Prof. Anna Mdee convened a workshop exploring: 'Afrocentricity- Putting Africa at the Centre of Analysis'
Afrocentricity- Putting Africa at the Centre of Analysis
Workshop Report
As a consequence of the nature of research and development funding, collaborative work with partners and stakeholders in Africa are still often framed in discourses of simplification and paternalism. In this workshop, we brought together academics from the Universities of Leeds and Bradford to discuss how research and impact activities might become more African-centred and in tune with lived (rather than imagined) realities across the continent.
This links directly to the work of Prof Tendai Mangena (Leeds) and Gibson Ncube and their proposed panel at the ASA-UK conference in August 2024 https://asauk.net/stream-1-alternative-ways-of-knowing-in-africa/
Partners: Centre for Global Development (CGD), Leeds University Centre for African Studies (LUCAS), Bradford School of Law, 100 Black Women Professors Programme
Date: 11th October 11-3 Venue: Liberty Building
Programme
Welcome and Introductions (Chair – Anna Mdee)
Anna introduced the motivation for the event, which builds on interactions begun at a 3-day conference at the University of Bradford on Just transitions and the post-oil future in July 2023 led by Bradford School of Law. At that conference, many speakers made calls for better contextual based understandings that do not rely on external agendas and ways of seeing ‘African problems’. Therefore, this event sought to continue and build on this conversation and to find ways to check some of the white saviour narratives on Africa that can emanate from UK universities and to find ways to collaborate further.
Session 1 – Changing the narrative
Professor Engobo Emeseh, Head of Department, Bradford School of Law
Ecogenocide and the case for reparations in the Niger Delta: A reflection on the Bayelsa Commission Report.
Engobo began by highlighting her own journey in thinking about international law and responsibilities for environmental damage by international companies. She gave a powerful overview of the decades of pollution caused by international oil companies in the Niger Delta, and talked through her role in the ground breaking Bayelsa Commission Report which exposes and evidences the multiple ways in which oil extraction has harmed the natural environment and human populations. The international companies responsible for this continue to avoid accountability. The Bayelsa Commission represents a locally rooted attempt to draw attention to this issue with international expertise and exposure.
Dr. Constance Awinpoka Akurugu, Visiting Fellow, (POLIS), Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Gender Studies, SDD University of Business and Integrated Development Studies, Ghana
'Reinvigorating Social Support Systems in Rural Northwestern Ghana: Towards Affective Empathy in a Neoliberal Age'
Constance asked us to reflect on the practice of collective responsibility and reciprocity expressed in various ways in different African societies. The most widely referenced concept of Ubuntu can be seen in different local expressions across the continent. She drew on her deep, longitudinal ethnographic work in Northern Ghana to illuminate how affective empathy is changing in societies as social structures, and dynamics change. In particular, she asked us to consider how neoliberal economics and individualism may break down affective empathy, and what might be the paths to rebuilding it.
Dr Kendi Guantai, Dean for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, University of Leeds, & Dr David Robinson-Morris, founding Director of the Center for Equity, Justice and the Human Spirit at Xavier University.
Decolonising dominant narratives- beyond ‘capacity building and co-production’
Kendi and David gave a very rousing double act on the nature of ‘whiteness’. Whiteness as the embedded and violent ideological expression of colonialism that continues as intergenerational trauma. They challenged us to think critically about the colonial nature of our own educational experiences, and how the struggle for decolonisation begins with ourselves. This means that institutions have to go far beyond simple agendas couched in ‘capacity building’ and ‘co-production’ in the way that they engage with and talk about Africa. Without this decolonisation remains a false and incomplete project.
Session 2- Putting Africa at the centre in research
Prof Anna Mdee- Professor in the Politics of Global Development ‘Empowering African communities’: Revisiting the simplified imaginaries of the White (Wo)Man’s Burden.
Anna started with the foundational idea that African development remains the ‘white man’s burden’. She talked about the ‘white saviour’ as a profound part of development industry ideological make up and how the University of Leeds yields to this temptation. She talked about her own journey as a young white saviour who married into a Tanzanian family, and how with more than 20 years of longitudinal research and personal experience she came to question so many foundation beliefs, and to begin to see and talk about ‘how things really work’.
Dr Winnie Bedigen, Lecturer, School of Politics and International Studies- Exploring how ‘empowerment’ is being thought about in the Nilotic Luo post-conflict settings in East Uganda.
Winnie examined competing ideas of women’s ‘empowerment’ in East Uganda drawing on her own deep knowledge of Nilotic Luo cultural understandings and perceptions. She stimulated the audience to think about how conversations on ‘empowerment’ can be both genuine and meaningful when they are rooted in local practices and conceptions.
Dr Simon Manda- Director Centre for Global Development, University of Leeds
Earth Moving:’ Flood Disasters, Power Bias and Inventories of Possibilities in Malawi.
Simon talked about his recent work in Malawi on post-typhoon flooding. He reflected on the complexities of local dynamics relating to land and power as regard flooding risk reduction. He reflected on the particular nature of insider-outsider dynamics and the need for complex understandings of community and community response.
Discussion: how to put Africa at the centre in research and partnerships.
The speakers taken together stimulated the audience to think about how the presentation of Africa is excessively simplistic, which hides the complexities and dynamics of local nuance and international power behind the narratives and language of external actors. All of us are under pressure to comply with these narratives through the nature of funding and the dominant institutional understandings of our employers (perhaps Leeds more than Bradford in this case).
This event provided a rare opportunity to talk about how ‘things really are’ and not how external actors might wish/or believe them to be. Participants were agreed in calling for more of these discussions and for seeking ways to try to challenge problematic understandings.
Next steps
Plan future opportunities for collaborative engagement in this conversation with a view to joint activities and research proposals. These should transcend academic opportunities and also consider public understanding. We also discussed more active local diaspora engagement in Yorkshire and the reinvigoration of the Yorkshire African Studies Network (YASN)