New Year Lecture 2024 - Prof. Dr. Akosua Adomako Ampofo
Abstract
- Abstract
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Each year, the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence starts its line of annual activities and events with the New Year Lecture open to the interested public, featuring prominent speakers who address questions and concepts central to the Cluster’s agenda.
The fifth annual New Year was held by Prof. Dr. Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Professor for Gender Studies and African Studies at the University of Ghana, and was entitled: "Crazy Tings: Can we be true to an African Agenda and Survive in today's Academy?"
About the Lecture:
Music is experienced and understood as an integral part of our self identity; it is closely linked with personal memories and significant moments of history, it is a form of self-expression of who we how we feel. Taking a slice out of Nigerian singer Tems’ book, Prof. Ampofo employed Tems' song, "Crazy Tings", as a metaphor to evoke the image of the multiple crazy things that abound in the academy, which is situated in a crazy world. She also reflected on how we might seek an intellectual engagement that serves Global Africa’s interests while ensuring that we are not destroyed in the process, and can hopefully even thrive.
THE LECTURE IS TRANSLATED IN BRITISH SIGN LANGUAGE!
Description
- Transcript
- dear friends so um I see the socializing in the room as um indication that um it is a great tradition to have a new year lecture where everyone can get together and uh chat and um catch up so this is um the fourth or even the fifth I'm not even sure New Year lecture of the cluster but there's one number I'm very sure of and that is 1844 that is the number of days we've had the Africa multiple cluster of excellence and um today I think we'll go down as a special day in the history of our cluster because we have uh the unique pleasure pleasure and honor to have two topnotch speakers here in the room Professor akosa adaro U and Professor Grace musila who will give a lecture and a response uh at today's event and they are both members also of our Advisory Board The Advisory Board meets tomorrow and we are tremendously pleased and honored to have you both here at the same time at the same place in the no so please join me in welcoming uh our two speakers I'm not going to take a lot of uh the time now just a few words uh what you are going to expect or what you can expect today and that is uh an introduction of our um lecturer by Dr isaka uh fera isaka T who is a scholar of Islamic Studies at the University of Ghana and also a research fellow at the University of broid um and she will also after the lecture give a formal introduction to professor moila and then we'll devote uh maybe a quarter of an hour perhaps a little more a little less uh to a Q&A session uh together with our uh listeners in the zoom who also uh welcome very warmly I think we are now ready to go and I would like to ask Dr isaka uh to come to the podium thank [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you hello yeah good evening ladies and gentlemen um it is with honor that I present our speaker in the annual New Year lecture series of the African multiple cluster of Excellence of none other than the University of bid a university in a small City in Bavaria yet known and attracts the entire world of African studies because of what it stands for it has always offered from inception and continues to offer in the study of African Studies by men women from various regions of the world the speaker is a professor of African and gender studies at The Institute of African studies University of Ghana legon she describes herself as an activist scholar and her work is informed by her faith questions of identity and power and a commitment to social justice her areas of Interest include African knowledge systems higher education race and identity politics gender relations masculinities and popular culture she holds a BC in architectural designs and MC in development planning from the quam Kuma University of Science and Technology Kumasi Ghana a postgraduate diploma in spatial planning from the University of Dortmund Germany and a PhD in sociology from the University of feril in 2005 she became the foundational director of the University of Ghana Center for gender studies and advocacy from the from 2005 from 2010 into 2015 she was the director of the African studies in the University she's the founding vice president president and immediate p president of the African studies Association of Africa an honorary professor at the center for African studies at the University of Birmingham UK and a fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences her most recent book co-edited with josephin Boku bets is titled producing inclusive feminist knowledge positionalities and discourses in the global South published by Emerald publishing in 2021 sh produced a documentary when women speak with k with Kate Skinner and directed by a tamaku in 2022 as part of a project titled an archive of activism gender and public history in postc colonial Ghana the project seeks to create a publicly accessible Archive of gender activism and political women she is the editorinchief Contemporary daor of African studies co-editor critical investigations into humanitarianism in Africa in Africa blog and serve or has served on the boards of organizations such as the US African studies Association the center for the advancement of scholarship University of Petoria Africa multiple cluster of Excellence our dear University of bid of which she is the chairperson peroli African Research Center University of Bristol Institute for human Humanities in Africa Huma University of Cape Town advisory Council North North Rin valiia Academy of international Affairs SOS Herman her minina International College Beyond borders ziton eelin and Gad bosos scholarship program and the next generation of the social science research Council of the United States among others she is a member of the council for the development of social science research C Council called cestria the network for women's rights in Ghana and the domestic violence Coalition in Ghana also she has consulted for several internation organizations including UNICEF UNIF UNS save the children Ministry for gender and social protection of Ghana participatory participatory development Associates gender studies and human rights Documentation Center and of course the Kofi Anan peace peacekeeping and Training Center and World Health Organization her work has been variously recognized she has been a fellow at the rockefella foundation's belagio center a melon fellow at the center for African studies at the University of Cape Town a full bride Junior scholar a new century full bride scholar and a senior full bride scholar in Residence in 2010 she was awarded the feminist activism award by sociologist for women and Society in 2015 she was the African studies Association of Americans African studies review dis distinguished lecturer and in 2019 she delivered the Audrey Richards distinguished public lecture at the center for African studies at the University of Cambridge she is the 2023 2024 wangari maai visiting professor at the University of Castle the speaker has also mentored several students and emerging scholars in various universities around the world she is also a senior scholar of the African feminist initiative ladies and gentlemen I take this opportunity to introduce our August speaker who is Professor Dr akosa adaku professor good okay so I want to first of all thank you all for being here and to everyone online also thank you it's um today is what Thursday right it's a Thursday evening it's cold I can think of many possibly more interesting things to do on a Thursday evening but I'm really grateful that you are all here and thanks very much to the clust and to our Dean uh Professor zman for doing me this honor of inviting me to do this and you're also taking a slight risk because with somebody like me you can never be sure what I'm going to say so but hopefully it will be all good I'm also really pleased that um Professor Grace Milla is going to be the respondent because I can't think of a more sensitive reflective um she personifies her name Grace to respond to uh my comments this evening so yes very very um happy to be here I'd like us to start by doing something that I have learned to do from a sister colleague wangui Wago who and I have now established this as something that I often do when I'm speaking somewhere which is to offer remembrance and acknowledgement to our ancestors so if you will indulge me I'm going to mention a few names of our senior brothers and sisters who passed in 2023 um just a very small snippet and that we will use this as a point of contact to acknowledge those who have gone before us and have worked so hard so these are just um very few selected Heroes the first one on my list and in no particular order is yak yakuba sawadogo who died last year at the age of 77 and I'm going to site here from um the website WR livelihood who gave him an award he was known as quote the man who stopped the desert starting around 1980 during a phase of severe drought he successfully created an almost 40 hectare Forest on formerly Barren and abandoned land today it has more than 60 species of trees and bushes and is arguably one of the most diverse forests planted and managed by a farmer in the Sahel region soko's remarkable success Builds on experimenting with traditional planting pits for soil water and biomass retention called Z or Z I'm not sure in the local language he continued innovating the technique over the years increasing crop yields and successfully planting trees despite facing resistance from locals in the beginning sawadogo was called a Madman because he was trying to stop the the desert from coming and people did not believe that planting trees I mean how many trees is he going to plant he never considered giving up and over time people came to admire his work and he received many awards including in 2018 the right livelihood award next on my list is mongi Enga a renowned South African playwright producer and composer he died last year at the age of 68 gma's body of work included the lorded theater production Wasa Albert which first showed in 1981 and went on to win more than 20 Awards across the world the political s satire explored the second coming of Jesus Christ as a black man returning to South Africa as a black man and and um you know what that would mean in a place like South Africa he was best known for creating the hit saraphina which first premiered on Broadway in 1988 saraphina told the story of a young student and how she inspired her peers to fight against racial segregation in aparte South Africa after her teacher was thrown in jail it was adapted into a musical drama starring whoi Goldberg in 1982 1992 I'm sorry I'm sure many of you have seen it becoming an international success and he was nominated for both Tony and Grammy Awards third person on my list is amama tedu who was a ghanan she died last year at the age of 81 she was a ghanan writer whose work written in English emphasize the paradoxical position of the modern African woman Adu began to write seriously while she was merely an honest while she was a mere honest student very young woman at the University of Ghana and and won early recognition with a problem play The Dilemma of a ghost published in 1965 in which a ghanan student returning home brings his African-American wife into the traditional culture and the extended family that he now finds restrictive they are dilemma reflects adu's characteristic concern with B people who have been and are coming back in other words educated abroad and the play um voices again her semi-autobiographical experimental uh work which he continues in the novel our sister kill Joy Reflections from a black eyed squint published in ' 66 1966 a Fearless feminist and panafrican often appearing Co in her photographs she was never diffident and served only one year as Ghana's minister of Education she couldn't survive uh longer than that next on my list is Henry Lopez who died last year at the age of 86 and was considered one of the talented writers who made Congo quotes the Latin quarter of central Africa born under the so-called Belgian Congo before independence he became a prime minister under Maran mob's Marxist leninist regime between 1973 and 1975 he was a former deputy director of UNESCO for Africa and Congo's ambassador to France at some point for for many years considered to be free spirited by many he wrote about the contemporary history of Africa and was the author of numerous Works including novels such as Le Grand ancest Deja de from the website um African news two more Harry bellafonte died last year um at the age of he was born in 27 so you can do the math for me um Harry balafon was a movie star as we all know blessed with good looks an activist anger and a voice that told songs of struggle loss and sweet memory he moved generations with both his rhythm and his rage catching the social conscience of the nation as he caught their ear with such hits as de Matilda and Jamaica Farewell he was the first artist to sell a million albums with the 1956 release of calypso First Caribbean artist and Bonte would go on to become an egot in other words he won both he won an Emmy a Grammy an Oscar and a Tony that's a big deal in the entertainment world and he was a Kennedy Center hon a and a recipient of the national medal of Arts in the US but his influence would become even more pronounced as an advocate for social justice at home and abroad serving as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador he supported efforts for Education the eradication of nuclear weapons and the fight against HIV Aid and apartheid I take this from CBS News website my last Honore is rosin Pope who died last year at the age of 84 she was a college professor and musician who wrote quote an appeal for human rights a document that laid out the reasons for the Atlanta student movement's um cries against systemic racism in 1960 the document Pope wrote as a 21-year-old senior at Spelman College launched a nonviolent campaign of boycotts and Sittin by black college students protesting discrimination not just in voting but in education jobs housing hospitals movies concets restaurants and law enforcement remember we're just at the edge of the Jim Crow era when she's doing this Atlanta's white owned newspapers wouldn't publish the statement and Georgia's segregationist leaders tried to dismiss it saying it couldn't possibly be the work of mere college students but the New York Times run it on a full page as did other Publications across the US it was read in the into the congreg Congressional Record as a testament to how segregation was stifling the ability of people to coexist with equality and dignity I take this from the Associated Press News and so now if you would indulge me can we have a moment of silence to remember our favorite ancestors and to honor them for the work that they have done thank you if we agree that we aim to transform the societies we inhabit if we want to be true to an African agenda the question we must ask ourselves especially in these crazy times is how can our intellectual practice contribute to transformation what Legacy will I leave behind when I transition to join the ancestors what seeds am I planting how am I how are we investing what we have will we reap a harvest what will your legacy be so I often use music and actually play music and we'll listen to some music at the end because um you know one if I use popular music then gives me some street cred with young people and it comes in handy but um if I'm being very honest you know if you're going to rate my popular culture credibility I think that the best that I might get is a B+ maybe but um definitely a b however as a living breathing person I know enough to get by at dinner table conversations and I've researched enough on music where I can know what somebody's doing at the moment you know I can give you some interesting facts on Beyonce or Jay-Z or Bena boy or somebody right I can even toss in some big names as I just did this knowledge is thanks in no small part to the young people in my Orbit and Spotify and actually my husband comes a close second he does a good job so being surround you you know you have to take from people who are around you music music is experienced and understood as an integral part of our self identity it is closely linked with personal memories and significant moments of history it's a form of self-expression markers and statements of who we are and how we feel for people of African descent music accompanies all of our rights of Passage music welcomes us into the world in the outdooring ceremonies of a baby it proclaims our progress during graduation ceremonies it announces and celebrates our marriages in the academy we are heralded with music before an inaugural lecture when we become professors and music sends us on our way to join the ancestors when we transition into the next World so we're taking a slice out of Nigerian singer T's book I employ her song crazy thingss as a metaphor to evoke the image of the multiple crazy things that abound in the academy which is itself situated in a very crazy world and I doubt anybody will disagree with me on that more importantly however I reflect on how in the midst of this craziness we might reflect on our commitment to Global Africa and how can this commitment extend beyond scholarly Pursuits and embrace a dedication to truth cultural integrity and social responsibility in the pursuit of knowledge how can our work have a transformative impact within the academy and our broader communities how can we leave a True Legacy that restores respects and heals and so as I take a slice out of her of our book of her um of her book you see academics of her song crazy things you might think about if you know the song where Were You just heard it and what it did mean for you and I hope you know TS and have listened to if not danced to crazy things crazy things I'm sorry T's born Tamil op is a Nigerian singer song writer and record producer if you didn't know that please know it now and according to Wikipedia she Rose to prominence after being featured on Whiz kid's 2020 single Essence if you don't know whiz kid know him now which peaked at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 chart following the release of the remix version with Justin Bieber why that had to happen is another story but fine thank you Justin Bieber the song end her a Grammy nomination the same year she was featured on the song fountains by Drake TS covered Bob Marley's No Woman No cry for the Black Panther wakanda forever soundtrack in 2022 that one you should know and in the same month her song free mind from her Deb EP which debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 peaked at number for 46 and broke the female record for longest charting number one song on the R&B hip hop AirPlay chart go temps so okay crazy things and the refrain of this song goes like this I wish I could sing it would be so much more exciting but I I'm so bad but anyway crazy things are happening crazy things are happening if you need somebody's craze you f chop somebody's craze so you do your Madness and I'll I'll I'll do my madness the lyrics of the song describe a state of confusion and Chaos where things are not as they should be and temps evokes a sense of being fed up with it all but determined not to let somebody else's craziness undo her own well-being in this sense I employ 's crazy enss as a metaphor for the state of our Nations as well as the academy which like our Nations is facing several challenges and changes that could be described as uncertain confused confusing even chaotic thus navigating the academic landscape while remaining true to an emancipatory agenda for Global Africa while simultaneously retaining our Humanity can POS pose both challenges and opportunities ah okay I forgot to give you the slide so you have two seconds to look at it there's terms so the crazy Academy in the academy multiple crazy things abound we're going to look at just three one such challenge is the instrumentalism that abounds the increasing pressure to produce measurable outcomes we all know that such as through research grants and Publications sometimes at the expense of more open ended Explorations and discoveries consciously or inadvertently the goals of a grant awarding organization can push or encourage a researcher to a certain approach methodologically and epistemologically we respond to Grant calls so the grant call is going in a certain direction and we are following it the pressure to publish in so-called International journals read euroamerican and high impact read as measured by citation matrices can impact what we work on such that it can be supp Supply driven promotion criteria rather than demand driven based on the relevance for our local conditions and those of our citizens globally this pressure can lead to a loss of focus on what I believe should be the true purpose of scholarship to improve the conditions of human beings in our communities in some way this could range from improving locally relevant knowledge to impacting policy another crazy tin in the academy is the pro proliferation of new technologies and digital platforms we use these for research and teaching and while these tools offer many benefits they also bring with them new challenges and complexities such as the need to navigate complex data privacy laws pay walls and the potential for technological bias and discrimination the internet has made it easier to access vast amounts of information but the quality of that information as we all know may not always be reliable and it takes a lot of time to to F fact check a potent example of this blossoming is the multitude of digital archives that are promising restitution restoration digital reparations and a lot of other RS many Innovative projects by unsophisticated and low resourced Africans have been hijacked by well resource Scholars and activists in the north and we must learn to navigate and evaluate sources carefully and be be determined not to lend our spirits to thieves and imposters but that's a lot of work so with so much information available it can be very challenging to process and synthesize this all to borrow a Biblical verse the thief comes to steal kill and destroy but the true Shepherd comes to give Abundant Life Today more than ever how do we address issues of ownership acknowledgement and intellectual property so many people out there ready to steal our stuff do these new and often attractive and sexy platforms come to give Abundant Life to the spirits and memories that have been untethered from the ancestors the availability of digital platforms and Technologies has also led to new research methods and data sources but this also means that researchers must adapt to new tools and approaches to main current and this pressure can also be overwhelming and lead to shortcuts and now add all the AI tools that are available right our Millennials and genz are both most Adept at navigating these sites but they are also most susceptible to overload and exploitation what what role are we playing as mentors to them to not only train them in the technicalities of our professions but also offer kindness support and Grace and all of this digital stuff leads to new anxieties like tonight I was thinking okay oh my God this thing is going to be recorded am I going to say something that I'm going to regret so let's talk about the next one which is councel culture it has come it's not going anywhere so we experence erence unprecedented levels of scrutiny and criticism from groups and individuals both within and outside the academy scrutiny from those I will refer to as the righteous or moral rights and the woke or liberal left and I use these adjectives Tong tongue and cheek so that I'm not misquoted to reflect the ways in which politically polarized OPP opponents often View and describe each other sometimes politicians and the media question the value and re relevance of our academic research and expertise even colleagues in the Academy have become increasingly critical especially on platforms like formerly known as Twitter X and we see unprecedented levels of competition and sibling rivalry in the academy as many of us even if we don't seek to become celebrity academics we are susceptible to firing off a quick oped p in a broadsheet newspaper calling forth our own credentials in a pretentious reference to our research Publications or connections I have seen some people literally giving us their CVS in the public space it's like who do you think I am some of us are not beneath name dropping or thinly veiled name dropping for that matter but set one foot arai and you may be cancelled for all your long and beautiful CV this can create a sense of chaos and uncertainty among Scholars who may feel that their work is being unfairly dismissed or marginalized and as I said I myself am sometimes nervous at the prospect I grew up at a time when we spoke freely and we engaged freely and the footprints were not there to be pulled out later to say this is what you said or to be quoted um out of context which influential intellectual could Judge Me based on a sliver of my composite work of Woe of woes what if I get the fact wrong what new terminology might be might might I be unaware of and so I misspeak and I'm judged yes my ego would suffer a momentary injury but I think more important than that is the potential impact on the the younger ones who respect and look up to me we must speak Our Truth it is important to call people out for infractions but who determines what an infraction is who checks if it indeed occurred who decides the punishment or how widely the details should be disseminated yes we must indicate our positionality but it's not always about our positionality there's a time to decenter ourselves in the spirit of social responsibility transformation and sometimes healing so before we go for our siblings publicly a moment of introspection to ask ourselves whose truth am I speaking who am I speaking for maybe in order so that we don't end up silencing or Worse patronizing the very people that we are speaking for and I want to do a little side step to give you a personal experience from 2019 fera mentioned that I gave a lecture at Cambridge University in fact I gave two lectures in addition to the one that she mentioned um there was somebody in who was heading a a program that brought multidisciplinary students together and when he heard that I was giving this lecture in Cambridge he said would you come and speak to my students and I said sure um looking at your students they come from diverse dis iines mainly from stem and at the moment I'm doing a lot of talking around race and you know matters that are problems for younger Africans all over the world can I be come and be provocative and he said sure provocation is good so I I go and give the lecture and um he introduces me as somebody who is sometimes who can be controversial and provoc ative and we had had this conversation so I was cool uh fast forward a few weeks I was a young white woman at Cambridge who without knowing the backstory to this lecture I had been invited to posted on Twitter that what happened that evening was a final straw for her so there had been some previous occasions where some lecturers at Cambridge had used the n-word and they had not been called out and for her to see this African Professor come from Africa and a woman and for her to be introduced as provocative and uh controversial was for her the final straw and she was going to leave Cambridge now fine that's her decision she was at the lecture after the lecture she did not come and speak to me she did not find out if something had transpired before she was being an unw wanted Savior and I felt very very patronized I'm sure that was not her intention but we need to be very very careful speaking of C councel culture silencing and Muslim there's an elephant in the room these days which out of respect for my hosts and where we are located on the face of God's Earth I will not name but we all know an elephant when we see one I'm talking about the different framings theorizations conceptualizations and approaches to similar situations in different parts of the world we all know the old phrase one man's terrorist is another man's Freedom Fighter right so when I ask questions how can we Embrace a dedication to truth cultural integrity and social responsibility in the person pursuit of knowledge how can our work have a transformative impact within the academy and our broader communities how can we leave a True Legacy that restores respects and heals I am making certain assumptions one I'm assuming that those of us in the room and online that we share certain values as Scholars that we seek to be true to I'm also assuming that those values include a de Colonial agenda and I'm not going to spend time speaking on those values because I believe we're all in the choir here and we know that song and we know the tune and we want to build knowledge that improves the lives of Africans globally and marginalized people everywhere I'm going to assume we want to be diligent and thorough in our work and that we want our scholarship to be original creative exciting I'm going to assume we want to treat others as kindly and honestly as we want to be treated our ourselves as we carry out our work I'm going to believe that we want to encourage the weary and lift the faint-hearted we cannot pigeon hole our Humanity extend it to some people but not to others many of our revered leaders such as quam androma and Nelson Mandela reminded us that our emancipation can never be complete While others remain colonized and under occupation we cannot reconfigure African studies with any form of bacation divisiveness between the good guys and the bad guys the good guys who may perpetrate violence because and the others who aren't really victims because we cannot truthfully reconfigure African studies in part without a dedication to the inherent truth that African studies is basically an emancipatory project project and cannot succeed in isolation of the freedoms of all colonized people wherever they may be on God's Earth aramia in the fanga of January 4th in an article titled and I quote the dispute over postcolonial studies it is ultimately about equal rights for All Peoples speaks to this trend to create perpetrator victim dichotomies ignoring contradictions building a new front between the left and the right and lifting guilt to cult levels he says and I quote in the first Iraq war Stuart Hall pointed out both the imperialist interests of the US Army and Saddam Hussein's crimes against the Iraqi and especially the Kurdish population and oppose the clear division between the good guys and the bad guys with regard to the ban on Widow criation in India by the British colonial power jatri spak has pointed out the Dilemma of IND Indian women do they welcome the law do they confirm the civilizing mission of the colonial rulers do they criticize it do they reinforce native patriarchy two things can be true at the same time how can we be sensitive to contradictions and ambivalences unless we absolutely believe in the idea that there can be a common good we will not reconfigure African studies it is true the common good is aspirational it wants as Cecilia Lynch notes in her book wrestling with God it wants to work towards Harmony and well-being but in practice it is open to critiques of paternalism and colonialism so we try and we are criticized and we try again in the so-called West or Global North or whatever there's to still too much belief in the need to influence with your ideas on Democracy equality secularism terrorism ISM gender sexuality research ethics publication ethics research methodologies etc etc needs to be more self-reflection about to quote Cecilia Lynch from same book and I quote her ethical assumptions the good they purport to achieve and whether and how they achieve them it is much easier to continue to think about how to improve the lives of others or how to negate their allegedly nefarious cultural activities than to dig deeply into our own possibilities and shortcomings or ask who might be left out of our conceptions of the common good unquote we cannot ignore these ethical tensions and expect to reconfigure African studies what is our responsibility when it comes to enacting Justice in the face of the severe economic social and political inequalities in the world in global Africa how will we do our knowledge work and solidarity not just with those who are suffering but our own those other people who are suffering but what about our own colleagues and our students street names have been changed statutes toppled curricula Revisited black people hired and a multitude of diversity inclusion projects have begun Black authors have been added onto curricula but then what just side note at the University of Ghana where I teach we had our own successful toppling of a statue of no less than Gandhi that's another discussion and yet as 's chance try try try I try try I just want turn my back tonight oh you tried to make me run insane but you know I'm not the same I just think I can do better we all can do better than respond in kind to The Craze that people from discordant places seem to inhabit and put on us so back to my question how can we be true to an African agenda and survive in today's Academy how can we Embrace a dedication to truth cultural integrity and social responsibility in the pursuit of knowledge how can our work have a transformative impact within the academy and our broader communities how can we leave a True Legacy that restores respects heals first of all whether we are dealing with the instrumentalization in the academy the challenges of new technology or the threats or Temptations of cancel culture may I suggest that as we reconfigure African studies we always always Center Africa yes we will critique complain cry from our pain but as we seek to restore we will not continue to make the violent Misfortune Of History our story or at least not the center of our story it's part of our story we are not simply going back for lost ideas but we are seeking the places where where the story was truncated aborted deviated and we are seeking creative continuation from what happened before the disaster to address the trauma of historic dissonance our storytellers responded dynamically to the needs of their communities once upon a time they created what today we would call afro future Visions storytelling is one site where we can express our truths stories and song text dance film and so forth in both Ghana and Nigeria that I'm more familiar with one response to chaotic systems has been a youth-driven explosion of creativity and Innovation from the Arts and entertainment through African cuisine to Innovations in medicine and Engineering young people are innovating creating and designing often without the infrastructure and resources that their counterparts in the so-called Global North have when the covid-19 epidemic struck the continent's youth Rose to the occasion swiftly with diverse social and Technology driven innov Ovations to help understand test for diagnose the virus and treat covid-19 patients we can ask why those stories didn't make it into the international newspapers that's another story we need a therapeutic model or approach if we are to be true to our stated goals and survive intellectually politically professionally materially and importantly mentally we need to rekindle our humanity and live generously we can't just be giving little Snippets of our goodness instead of planting seeds of self-centeredness Pride anger frustration let's plant seeds of selflessness peace and humility there's always a moment to pause before hitting the send button and I don't just mean literally and I remember um a former friend and colleague and I say former because we are not that close anymore and perhaps from this narrative you'd understand why had a this colleague had a difference with somebody and shared with me an email that they were going to send in response to their annoyance and I read the email draft and I said you know what sleep on it don't send it and their response was if I sleep on it tomorrow I might not send it and I'm like I mean I at that point like what do you say right and this colleague hits the send button we don't need to do that we really don't okay where am I so when we live generously when we cast our bread upon the waters we re reap a harvest of Peace So I have some suggestions that I'm making and and it may all sound like that that's obvious but I think we have to be intentional about these things let's be intentional about our networks we need to be embedded in collectives we all know that networks of like-minded individuals within and outside our academic institutions folks we know will come to our Aid if we are dismissed arrested deported because they believe in who we are and what we do networks where as B B Hook said we can heal in community and I would say we can also thrive in community these siblings fellow soldiers comrades they provide support and platforms to amplify our our work free of judgment or Envy some become allies choose them very carefully intellectual agreement is not enough then embracing diverse perspec perspectives again we know this but the diversity of perspectives within the academy whilst it's there we don't necessarily embrace it because we do a lot of us and them when I first joined the Academy I naively thought this is this wonderful space where we will all live in community and then I realized that there were all these barriers but not everybody was like that and those who opened and were open to diversity were the people people who nurtured me and others the most the modern Academy thrives on a rich exchange of ideas and incorporating diverse viewpoints can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of various subjects for someone like me who has been called not always as a compliment ah you anti decolonize this was now my new middle name I can fairly say that not everything is about about decolonization or the colony let's listen and learn from others I want to say a few words on interdisciplinary approaches many indeed most contemporary issues are multifaceted and can benefit from insights drawn from different disciplines related to my earlier point this approach can allow us to integrate African perspectives into broader academic discussions reconfiguring African studies means the work that we do should not merely be here as an example from Africa case study but should also be the building block of methods approaches in other disciplines it has become fashionable to be inter and multidisciplinary how many proposals or thesis have I not read that say I will use a multidisiplinary approach or an interdisciplinary approach And yet when I read them it's more of a salad where I can pick out the individual vegetables than a jolof rice where I can't separate them we need more of the jolof rice of the salad different disciplinary perspectives and how they relate how do they relate let's not just throw them in there right we want to see how they are connected and sometimes I read proposals and I'm wondering you have all these different perspectives listed and all these different authors have you the authors read each other's work have you even read each other's work we need to develop a research Focus that aligns with our African agenda by conducting research that addresses issues relevant to Africa or involves African perspectives and then we can meaningfully contribute to academic discourses while staying true to our values I say dare to be dangerous discard the banal ideas discard the fear of being cancelled it's not everything that's about sdgs development or peace and security and even when these themes are presented to us dare to interpret them differently critical engagements engage critically we all need to engage critically with mainstream academic theories and perspectives we can boldly challenge assumptions and biases that may exist within certain academic paradigms but we also need to be open to learning from others we cannot just be throwing fuku away when we have not read fuku we need to recognize the need for a balance between inclusion and difference adhering to our values while adapting to the expectations of the academic Community can be a tough tight rope to walk but walk it we must if we want to remain in the academy this might involve finding creative ways to integrate our agenda into mainstream academic activities creative at the same time not everything is about bringing everybody in we don't want to reduce us all to sameness and different means difference means that sometimes there will be spaces for certain demographics where other demographics are not welcome because we are dealing with our issues we need spaces to heal in Collective and those spaces maybe all of us or some of us in the process we need to read their room know what to say and when to say it and to whom not to tiptoe I'm not suggesting that we tiptoe around people's sensibilities and sensitivities but we don't need to create toxic spaces we are all tired and exhausted we don't need to create toxic spaces what does it profit us if we win the argument for Africa but we lose the souls of our siblings we need to Foster cultural competence among our peers colleagues students and mentors by educating others about the significance of African perspectives we can contribute to a more inclusive academic environment but please don't EXP respect the africanists and the Africans and the African descended people to always be carrying the burden to teach others and I'm going to do another snippet here from u a panel at the African studies meeting in fryborg which was when 2022 there were some students from some of your students Rigo were there and you had just lost um one of the students from Nigeria uh maybe there are some students here from then and so they were grieving and they were a little how shall I say distracted before they started the panel there were some who had visibly mourned or wept they were all in mourning but somebody were who had visibly wept so they were gathering themselves together and they introduced to the panel To Us by letting us know what had happened how wonderful their colleague was and um I think dedicating the panel to him or something like that so they all made their presentations at the end of the presentation there was a guy in the room first of all who who seemed not to have heard that they were in morning so there was not a word about this right when people tell you about their pain at least acknowledge it and then he went on to to ask a question for them to explain racism or wh savior or something one of these Concepts that we use and um I I can't remember whether it was somebody from the panel or maybe it was me because I also interjected it's like dude the information is there this is question 101 go and expletive deleted read go and read it's not every day we're going to do your homework for you right so please don't be letting us do the homework for those go and read talk to people oneon-one and say I really don't understand this genuinely it's like no I'm not going to give you my reference list go and read we need to promote advocacy and activism because as I said African studies is a political project if you are not in for shaking things up please you need to be out you are in the wrong place and so we need to strategically explore avenues for advocacy and activism within and outside the academy policy makers Civil Society government officials donors the Press can we initiate conversations can we work towards creating spaces for discussions on diverse perspectives and advocate for the inclusion of nonwestern viewpoints in curricular policy and so forth can we know who is doing what's out there I would for example in Germany recommend and I have short list but for example the the group uh NOA deut Medan we should be generous with our dissemination strategies yes build generosity into the system we can you can learn to be generous share knowledge in an accessible way is something that we need to do we need to know when the Jaron is relevant and try to learn when the Jon can be put aside it's not everyday Jon to make us look like we know a lot sometimes the Jon is too much we cannot reproduce the market driven model of selling knowledge on the backs of the Free Labor of academics postdocs students and research assistants let's be kind to all those people so by way of conclusion two of my favorite people I love to site them they make the point without having to say too much if we have not begun done to become an ancestor then let's ask ourselves what do I want to be remembered for and write it down and ask yourself whether people remember you for this there to be kind dare to be kind my late mother-in-law had a favorite phrase and she [Music] said to which nobody is going to say you've brought goodness to me get away with it we all like to embrace goodness and we all appreciate Grace and love and respond positively to it extend Grace advocate for students and colleagues who have less power the non tenard let's not take ourselves also too seriously in this business there are a lot of people who are not even reading our work and we are feeling so great we need to discard over bloated ideas of who we are and our posturing there's a whole world out there who doesn't care that my journal article just got cited by X number of people we need to learn when to leave the stage and the fact that I leave this stage doesn't mean that I might not go on to another stage right we all have our season and we should know when to leave and in that process some people will walk with us and some people will not walk with us or they will walk with us one day and stop walking with us the next day I always say as far as it depends on me let me be at peace I don't want to be the one to walk away but if you're explicative deleted is too much and you want to leave goodbye and I will close now and as I do I leave you with a video which we will play next from the playing for change project sometimes Africans are accused that we simply love eating drinking and dancing too much those Africans and we can find it a lot in the literature that racialized or ignorant at best reading has of course been discounted by psychologists and psychiatrists eating drinking and dancing in community is cathartic and enhances solidarity it's also a space where people are more likely to be authentic and the places where we act as we feel when the camera is off and people are not jotting down what we said and we are drinking a glass of wine we say the real thing we feel safe so as we listen to this song from a multimedia project featuring musicians and singers from across the globe co-founded in 2002 by the American Grammy award-winning music producer engineer and award-winning film director Mark Johnson and film producer philanthropist Whitney Kon please get up and dance if you will the eating will come later in this multi-artist rendition of Higher Ground originally by Stevie Wonder I hope to remind us that it won't be too long as we keep on trying that we reach a Higher Ground thank you very much and okay I'm a Mac User how do I get this thing to work and then what do I do next okay how can I do full screen I can't okay remember that I said you can get up and dance so me I'll be dancing [Music] come on I can't dance alone people keep on [Music] learning soldiers keep on [Music] Waring keep on turning cuz it won't be too [Music] long keep Ling why people keep on [Music] dying keep on turning cuz it won't be too long I'm so Dar glad let me try it again cuz my last time on Earth I live the whole world is s I'm so glad I know more than I knew then going to keep on trying till I reach the highest oh yeah teachers keep on teaching and preachers keep on preaching w keep on turning cuz it won be too [Music] long and oh yeah keep on loving and beling Keep On Believing sleepers just stop sleeping cuz it w me I'm so glad that let me try it again last time on I live the world of sin so glad that I know more than I knew then I'm going to keep on trying is my highest [Music] ground no's bring me down nobody stillest [Applause] Crown no no one's going to keep me [Music] down till reach my [Music] highest I said no one's going to bring me [Music] down yeah going the highest [Music] [Music] ground somebody feel [Music] good [Music] thank you so much thank you so much for your wonderful I now introduce the respondent and the respondent is an associate professor in the department of African literature at the University of the vit vand Johannesburg she obtained her ba on in language and literary studies at the mo University and had her ma degree in African literature at the University of vet vand in 204 she took a PhD in African literature at the University of V vasar her teaching and research interest centers on anglophone African literature African popular culture African feminism and biography she took she took up an appointment as a writing consultant in vits that's University of um V ferad Writing Center taught in other prestigious in tions such as University of Johannesburg stellin boy University and as a tutor a lecturer and later Rose to the rank of associate professor at the department of African literature at the University of V vand from 2018 to present she has also co-edited and reviewed several books and articles some of which are a death retold in truth and rumor rethinking eastern African literacy and intellectual landscape and against collaborations or the natives who wonders off she is an alumnos of the national Research Foundation related research researcher Grant Harold and Doris tfield scholarship Vitz postgraduate merit award and the Andrew melon postgraduate mentorship Grant she's currently a member of the modern languages Association African literature Association African Humanities program and a co-editor of the Contemporary Journal of African states with this brief introduction I now introduce our respondent in the name of Professor Dr Grace a musila also an esteemed woman in the for in the Forefront of African studies having two women on this special occasion marks a significant turn in the state of Africa and for this to take place within the frame workor of the University of bid marks another 10 with vital contributions of the University as a continuous p a continuous paace Setter in the state of Africa thank you very much much and Professor musil V you are welcome to [Applause] B uh good evening everyone I hope my sound is working okay so good evening good evening everyone and thank you all so much for joining us this evening both online uh both to those colleagues online as well as those of you who breathed the snow in B to join us tonight thank you so much and a big thank you to Dr F fera is sakur for that generous introduction I sound very clever thank you when you frame me like that so thank you so so much and of course my deepest gratitude to the extensive Community behind Africa multiple cluster of Excellence that made today's event possible under the leadership of Professor rudiger cman and Professor UT fendler and the rest of the te having organized an event or two in my life um I know the amount of invisible labor that goes into um these kinds of events that what what we see when it materializes often obscures a whole lot of Labor and effort so I just greatly appreciate that um I'm also very grateful to all the Pate uh colleagues who've generously made the effort to to ensure that our stay is pleasant and comfortable um while we're here but most of all a big thank you to my sister colleague friend and compatriot I happen to have assigned myself ghanian citizenship and provoked so yes compatriot Professor Aus adak for that powerful lecture that really struck an urgent aing call to all of us a call to optimism a call to renew a call to refuse the crazy things that perpetually threaten to derail us from staying on course with the emancipatory project of African studies I call to remember that we cannot stop at resisting that our resistance must always retain a keen focus on what we can build in place of what we dismantle a call to see beyond the present to engineer Futures that spell restoration and possibility and sometimes Futures that we might not be around to enjoy to indulge in and here I'm reminded again of um yet another woman thinker and who in whose name Prof ad holds a current Fellowship profar ma who talks about planting trees as an act of optimism that a lot of the time the act of planting trees is an act of optimism about the future because a lot of the time you're planting trees for people who will in future sit under its shade and you're not guaranteed that you'll sit under that shade and that's what I hear listening to to Professor adako for I hear her inviting us to that sense of optimism about planting trees into the future so to speak so um she invited us to ask searching questions about how we relate to the agenda of survival and thriving and I like that combination that we cannot just be here to survive we have to be a bit more ambitious than that survival and thriving of global Africa and she's asking us to revisit our committee ment to Global Africa Beyond careerism in her words how can our work have a transformative impact within the academy and our broader communities and how can we leave a True Legacy that restores respect and heals how do we stand up to the instrumentalism and the tyranny of bibliometric indices that continue to police the perimeters of our thinking how do we stay in the fight while confronting the increasing commodification of knowledge that cannibalizes the Academy's labors and channels it towards our ongoing UNH humaning how do we reverse engineer our ancestral legacies by thinking forward to that difficult question what will we be remembered for so Professor adako has given us a Manifesto on how we navigate these crazy things and still survive and thrive in the African Academy and in the academy at large and I find myself in a very difficult position today as a respondent because I'm in full agreement with the critiques and the road map that we've been offered in social media terms my response is literally a meme pointing upwards accompanied by three words what she said right but I've been reliably informed that a MIM is not the way to respond in polite company so what I'm going to try and do is to literally translate that Meme AKA what she said and I agree cosign into a few Reflections so three words animate my my my my response and my cosigning really and and and and um nodding along to to to prof's provocations and these are key words that I've been thinking with in my own work so I draw great validation and encouragement from your lecture that I'm on the right track with this line of thought and so my three key words are currency belatedness and refusal and I must apologize in advance to the linguists in the room I'm not a linguist but I'm venturing into linguistic terrain a little here with the help of my dictionary so the dictionary gives me the following definitions for the word currency firstly something that is used as a medium of exchange I.E money secondly General acceptance prevalence or Vogue third a Time or period during which something is widely accepted and circulated and lastly the fact or quality of being widely accepted and circulated from person to person so the different meanings of currency that is as a transactional medium as circulation is generally accepted or envogue form part of the Technologies of control that often undermine academic efforts at making transformative contributions to the thriving of global Africa and the three the twin axes of commodification and trendiness are very foundational to the derailment of our best efforts at producing knowledge that shifts something more than bibliometric indices and our upward Mobility up the academic career ladder and yes we must pay rent and we must buy bread so I'm not I'm not sneering down at that I'm just saying and what I hear uh uh Professor adak comp for to be inviting us is to say we can be more ambitious than that we can we can we can do more than that so flowing from currency then we have my second keyword which is belatedness and it's something I've been very interested in lately and again um something that that comes to mind when I think about um the the ideas the lecture has M for us and in relation to belatedness then a regular response to scholarly submissions by africa-- based Scholars and as you heard I'm based on the continent I'm educated on the continent I'm speaking from that location even though um again there's no such thing as being from the continent we they Parts they they they Norths in the continent just in the same way they souths in Europe and in Germany and I bet in bid as well if if we look Clos enough um but I'm speaking from that positionality as an africa-based Coler so a regular response to scholarly submissions by by Africa based Scholars to academic applications research fellowships and funders is that these submissions tend to be out of tune with current debates in their fields or seemingly preoccupied with questions that are considered to be dated in other scholarly contexts and this charge of relatedness is often framed in the dition of lack yeah so it's lack of originality lack of theoretical rigor out of step with contemporary debates in the field of study redundant in a word belated so for a while there assumption has been that our work especially as Africa based Scholars struggles with belatedness because it's produced in underresourced environments with limited access to the latest academic research which is often locked away behind pay walls as as as uh profer cako and puu mentioned earlier and so part of the response to this challenge has been that many stakeholders have set out to address this problem of access through legal and semi-legal ways in from Open Access virtual special issues of Journal content from major academic publishing Stables all the way to pirated e Library collections which some of us might be familiar with and don't quote me and also all the way to Fellowship opportunities at better resourced ins institutions but the charge of belatedness persists and these forms of access have often proved to be shortterm palliatives and so this is partly for me this is partly because the category belated lends false transparency to a much more complicated set of Dynamics because it inadvertently legitimizes our misrecognition of a much deeper systematically engineered set of circumstances that produce belatedness as a symptom of this debilitating infrastructure and so my sense is that while lack of access to the latest scholarship in our respective Fields contributes to deficits in RoR and originality interventions that lower pay walls fail to fix these challenges for two reasons firstly they Overlook decades old systemic problems that that have almost decimated research cultures in many parts of the African Academy and in such context then access to Cutting Edge research Publications definitely shifts something but the shift is too provisional to catalyze sustained production of what would qualify as rigorous Cutting Edge research in part because course we all know that that research is a product of a practice a culture a thickly layered institutional infrastructure so it's not an event and I think that's part of the the loophole that one is facing part of and here I'm I'm I'm in a way echoing the crazy things the crazy landscape uh within which we operating here but the second challenge here is that of course our research is perceived as related because it's evaluated based on scholar standards and registers whose benchmarks are the intellectual vernaculars and I'm using vernaculars deliberately here uh whose benchmarks are the intellectual vernaculars of African its scholars in in better resourced in locations masquerading as normative neutral standards and under these circumstances then Scholars writing from under resource locations find ourselves perpetually playing catchup to registers of engagement that are crafted elsewhere while writing from locations that either do not support sustained critical engagement with or fluent emulation of those supposedly normative scholarly Trends so in that scenario then at best our work will always look like passable you know they're okay but basically passible imitations of Trends methods and theories and registers that are crafted elsewhere so the question I find myself asking is if we were to sidestep catching up to Northern vernaculars That masquerade as normative registers of what academic engagement should look like then what are the other possibilities that we might be able to unlock what are the hidden opportunities in belatedness and of course here I'm sure the one text that comes to mind for many of us is uh Johannes fabian's time and the other how anthropology makes its object because it's an important reference point in thinking through the question of time and belatedness and of course fabian's notion of alron special temporal distancing in reference to the ways in which those who are marked as nonwestern others are often deemed to be lagging behind time is really key to making sense of this charge of belatedness that has historically marked Africans and African interventions as out of time but beyond the academy African life worlds are perpetually marked by this crisscrossing um Shadows of the charge of relatedness and the supposed need to in a way intervene and Fast Track our integration into the referential um contemporaneity of Euro America as a normative time frame right so these deepr rooted Logics of alron delay precede a lot of the scholars work and so when is stuck with the with the task of proving our Co evil nness right proving our compliance with the methods theories and epistemes of euroamerican referential time so when you operating within these frames of intelligibility that Maru is either absent or delayed or not yet ready or underdeveloped or illiterate or primitive as um The Scholar kaguru mashara paraphrases belatedness then it's very tempting to pursue currency in all the senses of the term at all cost but the cut here is that what is often obscured by this charge of belatedness is the well documented history of intentional undermining and sabotage of African universities by both African play political players as well as EUR American Funding institutions right from their founding and of course we all know about the chaos that were Unleashed by the world bank's structural adjustment programs in Africa from the 1980s and what that did to the knowledge production landscape and and there's a whole extensive body of scholarship on this history but it's rarely factored in when we confront this charge of relatedness as one of the crazy things that um terms in a way metaphorically references and the third and final word then now that that that comes to mind for me um is I thought about uh Professor Doo's mapping of where we find ourselves and what we need to do about this state of affairs is refuse so I've been thinking a lot about refusal and I come to it via the etimology of the word refuse which I find useful in three directions so firstly refuse is a verb that can mean to reject to decline or to disregard secondly the term refuse is a noun that references waste trash rubbish something that's being rejected lastly my dictionary tells me that both of these words that's that's refuse and refuse have their roots in the Latin word which I don't know how to pronounce um it's refuser which has its own roots in turn in the word ref refunder which means to restore or to give back or to return according to my dictionary and my dictionary says that this is where we get the word refund from so I was I I was very intrigued by this connection between re um repair restoration refund and refusal and refuse so refuse or refuse in these three meanings as a verb referencing rejection as a noun referencing waste and as a verb indexing repair seems to me to be a useful thread that holds together the line of thought that was mapped by uh Professor ad's lecture because in some ways it sums up her answer to the question question how can we be true to an African agenda and survive and thrive in today's Academy and what I'm hearing in a way as a paraphrase of what what what what she is telling us is that one answer is by practicing refusal right and so if we look at the extensive body of scholarship on Africa and Africans place in the world then of course we come face to face with the long histories of exclusion from what the Jamaican scholar Sylvia winter has tered defining statements of the human and of course we know in as much as I'm talking here in reference to to sort of um histories of exclusion from literally the category human we also know that these histories have colored perceptions of African studies relative to the so-called mainstream disciplines so I'm sure historians might tell us about the kinds of tensions that exists between being a historian and being an African historian or or historian of Africa in my own discipline I can definitely tell you that in my discipline of literary studies we still have hierarchies between English studies and African literary studies in English right so and and so in a way these are carryovers from this earlier history of exclusion from the perimeters of the human that ultimately it leaks over into the the the the disciplinary not just boundaries but also so the values that are the value that is attached to certain bodies of knowledge and ultimately then the tag African comes with a certain um undervaluing that has its roots in these histories of exclusion that we're sitting with so these long histories of unhuman of afrod descended people and African life worlds have always been underwritten by our categorization as Refuge as disposable categories of the human and this these histories continue to legitimize New Waves of Abandonment and disposability to date across Global Africa often under the the leadership and the control and the power of fellow Africans afro descended people and of course we also know that it extends Beyond Global Africa to many communities whose humanity is considered debatable negotiable disposable as the elephant currently in the global room that Professor adako noded to reminds us so I hear in her lecture then an invitation to respond to the to such ANH humaning not only of global Africa but of all communities that struggle with different forms of unh humaning I I hear in the lecture an invitation to respond to these forms of unh humaning with a double refusal in the two senses of the word firstly refusing this misrecognition of some categories of the human and by extension the forms of emancipatory projects that underpin Global Africa and secondly refusing in the sense of repairing the broken fuse of our Humanity through knowledge practices and forms of solidarity and modes of relation that Sid stape the compromising pressures of currency as well as the charge of belatedness that I talked about earlier so of course the repair work then is the toughest part of the task that confronts Us in thinking about the freedom dreams of global Africa because it Demands a tenacious optimism at that a different future is possible that we can reach Higher Ground as as we had in the closing song and this optimism is extremely difficult to generate and to activate in the face of so much that sometimes appears to spell the guaranteed defeat of our efforts that they so so much evidence that seems to reinforce to us that actually yeah your your Victory is not guaranted so how do we how do we cling to that optimism how do we renew that optimism and so I return again to Professor adako for's um reference to storytelling as one of the ways in which we express our truths and the role of creative expression um in her words in seeking the places where the story was trun aborted or deviated to address the trauma of historic dissonance close quote and so I take my Quee from her to return to my discipline of African literature for one suggestion about how we insist ourselves into the future in the face of so much evidence that there's a lot we up against a lot so and for me I see one such suggestion from from from African literature that says it is possible to insist yourselves into the future regardless of the systems you're up against even if the systems you're up against literally spell death and the suggestion comes from Chin's last novel I'm sure we all know of chinua and his last novel was titled ant hills of the Savannah so in this novel um we read about a story of the leopard and the toise and the leopard had been looking for the ttoys for a long time and for a while the ttoys had managed to escape the the leopard but one day unfortunately the leopard bumped into the tto on the path so when the leopard caught up with the ttoys he told him yes I've finally caught up with you and I've really been looking for you yes today is my lucky day I caught up with you so the totto asked the leopard for a few minutes to prepare his mind before he died and clearly the leopard figured look you're going nowhere right so do you right so he steps aside and he was like yeah go for it prepare yourself and now I'll quote from the novel but instead of standing still as a leopard had expected the totoys went into strange action on the road scratching with hands and feet and throwing sand furiously in all directions why are you doing that asked the puzzled leopard the Tes replied because even after I'm dead I would want anyone passing by this PO to say yes a fellow and his March struggled here close quote so in the face of the crazy things that perpetually threaten to silence us or coopt our freedom dreams it matters that we keep the struggle alive and as a Toto is new it was important that future passes by not a fellow and his March struggled here it was important that even in his death he kept on trying and inscribing a message of Hope into the future a message that would out leave him so one possible response to the question what will we be remembered for my hope is that in our different ways we will cast into the future a spirit of creativity of refusal of optimism that a different future is possible that we can reach the higher ground that um the song at the end was signaling that ultimately that other future is possible and it we may not be around to see it but we owe that future some kind of inscription into it which is the point that um that that the tto makes in his preparation even in his moment of surrender he still insists himself into being into that future and my sense of tonight's lecture is precisely that insistence into the future and not just surviving but thriving thank you yeah thank you so much thanks infinitely for this uh yeah extraordinary input you gave us um I don't want to take much time myself I promis that we will have a Q&A session we started a little late but I think we should take perhaps up to 15 minutes uh for uh reactions and questions from the audience and before I invite the audience also online using this function that is called f and a FR and an which is J for Q&A but I would like to welcome in our midst uh his Excellency the ambassador of Bina Faso to Germany Professor J waru who is over there it's really a pleasure to to have you here and for those who don't know uh Professor waru he's also a member of the Africa M clust of Excellence because he used to work at UH University of J KERO in wagu before he was um given the position as Ambassador so it's really great that you made the trip and uh crossed the Turing a with the snow today thank you so much for coming so uh the there's an Arabic adage which saysa uh the best speech is the short speech speech that is to the point and on this note I invite uh Q&A contributions and of course uh I think uh we will need both of you here professor adaku andu and Professor musila so uh the floor is open yes please you will get a microphone uh thank you um so thank you to professor adoo and uh Dr musila uh Prof M um so one thing that struck me from the um from uh Professor adum uh presentation was uh Harry bellafonte so I I don't know I I kind of think like his legacy is a bit comp complicated like um I guess it's a case of he said she said uh but uh essentially as a kid said that um he told her that there's nothing that a black woman could do for him right and if you're talking about centr uh you know Africans and uh just like um feminism and Womanhood and how do we reconcile that when can we say that it's okay for this person to be cancelled like when do we stop being charitable in our submissions thank you okay that's a tough one first of all I don't know that so I I will answer the question without referring to Harry bellonte because I I'm sure you probably have your facts but I don't know um it saddens me if this is something that he did say and I would I'd want to see the context and all of that uh when do we cancel somebody I think is the you know more important an question as I tried to convey in the lecture at some point all of us are going to misspeak um in in my family at home we we have a saying that there are certain things we only say around the kitchen table it's like we're not going out there to say them but if you had a mic in the room there would definitely be something one or the other of us said that would earn us cancellation but it's a safe space so we are able to say things that in polite company uh we might not say we have the time and the space to um to explain why we're saying that right and and this is this is why I also said read the room it's not everything that's in here that needs to come out here right but to the more fundamental question when will somebody should somebody be celled I guess it depends on who is doing the counseling because what what's what's your level of Tolerance and what's mine my level of Tolerance how much grace am I going to give to somebody who who spoke out of 10 how many times will I extend that Grace will I extend it the first time okay I forgive you maybe you apologize right and you made amends especially then I will not I AIA will not cancel you but again it depends on what you said but if you repeat the offense then it's like you're not Ser you're not a serious person so um for me it would a it would be a depends answer it also depends on what you said and whether it lines up also with your actions so for me there are people I don't I don't follow I don't site them in my work anymore because their personal life doesn't line up with um some of the things they say in public they sound fine but we know some of the things that they do this is me um I kind of have decided that I'm not going [Music] to again it depends on what your offens is but I try not to throw people under the bus in public especially if I have the opportunity to speak to you in private and to say dude what you just said was really not cool for us to have a conversation about it they may say a you're making sense let me go and apologize right if I thrw you under the bus in public I've broken all the bridges like you and I we can't communicate again because I really threw you out there so I I want to give people the the the chance to to say sorry and to mend their ways so a first offense um probably not but then having said that there are some guys out there in the manosphere you you I mean like you even get5 of Grace from me because it's like we don't say those things right so it's a nuanced answer I'm not trying to cop out um I'm really saying you know what I think and I will let Grace also respond even though she didn't mention Harry bellafonte so she can say not my guy but um you okay what the are you offerring to respond on our behalf or is that a followup question okay so and and you don't have to answer but I I yes on the canellation and I I guess it's a it's one we need to constantly confront I don't know enough about counseling because it's a tool clearly that does some work I just um I'm unclear on the work that counseling does in the collective sense right that when we canel cuz from my discipline I know there are sections of the community that canell chimamanda go adich for instance um and a whole range of writers who are problematic and so for my discipline these a these a these a huge challenge that what do we do and and the question I'll throw I I'll I will cou by throwing it back to all of us to say our reality as the human Community broadly and the Global African Community specifically and even more specifically the Continental African Community has been that a lot of our icons have given us so much but taken away so much more right so and here I would just obviously if we go to our our our our nationalist Heroes right because ultimately nationalism problematic Etc at the end of the day it was a weapon and an um an important vehicle of African emancipation that we we just cannot run away from that but if you look at a lot of these folks think I mean K kruma than Umi than tab a lot of these folks made so much possible but they also did so much damage and so the challenge then for me is always what do what do I do with that and how do we do it in ways that that that that compel us to acknowledge what these people enabled and to simultaneously also acknowledge the harm they did and my worry about counseling is that it it's it's very it doesn't allow me to do that in my understanding but like I said I don't understand enough um of it as a absolutely and I would say the same about Bella Fon then that yes he's clearly a problematic figure but his work did so much space making it it it it it did so much work in terms of just space making and making our Humanity possible so we need to figure ways of reconciling them and and we all filled with paradoxes and contradictions right so also who will be left uncancelled um at the end of the day but then what's the barometer no I think your your responses also clearly show uh that we are at a volatile moment in African studies and uh all your observations and remarks I think were really pertinent to show where we stand also with the Africa multiple cluster and I'm also grateful that uh the two of you are ready to walk with us in the advisory report but we have one more question here is that right yeah um thank you very much Pro for this uh very interesting um lecture um the question is about um how ready are the universities in Africa to to shift to be more responsible as you are calling for it and I wonder also if the concept of University as it is now especially in Africa is really um met to um to change or to to be a tool for uh for for the transformation of uh Africa in general thank you did you hear it all I didn't get well the question was about the role of universities in Africa uh broadly speaking and specifically can you perhaps U rephrase your question sorry I missed some of that I don't know if um I I I wonder if the universities the universities in Africa nowadays if they are really um ready to shift to change to contest um to to contest the idea of the University as it is so that they can be ready to to be a tool of a anticipation in Africa and the second one uh yeah the first the first one is uh um is about the idea the idea of University itself like does it fit really in this Global transformative agenda wow not being a university administrator myself anymore um you know when when um when our universities were set up on the continent some of them before independence some of them after Independence and they have different histories and relationship to the colonial Mission and so on these were European constructs right the the UN I mean we had old universities in Africa before these ones but the universities you know we had ancient universities in Sudan and Egypt and several places the current universities are European constructs they came with disciplines constructed in a particular way particular methodologies questions blah blah blah um in Ghana at the time and talking about problematic I mean in chroma right but enuma had the Practical understanding that you know what this University is a contradictory space a paradoxical space can be a problematic space but we're going to use it for the best that we can The Institute of African studies where I'm located was established by enoma in ' 62 and there's a speech that he gave at the opening of The Institute called the African genius where he gives us it's really a Manifesto of what we are supposed to do and it's as relevant today as it was then my understanding is that for enoma this was a compromise so we're going to have this space that takes back the the knowledge in the ways that we are supposed to in fact he says that we should study Africa in African centered ways Beed of their suppositions and and and whatever of of eurocentric knowledge he specifically says that he also says that we should think of the diaspora so this was a way and his intention was that we might also then feel so the insute of African studies has every possible discipline there we've had lawyers architects sociologists geographers and so on historians political scientists name it his thinking was that this would filter into the quote unquote mainstream departments in some ways it did in other ways it didn't it you know it goes like this um as Grace importantly said people did work that they were not alive to see the fruits of right so it's it's gone like this and I think that that was a compromise to the existence of a university that is not necessarily creating an emancipatory space for everyone and where we are wedded to these disciplines that can be problematic so um that's that's a long winded answer we've got the universities for good or ill that's what we have we're not going to bring back the ancient universities we can't so we have to work with the ones that we have uh personally me I'm a pragmatist so so I can decide to be inside the academy or say you know what this a very problematic space I'm going to leave but I want to concede that there has been so much good work that has been done within spaces within the university the university you know University administrations most of our universities are public universities they have to think of the Ministers of State the presidents and so on they have to be politicians but people within the University have done amazing work that has been transformation emancipatory and so on and I think that this is what we are both saying this evening that those of us who are there should try and do and we've had Vice chancellors who have also had that vision and we've had Vice chancellors who have not so it you know it behooves us who have received the Baton from other people who you know people went to prison for the things that they believed in so you know it's it's up to us and I forget the second question but I'm going to um pass the but on to you in a way you you've actually answered answered both of them that um as an institution it's definitely problematic and it's not just in Africa the the university as an institution is a problematic institution but like many other institutions right that a lot of the institutions we operate and are very flawed they're imperfect but within their imperfection they their pockets of room within which to do good work and within which many people have done good work both in universities on the continent and elsewhere and for me that's why I stay put in the academy that I still believe in what the the the space of the University even if it's aspirational a lot of the time that possibility of pursuing ideas knowledge investing in certain understandings of relation of community of the future and that insistence in that possibility it is there but again it's our job to do exactly what what Prof ad was reminding us earlier those tips around how do we navigate around all these blockages the the obstacles are there and they're there everywhere I think as we've learned from the recent Harvard situation it's not just in Africa but even in that harage they people who are doing good work and in the same way um in legon in in more University in in in vet University their pocket where we are doing transformative work so a transformative University likely but transformative work from universities it is happening and that's why we still there thank you very much uh I think it's also a reminder I whatever you said in your lecture and you your response and what you just uh um said in respon to the questions I think is for me as so a a an important reminder of our ethical responsibility as academics as Scholars as people who work in African studies and it's an important takeaway for me and I think we can conclude now uh and I have to say a few words of thanks to quite a number of people I we can sit down right I will not name them um well I think you have to stay here okay uh for a moment so I want to thank our uh sign language interpreters for a formidable job and [Applause] [Music] um I have to thank um um the team that uh was in charge of this event uh from the head office in the cluster and that's particular natal rling [Applause] surer and um there's a list of 20 people who I will not uh mention by name here but I would like to mention Sabina grina not sure whether she's here or outside uh who's also been doing a tremendous job uh in uh publicizing our event and doing everything surrounding our PR but uh the biggest [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thanks to the three of you um AWA thank you so much oops Grace I really appreciate it and fera please yeah so let's thank again our [Applause] speakers
Origins & context
- Title
- New Year Lecture 2024 - Prof. Dr. Akosua Adomako Ampofo
- Language
- English
- YouTube playlist
- New Year Lecture
- Date
- February 22, 2024
Identifiers & sources
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