Patterns of handmade embroidery are an important part of the culture of a number of African people, particularly in Nigeria. The need to digitally document these patterns emerges in the context of its low patronage despite its quality and richness. The development of a database will assist in resuscitating the dying art of Handmade Embroidery Patterns (HEP). The patterns of handmade embroidery are also irregular and inconsistent due to the manual method, and creativity involved in its production. Developing an automatic recognition of HEP will therefore create a system where machine embroidery can be made, or automated to mimic the creativity and peculiar intricacies of traditional handmade embroidery patterns. This study developed handmade embroidery pattern database (HEPD) that can be used for many processes in the field of pattern recognition and computer vision applications. Samples of handmade embroidery patterns were collected from three different cities in South-Western, Nigeria. Pre-processing operations such as image enhancement, image noise reduction, and morphology were performed on the collected samples using image-processing toolbox in MATLAB. This work developed a validated new dataset of handmade embroidery patterns containing two categories of embroidery patterns with a total number of 315 images in the database. It evaluated the database for recognition process using cellular automata as feature extraction technique and support vector machine as its classifier. The performance metrics employed are sensitivity, specificity and accuracy. For the two classes of images considered, 72% sensitivity, specificity of 93% and accuracy of 80% were obtained for grayscale image. For the binary image, an accuracy of 72% with sensitivity of 82% and 65% specificity were obtained. The result obtained showed that the grayscale image exhibits an efficient accuracy than binary image.

Aesthetics was never a subject or a separate philosophy in the traditional philosophies of black Africa. This is however not a justification to conclude that it is nonexistent. Indeed, aesthetics is a day to day affair among Africans. There are criteria for aesthetic judgment among African societies which vary from one society to the other. The Yorùbá of Southwestern Nigeria are not different. This study sets out to examine how the Yorùbá make their aesthetic judgments and demonstrate their aesthetic philosophy in decorating their orí, which means head among the Yorùbá. The head receives special aesthetic attention because of its spiritual and biological importance. It is an expression of the practicalities of Yorùbá aesthetic values. Literature and field work has been of paramount aid to this study. The study uses photographs, works of art and visual illustrations to show the various ways the head is adorned and cared for among the Yoruba. It relied on Yoruba art and language as a tool of investigating the concept of ori and aesthetics. Yorùbá aesthetic values are practically demonstrable and deeply located in the Yorùbá societal, moral and ethical idealisms. It concludes that the spiritual importance of orí or its aesthetics has a connection which has been demonstratively established by the Yorùbá as epressed in the images and illustrations used in this paper.

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Three of the new Rhodes University board members are currently based elsewhere in Africa and the global south: Folárànmí is at Obáfémi Awólówò University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, Kakande is at Makerere University in Uganda, and Koide is at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB) in Cachoeira city in Bahia, Brazil. 3 The transnational approach of this board grows partly out of necessity, as our university structures differ to those in the United States, where the other three editorial boards are based. However, it also offers us

He has published scholarly articles on Yorùbá murals and architecture in many journals and chapters in ve books. He has also exhibited his paintings both in Nigeria and overseas. He is the recipient of the rst Ho man Dozent for Intercultural Competence at the University of