Late last month, the CIHA team traveled to Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, for the 5th biannual meeting for the African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) hosted by the Centre Arrupe pour la Recherche et la Formation (CARF), led by ASAA President and CIHA co-editor Toussaint Kafarhire Murhula. This year’s conference marked the 10th anniversary of the association with conversations, debates, and panels centering on the theme of Repatriating Africa: Old challenges & critical insights.
For a more thorough discussion of the entire ASAA conference, see the report by Modeste Agramako at the end of the post.
In collaboration with ASAA, we hosted a preconference workshop titled Reversing the Lens on Aid in Africa. We asked participants to reflect on the following question: What happens to aid ontologies, epistemologies, and practices if, as Ngūgī wa Thiong’o invites us to do, we focus on what Africa has given—willingly or reluctantly—to the world (and the West) instead of the other way around?
Our work at CIHA represents an early, sustained response to contemporary calls to “decolonize aid” and “decolonize humanitarianism.” This workshop represented an invitation to ASAA participants to converse with CIHA to move forward with the work of reversing the lens on aid in Africa in the classroom and work as researchers and faculty. The workshop also discussed the forthcoming edited volume, “Who Gives to Whom? Reframing Africa in the Humanitarian Imaginary,” edited by co-editors Cilas Kemedjio and Cecelia Lynch. We thank the researchers and faculty from Lubumbashi’s Teachers Training College, as well as other participants, for your participation and feedback!
ASAA report by Modeste Agramako, Luce Graduate Fellow from Hekima Institute of Peace Studies and International Relations (HIPSIR).
