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Africa

140 years since the colonial division of Africa

The picture shows Chinwe Ogbonna, Alexander Makulilo and Fra

Chinwe Ogbonna, Alexander Makulilo und Franzisca Zanker at the event

From November 15, 1884 to February 26, 1885, the Berlin Conference, which is also known today as the Berlin “Congo Conference” or Berlin “Africa Conference”, took place in Berlin at the invitation of the then Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The final document of the conference formed the basis for the subsequent division of Africa into colonies. Despite the far-reaching consequences of this conference, knowledge of its contents and its significance for African-European relations is rudimentary, not only among the German public but also in German politics.

Last week, January 29/30, the German Africa Foundation e.V. together with the University of Dar es Salaam and Farafina Afrika-Haus e.V. organized a symposium in commemoration of the events, looking at the current relationship between the European and the African continent. Among the organizers was the ABI’s visiting professor, Prof. Alexander Makulilo (University of Dar es Salaam).

Traveling to Berlin from Freiburg, our colleague Franzisca Zanker and our ALMA-Fellow Chinwe Ogbonna joined the event. Franzisca Zanker spoke on the colonial legacies of today's visa and migration regime. Amongst other issues, she shared details on how, according to a recent study, African applicants are disproportionately affected through non-refundable Schengen visas, with exceptionally high visa rejection rates:

In 2023, the EU earned €130 million from rejected visa applications, about 42% of that was from applicants living in Africa. Is the constant rejection of visa's for our African colleagues, alongside multiple other restrictions just a question of "following regulations" or a reflection of the unequal racialised hierarchies that persist until today? 

Her impression from the conference: “The cold shadow of that awful event and what followed and preceded it was very present - the original deed of those who carved up the African continent and claimed it as "theirs" was on display. It was a time to reflect, reckon with where we are today 140 years later and advocate, discuss and share we want to be going forward.”

ALMA Reviews Blog: Changing the Ontology of African Identity

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Euro-centrism Versus Afro-centrism: Asouzu’s Response to the Fallacy of Dogma in African Identity 

By: Saheed Anuoluwapo Agunbiade
Published in: LAJOP vol. 5, no. 1, April, 2024

The current state of Africanness is tenuous. Hundreds of years of colonisation and decades of neo-colonialism have fundamentally altered what it means to be an African. Having lost lives, languages and cultures, many on the continent and in the diaspora question the authenticity and strength of our current culture; is there an African culture after colonialism, or are we simply reproductions of our colonial overlords on the African continent? Are Africans in the midst of an identity crisis? Is it bad if we are? In Saheed Anuoluwapo Agunbiade’s Euro-centrism Versus Afro-centrism: Asouzu’s Response to the Fallacy of Dogma in African Identity, these questions are approached via a thorough review of Afro- and Eurocentric thought paradigms as well as through the Nigerian philosopher Innocent Asouzu’s Ibuanyidanda ontology. 

Agunbiade, like many other scholars, pegs African culture as being perennially unstable due to the whirlwind of cultures and connotations invoked when the term African is applied. Does being African mean being Black or Arab? Is African culture something that existed only prior to colonisation, or is our contemporary mix of Arab, European and traditionalist value systems akin to an African culture? For the sake of simplicity, Agunbiade (p. 37) defines an African as: “an open-minded person who is embodied with the intellectual, social and cultural traditions of the Africa [sic] and also feels the need[ ] to acknowledge the interdependency of the individuals in the world in the face of [an] ever-changing global environment”. This definition notwithstanding, the question of “what African culture is” remains wholly unanswered. Agunbiade states that traditionally, this issue has been handled vis-à-vis a reversion to ethnocentrism in African and European academic spaces. 

From a Eurocentric approach, Agunbiade claims that European scholars seek to diminish foreign ontologies while uplifting their own, as a way to promote their ethnic ontology as hegemonic and correct (p. 48). Conversely, proponents of Afrocentrism seek to create and promote a uniquely African ontological position that supplants foreign ontologies to secure its own dominance. Contextualising this within his argumentation, Agunbiade argues that ethnocentrism, whether Afro- or Eurocentrism, is the incorrect approach, as ethnocentrism tends to breed conflict. 

To mitigate such conflict, Agunbiade proposes Innocent Asouzu’s Ibuanyidanda ontology, to complement the negative effects of Afro- and Eurocentrism. Ibuanyidanda, roughly translated from Igbo to mean “no load is insurmountable for the ant”, is an ontology that argues that humanity accesses its full potential when we view individuals as complementary to each other's existence and view reality through the gaps in our knowledge. The Ibuanyidanda ontology enacts this interdependent worldview by dismantling the “us” versus “them” dichotomy presented by an ethnocentric worldview, while simultaneously providing a less ego-driven synthesis of the world: “we are able to meet the other in its otherness and accept it as an extension of our ego without bias because of this universal or transcendent thinking” (p. 55). Although the Ibuanyidanda ontology promotes a harmonious acceptance of diversity, Agunbiade’s synthesis of its perspective reveals a critical gap in his argumentation.

While Agunbiade’s synthesis of ethnocentrism and the Ibuanyidanda ontology makes for an easy read and provides a refreshing look at the rather dicey topic of identity, his ultimate text lacks a proper thesis or conclusion. Although the discussion within the text is fruitful (e.g., in its comparison of thoughts and ontologies) in his conclusion Agunbiade relates his commentary only to the topic of ethnocentric conflict, without clearly relating his discussion back to the topic of African identity. One can assume that Agunbiade proposes Ibuanyidanda as a means to stabilise and alleviate conflict within the identity through the utilisation of Ibuanyidanda’s interdependent qualities; however, such an idea would need to be properly explained to meaningfully contribute to the text’s discussion. 

The answers to the questions: “Who is African?” and “What is African Culture?” remain somewhat unsatisfying. While Agunbiade does provide a self-constructed definition of an African, the “interdependency” highlighted in his definition appears to exist for the sole purpose of conflating Africanness into the Ibuanyidanda ontology. This conflation arises from the insufficient amount of reference material supporting the claim that Africans ubiquitously recognise the interdependence of individuals. Many attributes in Agunbiade’s definition appear logical and are grounded in claims made by other academics. However, the interdependency aspect of the definition seems incongruous and lacks adequate citations, raising questions about its purpose and functional validity. Due to the uncertainty of Agunbiade’s proposed definition, it remains to be seen if the Ibuanyidanda ontology would be the correct ontology to tackle identity-related instability. While it is evident that the Ibuanyidanda ontology could help mitigate the effects of ethnocentric conflict, it is not abundantly clear if this ontology could translate to a stabilisation of the African identity crisis.  

Even with these criticisms in mind, Agunbiade’s article is a refreshingly non-ethnocentric look at African identity. As it is such a rarity for African identity to be handled outside of the scope of ethnocentrism (although from a philosophical perspective), Agunbiade’s work is a noteworthy contribution to the rich discourse within African identity studies.

Reviewed by: Lena Diakite

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Franzisca Zanker in The Conversation on the connection between migration and development in Africa

Amanda Bisong and Franzisca Zanker

In this article, Franzisca Zanker and Amanda Bisong discuss the connection between migration and development in the context of norms and expectations around migration in Africa. They conclude that migration is oftentimes seen as essential for development. Remittances that migrants send home offer financial support for many households and pay for houses, school fees, or hospital visits. However, they show that there is a mismatch between social and policy attitudes to migration. Due to this, there are different barriers to migration that negatively affect the conditions under which mobility happens, such as strict visa rules. This way, the potential that migration offers for development is not fully utilized.

The article can be read in full length on the website of The Conversation.

New ERC Grant for Franzisca Zanker: “The Political Lives of Migrants: Perspectives from Africa”

A writing hand with a blue pen and an open note book.

Innovative research methods such as migrant agency diaries will also be analysed as part of the new research project. 

| © ABI

ERC Grant: “The Political Lives of Migrants: Perspectives from Africa”

 

The European Research Council (ERC) will fund a new research project on migration in Africa, led by Dr Franzisca Zanker. The Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute will receive 1.5 Mio Euro for the project in the next five years

The project is among the 14.2% of the applications that was selected for the ERC-Starting Grant 2024. Besides its pertinent research question and the important inclusion of perspectives from the Global South, the evaluation panel found the innovative research methods especially convincing. These include participatory theatre workshops and the analysis of migrant agency diaries. 

The reception of refugees and other migrants, their long-term perspectives and their lives in a new home are among the most pressing political questions of our time. What do migrants think about this? How do they see their lives, their role and their political agency? A four-person research group based at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute, headed by Dr Franzisca Zanker, will work on these questions. 

 

The research context

The project seeks a new perspective beyond the dominant Eurocentric migration research by focusing on the political agency of refugees and other migrants in Africa. The research will consider various postcolonial spaces and conditions. The project aims to further a self-defined understanding of migrants' political agency in interaction with state and non-state institutions and actors. In the spirit of critical knowledge production, the ERC-funded project follows a collaborative research approach, for example by collaborating with Africa-based colleagues and translating the research results into local languages. 

The research project will shed light on the effects of different migrant trajectories, i.e. their legal status or whether in their country of origin, transit or destination, on their political agency. Empirical research will be conducted in Ghana, Kenya, Liberia and Malawi.

 

Dr Franzisca Zanker about her success:

‘I am delighted about the opportunity to bring new perspectives to such an important social issue with this project. What can migrants tell us about their own role, needs and desires in society? What can we learn by adopting an Afrocentric perspective? This prestigious and substantial grant will allow my team and I to push methodological boundaries, further our understanding of migrant agency and ultimately knowledge production.’

 

About Dr Franzisca Zanker

Dr Franzisca Zanker is a researcher on conflict and (forced) migration. After completing her doctorate at the University of Tübingen in 2015 and a position at the GIGA Research Institute in Hamburg, she has headed the Cluster on Patterns of (Forced) Migration at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute in Freiburg since 2017. She was Principal Investigator on several research projects on the political interests of African states in migration and refugee protection, funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research and the Mercator Foundation. She is co-coordinator of the research group ‘African Mobility, Migration and Displacement’. 

Dr Zanker has an extensive publication record and serves on the editorial board of Journal of Refugee Studies. She has carried out fieldwork in Kenya, Liberia, The Gambia, Uganda and South Africa. 

The Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute

The Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute (ABI) is one of the most important research institutes in Germany in the fields of comparative areas studies and transregional studies. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, the institute cooperates with the University of Freiburg. The ABI conducts research on issues of migration, conflict and governance in countries of the Global South. 

About the European Research Council (ERC)

The ERC was founded by the European Union in 2007 and is the most important European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of all nationalities and ages who carry out projects throughout Europe. More information at www.erc.europa.eu 

 

Dr Zanker and Ms Taxis are happy to answer any press enquiries.

Dr Franzisca Zanker 
franzisca.zanker [at] abi.uni-freiburg.de
Tel: +49 (0)761 888 78 31

Clara Taxis
Science Communication 
presse.abi [at] abi.uni-freiburg.de
Tel: +49 (0)761 888 78 14

 

Press Release ERC Grant 2024 Franzisca Zanker (832.04 KB)

World Refugee Day: Franzisca Zanker on the outsourcing of asylum procedures to African third countries

Externalizing Migration - Logo

20 June is World Refugee Day. The UNHCR writes:

"It is the day that reminds us that millions of people are forced to leave their homes. The United Nations Refugee Agency publishes the annual "Global Trends" report, which summarises the dramatic situation worldwide in sober figures. At the same time, the UNHCR recognises the strength, courage and resilience that refugees, internally displaced persons and stateless people demonstrate on a daily basis. There are currently 120 million people on the move - the largest number of displaced persons ever recorded."

Franzisca Zanker published her analysis "Outsourcing Asylum to African States? An endeavour destined to fail" on the recently launched platform www.externalizingmigration.info. The platform offers contributions from academics on the topic, in text and video form and as podcasts. 

Franzisca Zanker's contribution looks at the European strategy of outsourcing asylum procedures to third countries and uses previous attempts at cooperation to show that the political interests of African partner countries are not being sufficiently taken into account: 
 

"Rwanda is not the first country to be addressed by European states in the matter of accepting third-country asylum seekers. The current debate is rather the most recent endeavour in an ongoing externalization effort that tries to convince African countries by various carrot and stick methods to take back their own “rejected” nationals, and ideally, even third-country nationals. The difficulty of successful cooperation pinpoints the unlikelihood of outsourcing asylum ever becoming a viable option for potential African partner countries."

Read the full entry here.

AMMODI Virtual Roundtable now online: Making African(ist) Migration Research Visible

AMMODI Virtual Roundtable: Making African(ist) Research Visible

v.l.n.r.: Kudakwashe Vanyoro, Ruth Nyabuto, Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Sergio Carciotto, Jessica Adjeley Mensah, Kwesi Sewe, Åsa Lund Moberg, Ibrahima Amadou Dia, Heaven Crawly.

Global academia is in the midst of renewed debates and interventions against the persistent inequalities in African and Africanist higher education following calls for decolonising academia. Migration patterns and policies, as well as research on them, are often deeply informed by post-/colonial relations, and migration research has been slow in exposing and addressing its post-/coloniality.

The collaborative Research Group AMMODI therefore hosted a virtual roundtable in December 2023. The recordings of this event are now available online as a video!

The roundtable seeked to address the structural inequalities embedded in Africanist migration research through a set of dialogues between researchers, journal editors, and librarians who confront these issues in different ways. It aimed to diagnose the persistent inequalities in the field, and offer inspiration for ways to work towards more equity and inclusivity.The roundtable also briefly introduced the AMMODI database of over 200 Africa-based scholars working on migration, mobility and displacement and their work, which aims to be one step towards increasing the visibility of African migration research.

 

Free movement in west Africa: three countries leaving ECOWAS could face migration hurdles

Symbolbild Zeitungsartikel

For Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, a recent decision to withdraw from the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) has thrown up questions about how they will navigate regional mobility in future. Ecowas covers a variety of sectors, but migration is a major one. The bloc’s protocols since 1979 have long been seen as a shining example of free movement on the continent. They gave citizens the right to move between countries in the region without a visa, and a prospective right of residence and setting up businesses.

As multidisciplinary scholars, Franzisca Zanker, Amanda Bisong, and  Leonie Jegen have previously researched migration governance in west Africa, at the regional level, and in particular contexts like Niger. In an article for The Conversation, they argue that Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso have much to lose if their departure from Ecowas curtails mobility. But it is likely that informal mobility will continue anyway.

 

You can find the full article on the website of The Conversation

ALMA Reviews Blog: Stages of Colonialism in Africa

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Stages of Colonialism in Africa: From Occupation of Land to Occupation of Being

By: Hussein A. Bulhan

Published in December 2015 in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology.

Available at: https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v3i1.143 (link is external)

In this article, Hussein A. Bulhan discusses a different side of the colonial enterprise, viewing colonialism as the occupation not only of land but also of each colonised person, a condition that becomes a mechanism through which one perceives one’s existence in the world. The article is drawn from the author’s own scholarship (personal experience and reflection) and the limited academic resources available in the “peripheries” of the world where he lives and works – in Somali, Darfur and Sudan. Bulhan is nonetheless able to transcend such limitations and navigate the effects of colonialism beyond what is easily quantifiable. The author’s major themes are clearly laid out in the first five pages of his article, where he discusses the stages of colonialism and the ongoing intersection between colonialism and psychology in the form of metacolonialism, or coloniality. For a new reader of such a sensitive exploration, the article and the author’s methodological approach might appear flimsy or unorthodox, given Bulhan’s curiosity and frankness. However, with a nod to the works of the scholars who pioneered such work – particularly Frantz Fanon, the French psychiatrist who wrote extensively on the role of psychiatry and psychology in colonialism – it would be wiser to pay attention and read between the lines, feeling the author’s frustration at the misuse of these disciplines, which were meant to benefit individuals, not oppress them.  As Fanon focused on psychiatry, the author here focuses on psychology whilst drawing a linkage between psychiatry and psychology. 

In examining the history of psychology, Bulhan explores the relationship between psychology and colonialism and reveals how psychology contributed to justifying and bolstering oppression and colonialism in Africa. For him, the demise of classical colonialism, which began in 1957 with Ghana gaining independence and other African countries following suit in the 1960s and 1970s, was a critical turning point, when the ambition for freedom reached its peak. In those times, the African public found new inspiration in their own words and in those of their children, who were calling for the expulsion of the colonisers. However, whilst the colonisers did in fact leave the continent, they left behind countries unfit to govern themselves and with economies fully dependent on the countries of Europe. Bulhan regards the current situation as a neocolonial machine that continues to oppress its citizens for the benefit of former colonial empires and their allies. The material resources in Africa are being plundered for the benefit of the former colonisers. This has had tremendous consequences on the continent in terms of economic and infrastructural development. Beyond the outside economic domination over Africa, which is reminiscent of Hannah Arendt’s scholarship on the scramble for Africa, the author’s analysis further highlights the role of culture and psychology in perpetuating colonialism. To do this, he proposes a new way of conceptualising colonialism – metacolonialism – which he describes as: 

"a socio-political, economic, cultural, and psychological system that comes after, along with, or among the earlier stages of colonialism …. One can also define it as a colonial system that goes beyond in scope or behind in depth what classical colonialism and neocolonialism had achieved." (p. 244)

Such a line of thought is striking, given that the effects of colonialism in major public discourse are often weighed and validated in economic terms without regard for the psychological implication of colonialism on the colonised. With metacolonialism, the author delves deeper into the psychological implications and power dynamics of colonialism, which allow the colonisers to name and interpret the world and the self while suppressing the experiences and stories of the colonised. In Belhan’s words:

"The story of the colonized remains untold due to censorship and social amnesia enforced in crude or subtle ways. If writers of this story are not directly harassed, the media industry seldom publishes their alternative story; professional journals winnow it out; publishers reject manuscripts; and tenure review committees consider it a sign of radicalism or proof of idiosyncratic obsession to excavate a long-forgotten past too uncomfortable to recall. […] If one endeavors to tell the story of the colonized, the teller is from the start stuck neck deep or totally submerged in the maelstrom or disaster the colonizer had created. Not only does one wade in the dissimulated history and scholarship of the colonizer’s metacolonial systems of education, but also the world in which one lives—including institutions for which one works—contradict one’s story about the colonized." (p.245)

What Bulhan shows in this section of his paper is not only his frustration with academia but also the frustration of many who have tried to tell a different story, their story, as it affected them. For example, the issue of censorship raised by the author is not only peculiar to the colonial enterprise in Africa but also applies to any stories or truths that do not match the conventional narrative or that offend the listener’s vanity. Yet, when we censor the narrative of the speaker we also censor our own ability to exchange meaningful ideas about how we perceive the world around us (pp. 245–246). We limit our ability to think differently in a world that contains infinite complexities. Finally, Bulhan describes how psychology and its medical counterpart, psychiatry, contributed to colonialism, thus making it imperative to decolonise the psychological sciences. As the author recounts, during the colonial period, psychologists and psychiatrists embarked on racial comparisons to determine the size of the typical African brain. They concluded from a biased sample that Africans belonged to a lower evolutionary phase of human beings (p. 249). Africans were viewed as “lobotomised Europeans” or at least as neurotic Europeans (ibid.). 

Equally relevant is the fact that, after the classical colonial period, the psychological and psychiatric literature shifted from identifying Africans as subhuman to asserting alarming rates of mass depression and other psychiatric disorders, thereby trumpeting the predominant narrative that slaves were innately incapable of living independently or sanely without a white master (ibid.). Today, such notions are rarely found in psychiatric and psychological literature, as they have become more subtle and refined in theories and their application, the author argues. Richard C. Keller, who studied the history of medicine and the relationship of psychiatry with colonialism in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, reached a similar conclusion. Like Bulhan, Keller, in his book Colonial Madness: Psychiatry in French North Africa, explored the position of the mentally ill in nineteenth-century North Africa, the problem of institutionalised mental illness and the overuse of psychopathological language to describe the experience of an entire population. Both scholars are influenced by Frantz Fanon. 

While Bulhan raises critical points about the historical relationship between colonialism and psychology, there could be a deeper exploration of any potential positive contributions or efforts within the field to address the legacies of colonialism. Examples like Carl Jung, Viktor Frankl, Carl Rogers and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross would have helped show that not every psychologist or psychiatrist rejoices over the heinous legacy of the profession, be it colonialism or the imposition of the therapist’s view on the individual. This would provide a more nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between colonialism and psychology. Also, the issue of individual responsibility as opposed to institutional responsibility could have been pursued, as well as the limitations of decolonising psychological science; what does it mean, who is in the position to do it and what would be the practical implications? Addressing these points and offering strategies to overcome them would strengthen the argument and provide a more comprehensive analysis. 

 

Reviewed by: Ernest Chetachukwu Anudu


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