Short Abstract

With the newly established CEEPUS Network called African Studies in Central and Eastern Europe (ASiCEE), this panel wishes to encourage contemporary discussions about the African engagements of CEECs, and Africa–CEE relations, with a focus on international relations, geopolitics, P2P connections.

Long Abstract

The ASiCEE network focuses on systematic academic cooperation on African Studies within the CEE region by connecting existing centres of excellence, departments, emerging research groups, and individual scholars who research on African societies, politics, and cultures from regional, comparative, and transnational perspectives. Africa-oriented foreign policies, (re-)engagements with African countries, involvement in humanitarian projects and development assistance have pierced up on the political agendas of countries of the wider macro region in the first decades of the 21st century, but certainly after former Eastern Bloc countries joined the European Union in 2004. There have been some good initiatives from V4 countries since the early 2000s, and all have revealed the importance of inclusive development, with a focus on the local communities – in particular as far as sustainability is concerned. Since the 2010s, every country of the ex-Communist Bloc, including the Russian Federation itself, has also fostered pragmatic foreign policies with African regions and states. Asserting an increased role in the external actions of the EU has not fully manifested yet, but there are important steps taken in terms of climate change, for instance, or in the context of EU–Africa relations. The panel wishes to offer the opportunity for presenting papers, which tackle how African issues are viewed via CEE Prisms, and in general, how African Studies are dealt with, managed and imagined in Central and Eastern Europe, and how networking across the region (and beyond) can contribute to even more nuanced understandings of Africa.

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