has been accepted as a credible represent of Africa

1. SPASSPAS is a non-profit organization based in Gaston Berger of Saint-Louis and Alberta [Canada]
2. It is governed by
   • A general coordinator
   • A cordination team
3. All scholars from the world, specially from Africa, are members de facto whenever tyey accept to be in our databases
4. All scientific progams are peer-reviewed. Qualified Scholars are invited to manage them under the cooridnation team
5. Significal funders form the body of funding members. This body is be the top management structure of the society