Africa Initiative

What is the Africa Initiative?

The Africa Initiative (AI) brings Africa to Duke’s campus in Durham.

The initiative is a faculty-led effort to connect scholars across Duke who have an interest in the countries and cultures of the African continent. AI encourages discussion about African politics, economics, society and culture and fosters interdisciplinary academic and research collaborations related to Africa on campus.

Duke faculty and students are also actively engaged in service learning opportunities, courses and research projects on the African continent.

The Africa Initiative is sponsored by the von der Heyden Fellows Fund, established by Karl (’62) and Mary Ellen von der Heyden.


Africa Initiative Events

Stories of Resistance- Human Rights in Equatorial Guinea
A Conversation with Tutu Alicante 

Monday, April 08, 2024
5 pm – 6:30 pm
Rubenstein 153 Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room

Refreshment will be provided.

In this talk, Tutu Alicante will discuss his tireless activism on behalf of human rights, press freedom, and rule of law under the present day dictatorship of Teodoro Obiang, nephew of the previous dictator, Francisco Macías, in Equatorial Guinea. 

Tutu Alicante Bio:
Born and raised in Equatorial Guinea, Tutu Alicante is the founder and executive director of EG Justice,the world’s first nonprofit organization that focuses on human rights, anti-corruption, and rule of law in Equatorial Guinea, home to one of the world’s longest-lasting dictatorships. In retaliation for his activism, the country’s president declared him a “traitor and enemy of the state.” A trained human-rights lawyer, Tutu is an expert on authoritarianism, resource revenue transparency, and global kleptocracy. The talk will be in English and is open to all.

Co-sponsored by: Africa Initiative (AI);  Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute (DHRC@FHI)

Contact

Africa Initiative
John Hope Franklin Center
2204 Erwin Road
Durham, NC 27708

Rohini Thakkar
rohini.thakkar@duke.edu
(919) 681-3262


Towards a Critique of Democracy in West Africa
A Half-day Symposium at Duke University

Wednesday, April 17, 2024
9:30 am-3:00 pm
Smith Warehouse, Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall, Bay 4, C105

“Lunch will be provided.”
The event is open to all, but registration is required.

Registration Link

This symposium explores quotidian forms of democratic governance in West Africa beyond the official.  Examining embedded (substantive) practices—those rhizomatic modes of participatory governance that inhabit contemporary cultures of assembly, as well as the pan-Africanisms and militarisms of the early postcolonial period that continue to haunt West African political imaginaries today—the papers locate themselves within critique and suggest alternatives to democratic proceduralism.  They are acutely attentive to the times we inhabit: after the end of FrancAfrique, at a moment when new hegemons are plundering the continent, at a time of democracy’s global demise.  They also remain keyed into new modes of digital and diasporic belonging.

Keynote Speaker: Achille Mbembe (WITS)

Speakers: Mamadou Diouf (Columbia), Felwine Sarr (Duke), Alioune Sow (Florida) Gary Wilder (CUNY)

Discussants: Michael Hardt (Duke), Laurent Dubois (UVA)

This event is organized by the Africa Initiative at Duke University and cosponsored by the Franklin Humanities Institute

Speakers’ Bios

Mamadou Diouf is Leitner Family Professor of African Studies (Middle Eastern, Southern Asian and African Studies) and History (History Department) at Columbia University. He previously served at the University of Michigan, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa and Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Senegal. His publications include, L’Afrique dans le temps du monde (2023); Senghor et les arts. La reinvention de l’universel (with S. Frioux-Salgas et S. Lignier, catalogue of an exhibit at the Musée du Quai Branly, 2023) ; Déborder la Négritude. Arts, politique et société à Dakar (with M. Murphy, 2020); Les arts de la citoyenneté au Sénégal. (with F. Fredericks, 2013); Tolerance, Democracy, and the Sufis in Senegal, 2013

Laurent Dubois is the Democracy Initiative Professor in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia, and Co-Director of the Democracy Initiative. He has written about the Age of Revolution in the Caribbean, with Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (2004) and A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (2004), which won four book prizes including the Frederick Douglass Prize. His 2012 Haiti: The Aftershocks of History was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His work on the cultural history of music, The Banjo: America’s African Instrument (2016), was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Humanities Fellowship, and a Mellon New Directions Fellowship. He is currently beginning work on a history of the French Atlantic.

Michael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University.  He is co-author of several books with Antonio Negri, including Empire.  Michael Hardt’s writings explore the new forms of domination in the contemporary world as well as the social movements and other forces of liberation that resist them. In the Empire trilogy — Empire (2000), Multitude (2004), and Commonwealth(2009) — he and Antonio Negri investigate the political, legal, economic, and social aspects of globalization. They also study the political and economic alternatives that could lead to a more democratic world. Their pamphlet Declaration (2012) attempts to articulate the significance of the encampments and occupations that began in 2011, from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park, and to recognize the primary challenges faced by emerging democratic social movements today. His most recent book is The Subversive Seventies.  Together with Sandro Mezzadra he hosts The Social Movements Lab.

Achille Mbembe is a prominent scholar, born in Cameroon, with a rich academic background spanning across various prestigious institutions globally. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the Sorbonne and has taught at esteemed universities like Columbia, Penn, and Harvard. Mbembe has received several honors, including honorary doctorates and prestigious awards like the Geswichter Scholl-Preis and the Gerda Henkel Award. He co-founded Les Ateliers de la pensée de Dakar and is influential in French critical theory. Known for his works like “On the Postcolony” and “Necropolitics,” he extensively discusses contemporary politics and philosophy. His writings, originally in French, have been translated into thirteen languages, reflecting his global impact. Mbembe holds an A1 rating from the South African National Research Foundation and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Felwine Sarr is a humanist, philosopher, economist, and musician and the Anne-Marie Bryan Chair in French and Francophone Studies at Duke University. He is the author of Afrotopia (University of Minnessota Press, 2019, tr. by Drew S. Burk). Well-known for his groundbreaking report “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics,” Sarr taught at the University of Gaston-Berger in Saint Louis, Senegal, where he was previously dean of its Economics and Management department. His research focuses on economic policies, the development economy, econometrics, epistemology, and the history of religious ideas. In addition to Afrotopia, he has published the meditative essay Dahij (Gallimard, 2009), the collection of short stories 105, rue Carnot, the philosophical text Méditations africaines (Mémoire d’encrier, 2011), as well as the essay “Habiter le monde” and the collection “Ishindenshin,” both published by Mémoire d’Encrier. Further, he cofounded the Laboratory for the Analysis of Societies and Powers/Africa-Diasporas (LASPAD) in Saint Louis, as well as the publishing company Jimsaan in Dakar. In 2016, he co-created with Achille Mbembe the annual Dakar and Saint Louis workshops Ateliers de la pensée, which sought to stimulate a “non-colonial” school of thought. Sarr also co-founded with Achille Mbembe the Ateliers de la pensée’s doctoral school.

Alioune Sow’s research interests include democratic transition and cultural forms in francophone West Africa, focusing especially on memoirs, theater and films in Mali, as well as the history of ideas in the Sahel, migration and theater practices in France. He is currently completing a book project entitled Transitional memoirs: narration and memory in contemporary Mali, which examines the interplay between letters, politics and the cultures of memory in post military Mali and in the Sahel. His articles and chapters on memoirs and confessions in democratic Mali, refugee theater in Bamako, Malian cinema and military, Malian television serials and democratic experience, have been published in the Journal of Modern African Studies, Critical Interventions, African Studies Review, Social Dynamics, Biography among othersHe has also edited special issues of Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines and Etudes Littéraires Africaines and contributed as an editor and author to the Oxford handbook of the African SahelVestiges et Vertiges appeared with Artois Presses Université in 2011.

Gary Wilder is a Professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, where he also directs the Committee on Globalization and Social Change. His research explores the intersections of historical anthropology, intellectual history, and critical theory, focusing on the French empire, Francophone West Africa, and the Caribbean. He authored “Freedom Time” and “The French Imperial Nation-State,” with forthcoming work titled “Concrete Utopianism.” His extensive publications span prestigious journals and edited volumes, reflecting his interdisciplinary approach. Wilder’s research has been supported by grants from prominent institutions, including the MacArthur Foundation and the Mellon Foundation, enriching his contributions to understanding Black Atlantic social thought and the politics of temporality.