Short Abstract

This panel examines if efforts to decolonise development in Africa truly shift power or simply recreate old hierarchies. It explores diverse meanings of decolonial struggles and highlights African-led solutions challenging inherited colonial frameworks in development policy and practice.

Description

Decolonising development in Africa remains a pivotal yet contested process as the continent grapples with the enduring legacies of colonialism woven into its political, economic, and knowledge systems. This panel explores whether current movements toward decolonisation are effecting meaningful shifts in power relations or merely replicating colonial hierarchies through new modalities. Central questions it engages include: How do divergent understandings of decolonisation shape these struggles across African contexts? To what extent do African-led initiatives—from economic regionalism and cultural reclamation to indigenous knowledge-centred policy—challenge entrenched epistemic colonial frameworks that persist in development theories and institutions? Drawing on examples such as the African Continental Free Trade Area’s potential for intra-African economic sovereignty, cultural heritage repatriation efforts, and educational reforms embracing indigenous languages and knowledges, the panel considers pathways toward greater autonomy and justice. It also problematizes the risks of co-optation and symbolic gestures that fail to transform structural inequalities or redistribute decision-making power. Ultimately, this panel aims to foster critical dialogue on how development praxis in Africa can transcend inherited colonial legacies to build genuinely emancipatory models. By centering African voices and innovative approaches in theory and practice, the panel advances a reimagining of development that is equally decolonial, just, and sustainable.

This Panel has 5 pending paper proposals.
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