Pondering the future of Africa

Africa is in the spotlight of this year’s Killam Trust lecture series beginning Tuesday.

This popular series is an annual tradition at Dal, focusing on recent and central global issues. For example, last year’s theme was "Resilient Communities: Envisioning and Acting for Sustainable Futures" and focused on sustainability issues. This year’s lectures will host visiting academics from prominent North American universities, speaking on the theme of "The Future of Africa, Considered."  

Free and open to the public, the lectures provide an opportunity for the university community as well as Halifax community members to unite around issues facing our global community. 

James Ferguson, an anthropologist from Standford University in California, will deliver the first lecture, "Declarations of Dependence: Labour, Personhood and Welfare in South Africa." It takes place Tuesday, October 21, 8 p.m. at the Scotiabank Auditorium, Marion McCain Building. Dr. Ferguson will concentrate on the South African experience with labour transformations to examine societal changes taking place globally.

In November, Mamadou Diouf will speak on the theme of "Reconfiguring Public Space and Re-imagining Communities in Contemporary Africa." Dr. Diouf, the head of Columbia's Institute for African Studies at the School of International and Public Affairs, will be looking at how different groups are shaping urban spaces in West Africa through changing identities and politics. The lecture is set for Thursday, Nov. 6, 8 p.m. in Theatre A of the Sir Charles Tupper Medical Building.

The third and final lecture, "What Happened to the African Renaissance? The Challenges of Development in the 21st Century" will take place on Thursday, Nov. 20, 8 p.m. in Theatre A of the Sir Charles Tupper Medical Building. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, who currently leads the department for African American studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, earned his PhD at Dalhousie through the Department of History. He will return to his alma mater to present on “the second independence” in Africa, the new wave of democratization in Africa. This timely lecture will reflect on the changes that have occurred in Africa in the post-apartheid era.

Dalhousie history professor Philip Zachernuk, who helped plan the lecture series, says the future Africa is a theme which spans numerous faculties of Dalhousie, including International Development, History, Architecture, French, and Medicine, to name a few. 

LINK: Killam Trusts at Dalhousie