Together with Divine Fuh of the University of Cape Town, PARC’s Eyob Balcha Gebremariam was in Cape Verde this September to facilitate an Africa Charter writing workshop at the 6th Biennial African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) conference.
Around 20 conference participants attended the workshop, with a presentation on the Africa Charter followed by an insightful round of discussion. Four early-career researchers had been selected to participate in the workshop and present their work in progress.
These fascinating presentations explored each researcher’s encounters with, mainly, the inner layers of the Africa Charter framework (epistemic justice, language, extraversion and the development frame) in their involvement in international research partnerships.
The presenters were:
Cecilia Avorkliyah: PhD Candidate, the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana.
Elie Ekoto Bokele : researcher, Centre Arrupe pour la Recherche et la Formation (CARF), Lubumbashi, DRC.
Francelino Dalton Wilson: lecturer at Pungue University, Manica Province, Mozambique and PhD candidate at University of Porto.
Lilian Njeri Mbuthi: a Kenya-based early-career researcher.
The workshop created a lively opportunity for the presenters and workshop participants to discuss how the power imbalances articulated in the Africa Charter framework are manifested in the daily encounters of early career researchers in the continent.
After the workshop, each presenter had a one-on-one meeting with Divine and Eyob to discuss their project, receive detailed comments on their draft papers, and set a new timeline for the next version of the paper.
The expected output of the workshop is to produce a collective publication co-edited by the Africa Charter core team.
This pre-conference workshop was sponsored by the Right to Discipline fund from the Antipode Foundation.
Read more about the Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaborations
(Left to right: Eyob Balcha Gebremariam, Lilian Njeri Mbuthi, Cecilia Avorkliyah, Elie Ekoto Bokele, Francilino Dalton Wilso and Divine Fuh)