– 2 –

“Pedagogical Use of the General History of ” Project

Elaboration of the common pedagogical content

for use in African schools

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First meeting of the drafting teams

*** Workshop on the revision of concepts, paradigms and categorization used in Social Sciences and applied to Africa

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Harare, Zimbabwe, 5 – 6 September 2011

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Concept paper

by Mr Martial Ze Belinga, consultant

General issue

The decolonization of the concepts, paradigms and categorizations used in the social and human sciences, particularly in history, is regarded as an epistemological necessity throughout the scientific and intellectual communities in the former colonies (and beyond) and as yet another component of the cultural and political emancipation of peoples who, not without difficulty, have thrown off the yoke of European colonization. In post-colonial studies, researchers in Latin America1 and Africa2 now select topics on the structural, protean remnants of colonial relations in the post-colonial era – a sort of “coloniality”3 that perpetuates age-old images and epistemological racism, in sum, disparaging non-Western cultural output. This inextinguishably burning issues somewhat informs the endogenous African approach taken in writing the General History of Africa (GHA). The outstanding preface to Volume I signed by Mr Amadou Mahtar M’Bow, Director- General of UNESCO, sounded the keynote of this groundswell.

The GHA was designed against a backdrop of political decolonization (1964) as an academic onslaught on biased wor ld vie ws of Africa as a mere object on the sidelines of the history of humanity. Owing to biased views on the weakness of African sources, reputed to lack written signs, the primacy of outside sources which were the only ones deemed to be genuinely credible in an ethnographic historiographical setting, was firmly established. All of the continent’s social forms, practices and historical developments, vie wed at the time from the “W estern provincialism” standpoint, were initially measured against the yardstick of European history only. As a result of the centuries-long slave trade and colonization of the African hinterland, stereotypes and prejudices became entrenched and a functional image of the negro in slave societies took shape. The writing of African history did not withstand wholesale biases, errors and distortions wrought as much by the historical need to justify hegemonic policies as by the dated omnipotence of an imperialist and condescending Europe holding sway over the whole world.

The General History of Africa, an act of self-assertion entailing rigorous exhumation of an African past, the patient collection of oral, written and archaeological sources, the use of African concepts, ethnonyms, toponyms and anthroponyms, and an interdisciplinary approach, amounts to proactive and positive decolonization of Africa-related imagery. As it has contributed to the goal of a form of emancipation, a break with historiography, it is indisputably a best practice, giving primacy to the complex dynamics of indigenous actors, making Africa their own subject. The relativization of external categories, be they temporal or spatial in respect of Africa viewed and extended to include the diasporas and peoples of African descent, and the careful but groundbreaking promotion of African terms are both indicative of the decolonizing mission that is to be accomplished by the General History of Africa.

Yet while the General History was being drafted, major events continued to run counter to the context described by Mr M’Bow. Great changes were at work in the world such as population changes, technological developments, the emergence of new industrial nations, the juxtaposition of international regionalization (the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), powerful liberal globalization f lows , the end of the

1 See, for instance, Rodolfo Stavenhagen’s Sept thèses erronées sur l’Amérique latine ou Comment décoloniser les sciences humaines. Paris, Editions Anthropos, 1971, first edition, 208 pages. 2 In 2007, Codestria launched an initiative rewarding the best essays on the subject “Decolonizing the social sciences in Africa: an incomplete programme”. Another approach, taken by the historian Achille Mbembe in his key work De la postcolonie (Karthala, 2000), addresses the issue of the link between colonial violence and the postcolonial “potentate”. 3 Several South American authors have used the term coloniality to describe global relations of domination, qualified as “structural” by the French philosopher Alain Renaut (Un humanisme de la diversité, Flammarion, 2009), established after colonization and surviving formal independence in such areas as ethno-racial hierarchies, economic system, gender, religion and knowledge. Cold War and the disestablishment of political apartheid, all combined with, at best, the disastrous stagnation of the African continent generally.

In regard to images and knowledge, the apparent decline of essentialist ideologies observed in the third-worldism years has been imploded by non-convergent ideological schools of thought. The likely and complicated causes of the “liberated” resurgence of new forms of essentialism, racism, rejection and indifference to intolerance include the waning of cultural relativism, nationalist rearmament in major but decreasingly influential Western countries (fears of decline, immigration, isolationism and an unpalatable colonial past), cyclical economic and financial crises, mass unemployment, anticolonial, Islamist and ultraliberal forms of fundamentalism and the rise of Asia. The statement made in 2007 by the winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, Dr Watson, to the effect that the black race was inferior, betokens the scale of the resurgence of racializing ideologies,4 with African history and culture being sidelined once more.

Moreover, Africa can only be envisioned as portrayed in the media – beset by the never-ending problems of the day. The dominant images by which it is entrenched in the collective mind are inseparable from the still prevalent colonial view and from the asymmetry of power, and they surface again whenever the situation changes. In-depth consideration of the educational component of GHA’s decolonizing mission is all the more justified because it has been found that essentialist, incomplete, partial and variously biased content does not die out automatically. The mission was also designed to redress other distortions endogenous to Africa and originating in elitist views, rivalry among peoples, religious discourse (Islam, Christianity) and other factors, all of which are potential distorting prisms. It is only fair to state that many Western researchers are resolutely taking radical approaches to the decolonization of images.5

If the decolonizing mission is to make headway, decisions must be taken on the inherent characteristics of pupil’s receptiveness to educational content. Owing to young African’s inclusion in information flows globalized by the Internet, their hunger for history and their thirst for dignity, this generation’s sensitivity to the unequal values placed on cultures and histories has been exacerbated. A common core of African knowledge, accessible to as many people as possible, is now required, more than ever before, as a matter of urgency – an urgency increasingly conveyed to the diasporas of African descent worldwide in search of preferably non-slave roots in the continent.

If the GHA is to be used successfully in education, an array of undefined terms, polysemy (words, concepts used in markedly different ways) and unfairly underestimated semantic and conceptual ambiguities must be phased out. The most ordinary concepts such as tradition, modernity, development, authenticity, identity, democracy and pre-colonial period do not necessarily raise the most problems.

In proposing a conceptual framework for the revision of knowledge of Africa, under the approach envisaged here, the parameters of epistemic coloniality – namely the remnants of colonialism in contemporary knowledge – will be reconfigured and exit strategies other than the mere inventory and avoidance of terms could be envisaged. Consideration should then be given to the thematic

4 As illustrated by Richard J. Hernstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve, 1994; Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, 1997; the rise of the extreme right vote in Europe; the preliminary Bénisti report (2004) on delinquency in France which, claiming that risks inhered in bilingualism, incriminated African culture by using the expression “speaking the country’s patois” and the denunciation of the racism of elites in Europe by Doudou Diène, then United Nations Special Rapporteur Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, Libération.fr, 22 November 2007. 5 See for instance Jack Goody, The Theft of History, Cambridge University Press, 2006. The author shows how European ethnocentrism claimed for itself the invention of institutions (democracy, market capitalism, and so on) which were at least in their infancy elsewhere (Asia and Africa). outlines of interactive reflection (workshop), putting into practice one or more realistic approaches to the decolonization of knowledge.

1. Epistemic coloniality: a conceptual framework

“Coloniality” of knowledge, a neologism used by specialist researchers in Latin America,6 denotes the wide variety of colonial relations that subsisted through adjustments in the post-colonial era as relations of global domination. Such asymmetries of power encompassed relations of cultural production, knowledge and imagery – hence epistemic coloniality. The names of individuals, places, things and the geopolitical divisions wrought by imperialism, languages and various cognitive objects “borrowed” from the West are all subsumed under cultural and epistemic coloniality. Widespread and hidden behind the sovereignty of former European possessions, it is perpetuated by drawing the veil on a narrow universal construct confined to learned materials attributed to the West.

The apparent “objectivity” of “scientific” knowledge, purportedly neutral about the place where it is enounced, cannot preclude a review of content for decolonization and revision. However, the embedding of interpretive grids on Africa in a broader historically constructed framework, an episteme, only rarely enables knowledge to be isolated from the setting in which it was produced. As a consequence of this mainly implicit form of widespread, protean and historical coloniality, a wide variety of the specific forms of content – concepts, paradigms, categories, classifications, usages, languages and images – must be revised. Such variety rules out any quantification, as the items in question are too heterogeneous. Cultural coloniality must therefore be formalized so that problematic content can be garnered.

2. Formalization of epistemic coloniality

Problematic cognitive content can be addressed through a simplified formal construct based on a few characteristic and nested variables. The discursive viewpoint, the schemes used (categories and paradigms) and the schemas applied (concepts, notions, preconceptions and prejudices) are the requisite identification variables.

Viewpoint: The knowledge in question can be understood owing to its epistemic thrust and the underlying explicit (Africa, continent without a history) or implicit (Africa, land of mystery) rationale. This generally requires overall understanding and a close analysis of discourse, texts, statements and sources.

Viewpoint is based on the cognitive divisions, otherwise known as schemes, within which reflection and thought are developed. Schemes are either categories, such as chronology (prehistory, history and middle ages), the space under consideration and classifications (dynamic societies versus static societies) or paradigms such as the paradigm of the birth of history with the Indo-European peoples or relatively “exotic” approaches specific to some disciplines (colonial ethnology) or ideologies (Marxism). Categories such as “slave” or “free man” determine the structure of historical images and narratives, yet they do not always reflect the complexity of African social situations, be they servile or not.7

6 Ramón Grosfoguel (Puerto Rico) works a great deal on issues relating to epistemic racism, epistemic diversity, and pluriversality. In his opinion, it is the universalist claim of biased Western epistemology, that determines the coloniality of knowledge, discrimination of cosmologies and extra-European epistemes. See “The Epistemic Decolonial Turn”, Cultural Studies, 2007, Vol. 21, No. 2, pages 211-223. Other authors such as Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (Plurinational State of Bolivia), Pablo Gonzales (Mexico) and A. Quijano (Peru), have written on these issues. 7 See, among others, Claude Meillassoux, L’esclavage en Afrique précoloniale, Maspero, 1975. As each view point entails schemes that support its main thrust, the coloniality of content applies only exceptionally to isolated words. It brings mutually evocative lexical and semantic fields8 into play in much the same way as “tribe” evokes savagery to be civilized and the imagery of an isolationist group. Similarly, the viewpoint held of a white involves spatial analysis categories focused on Lower Egypt, the northern part of the Nile and presumably non-African dynasties. Through cultural paradigms, and falsifications where necessary, Ancient Egyptian would be linked to Hamito-Semitic languages. Oppositions would be constructed, for instance, on the model of the Nubian enslaving the black African. They are even referred to as to the “brown race”, “whites with a black skin”.9

The concepts of civilization in the singular, for example, are often used for the classifications and relegations of non-European ways of life and organization. Racial superiority could in this case be both a teleological viewpoint (having a purpose) of the narrative and an ideology or a concept. Owing to the measurements of directive physical anthropology, it becomes a scientific notion that is supposed to be immediate, tangible, coinciding with existing prejudices. The stereotype of the “lascivious, lazy, stupid, nasty black” sums up preconceived ideas stemming inter alia from the idea, dear to Victor Hugo,10 of the barbaric, savage continent that impeded progress.

Languages, which raise preeminent cultural and cognitive issues,11 were identified quite early as versatile structuring agents in the decolonization of knowledge in that they convey memory, support a group’s own world vie ws and conserve “oral traditions”. While they form a natural part of the cultural diversity of humanity,12 their scientific contribution to historiography has been proven.13 Owing to their propensity to reveal the past and to anticipate the form that historical narrative will take, they are categories in the elementary forms of the coloniality of knowledge, despite the difficulties entailed in using them in the best possible way in scientific pursuits (codification, harmonization, morphosyntax, and so on).

Otherness and its situations of incommunicability, comparativism, a certain historical practice of the authoritarian designation of the other and the imputation of beliefs and values are all hallmarks of such coloniality. Examples are legion, 14 and diffusionism may have a hidden paradigm − the epistemological “whitening” of history. It would tend to deprecate or to “arrange” that which, from ancient geometry to Mandingo nautical prowess, 15 would depart from the dogmatic finality of the single subject of great history.

Table illustrating epistemic coloniality

The table proposes a possible formalization of the way in which the Western view, violence, socialization and interiorization have produced a biased extra-western history. It is this coloniality,

8 Groups of words referring to a single universe of meaning or, on the contrary, different meanings expressed by a few words. 9 See , “Nations nègres et cultures”, Présence africaine, 1954. See, too, “The peopling of Ancient Egypt and the deciphering of the Meroitic script”, The General History of Africa: studies and documents 9, UNESCO, Paris, 1985. 10 See the address delivered on 18 May 1879 before Victor Schoelcher at a banquet commemorating the abolition of slavery. Africa, a land belonging to no one, is described in it as an obstacle to progress and its colonization as a duty incumbent upon Europe. 11 See The educational process and historiography in Africa, UNESCO, 1985. 12 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, 2005. 13 See African ethnonyms and toponyms, UNESCO, 1984. 14 This may be illustrated as follows. The Komas Pétomanes tribe of the mountains of North Cameroon, thus designated by the French colonial authorities. See Guy Georgy, Le Petit Soldat de l’empire, Flammarion, 1992. Imputed ethnonyms are a critical location in coloniality, the dominant side even imposing its will on the identification or the identity of the dominated side. The example of the name of the ethnic group Mbondjo () is highly instructive in this respect – see the book by Jean-Michel Mabeko Tali, Barbares et citoyens, L’Harmattan, 2005, p.195. 15 See Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus, Random House, 1976. the legacy of the structures of knowledge, that the table attempts to portray. It links the corresponding schemes and schemas to the viewpoint of a narrative. Coloniality can thus be read moving from viewpoint to specific schemas. However, as the viewpoint is not always identifiable at first glance, it might also be possible to consider presuppositions and categories, staring with the most trivial prejudices. In sum, epistemic coloniality is read as follows:

Viewpoint → schemes→ schemas, or on the contrary, schemas → schemes→ viewpoint.

Viewpoint Schemes Schemas

Denial of history, humanity Continent without history, Hegel, Gobineau, Kant, prehistory, ethnology and primitive mentality and exotic peoples. diffusionism.

Ethno-racial hierarchies Civilization, modernity, Races, values, superior superiority, science, industry cultures, savages, barbarians and physical anthropology. and Greek miracle.

Eurocentric norm External “Imported” ethnonyms, designation/identification of the toponyms, anthroponyms: world (time and space). Brazzaville, Afonso 1. External characterization of Universal vs. the particular, African societies Feudalism, tribes, acephalous Comparisons and societies, ordered anarchy, classifications. mechanical solidarity and stationariness.

Pejorative terms and other Unfinished civilizations Slave mode of production, biases (falsifications) (Braudel), religions vs. archaic, benefits of animism, primitive art and colonization, pacification, Euro-Mediterranean absence of major religion, antecedents (discoveries). writing and nations in Africa. Colonization and humanism.

Ambiguities, polysemy. Black/white Africa, African Black peoples, black Africa, identity, traditions, pre-colonial, barrier of the Sahara, democracy, modernity and authenticity and Africanization. knowledge.

3. Decolonization and pedagogy: a strategic approach

It is clear from the formalization of the coloniality of knowledge in relation to Africa that the taking of an exhaustive inventory of problem terms is incomplete on several grounds, namely: the widespread dissemination and heterogeneity of the items to be revised, the implicit nature of bias and distortion, competition with portrayal by the media, the effect of the multicultural nature of contemporary societies on the writing of history, the reproduction of long-standing errors and falsifications, and equivocations. It would accordingly be appropriate to address the decolonization of knowledge in terms of revision strategies and not of eradication. Such a mission would involve building up specific cognitive compartments such as scientific research, glossaries and lexicons of languages and proper names, updating of maps, and so on.

The range of epistemic decolonization strategies is broad, but some points do stand out in the approaches of historians, in particular in the GHA process. Deconstruction: this consists in analysing a term, a Western concept (or one considered as such) and comparing it with the African facts to which it relates. The comparison is based on a thorough understanding of the concept placed in its historical, institutional or economic context, thus warranting, or not, the validation of its use in the African context. 16

“Genetic” conceptualization requires African terms/concepts (for instance, Mansaya, Ubuntu, Heer Issa to be used to describe African historical realities. Such conceptualization should investigate the historicity of indigenous facts and then relate them to concepts known or unknown in the social sciences, drawing on explanatory references – Verdier’s kabiye city.17 Notions in non- African languages (village communities, for instance) might also, after examination, reflect ancient African facts, values and institutions.

The use of African toponyms, ethnonyms and anthropon y m s ,18 mentioned above, is an especially useful way of reaching the source of African history from the standpoint of the Africans concerned. Their contribution to the understanding of migration (Swaziland) and the reconstruction of cultural kinship (Cheikh Anta Diop, Théophile Obenga, and Pape Diagne) has been proven, in spite of their problematic mobilization.

Terms, notions, paradigms and categories that are ultimately too problematic (peoples without history), pejorative (African patois/dialects as against Indo-European languages) or outmoded may be used for pedagogical refutation, restricted or forbidden: negative decolonization.

In promoting an attractive endogenous history, “educational paradoxes” regarding the background to tangible culture, the international relations of ancient Africa and world views, including the abolitionist aims of Sundiata Keita in the thirteenth century, could be handled tactfully. An African history viewed from the within and free of the remnants of essentialism would inevitably be paradoxical, as the images are so unfamiliar from an indigenous African standpoint.

Emergence from colonialism also entails rejection, criticism and invalidation of the physical space assigned to Africans and espousal of temporal and spatial images chosen by Africans. In particular, the diasporas of African descent worldwide together constitute with Africa what those concerned have long called “the black world”. A decolonized history will not overlook people of African descent worldwide, who constitute together with African migrants the African Union’s sixth region.

In connection with but not confined to the colonial problem, several terms used, such as tradition, African identity, development and democracy have different meanings which limit their usefulness. These terms would gain by being clarified so that learners and their teachers will not face insoluble problems.

The approach to the decolonization of knowledge on Africa, by affording an opportunity to recount an innovative history from within and with a different outlook on the world, would make a crucial contribution to what the poet and thinker Aimé Césaire called the meeting place for giving and taking, a rearranged universal, a “pluriversal” open to the greatest human variety.

4. Themes and challenges of the 5 to 6 September workshop

16 See S.M. Cissoko, “Problems of conceptualization and definition in African history with reference to some social and political institutions”, in The educational process and historiography in Africa, UNESCO, 1985, pp. 79-90. The author proposes a deconstruction of concepts deemed to be operating in Africa – race, clan, family, tribe, ethnic group, kingdoms and empires. 17 See R. Verdier, “Critical reflections on the ideas of law and power in pre-colonial Africa – terminological and conceptual problems”, in The educational process and historiography in Africa, op.cit. pp.21-33. The author deconstructs concepts applied to Africa (feudalism) and then proposes a “genetic” approach (historical and socio- anthropological) to the conceptualization of African facts. 18 See African ethnonyms and toponyms, op.cit. The challenge of the workshop on the decolonization and revision of knowledge in use in the social and human sciences in relation to Africa is manifold:

– familiarize writers of textbooks based on the UNESCO GHA with the innovative approach to this reference work ;

– encourage the writers to develop a critical approach to biased representations and inappropriate concepts and notions that are used, all too often, to teach about Africa and portray it in the media; raise awareness, in practical terms, of the maintenance of permanent links between epistemology and history;

– stimulate the emergence of functional approaches to the revision of concepts and categories, in a context of creative interaction and sharing of best practices.

In addition to questions of methodology and of immersion in the fabric of the GHA referred to in the working documents ahead of the workshop, the themes of the meetings will be linked to the revision of knowledge in relation to Africa. Accordingly, the themes will be grouped together, as set out below, and two themes will be considered on each of the two days of reflection.

– Day one: two themes: 1. Conceptualization and strategies for the decolonization/revision of knowledge. 2. Decolonial content and categories.

– Day two: two themes: 3. African languages, toponyms, ethnonyms, anthroponyms. 4. Pedagogical use, receptiveness and implications.

Theme 1: Conceptualization and strategies for decolonization

The sources of problematic terms and semantic fields include: cognitive bias, ignorance, incompetence, denial, falsification, disparagement, essentialist hierarchies (ethno-racial and cultural), deliberate oversight, and so forth. The workshop should address the problems below:

– Identification of problematic content. What approaches, tools and strategies should be used?

– Deconstruction of external paradigms. Would, for instance, a contextual analysis of their relevance, based on the “deconstruction – validation/rejection/correction/substitution” model be convincing? Terms such as prehistory, pacification, acephalous States, black Africa, hunter-gatherers and underdevelopment might be reworked in problem situations or practical exercises.

– Conceptualization of African historical realities from within – institutions, procedures, traditions (genetic approach). In which conditions, in what proportion are these concepts universalizable, valid beyond the local area?

– Dealing with ethnocentric content. Should the discriminating factor be the degree of ambiguity or the existence of a scientific consensus? Avoid, ban, warn?

Theme 2: Decolonial content and categories

The decolonization of problematic concepts might seem “negative”, incomplete and based only on the elimination of undesirables. By proposing a different, relevant thematic approach, it could change the general view of ancient knowledge.

– What categories should be proposed? A different periodization of African history (choice of dates, key periods and temporal divisions)? Which African space and denomination (black, white Africa)? What endogenous spatial representations? What about territories with large diasporas and many people of African descent? How can the tools of thought and representation of the world be developed in order to end the primacy of the external view?

– Could the emerging themes of the pedagogical use of the GHA also relate to the history of gender, minorities and the Boers? Cultural practices (sports, leisure, morality and aesthetics)? Institutions (politics, religion, law, economy, indigenous education and initiations)? Indigenous knowledge and skills (traditional medicine, nautical art, hunting, fishing, architecture, agro-ecology and gastronomy)? Relations with Asia, the East and the Americas? Ancient cities?

– Could the educational paradoxes contribute the revision of the scientific and collective image of African history? How can the thematic promotion of the great civilizations and cultures (Songhai, Ghana, Monomotapa, Swahili contribute to it? Would these intentional paradoxes, far from glorifying the past, help to restore the key idea of a historicity of African societies?

Theme 3: African languages, toponyms, ethnonyms and anthroponyms

The importance of African languages, proper names and ethnonyms to African history no longer needs to be proved. The workshop might therefore wish to address the questions below.

– What is the identifiable contribution of African languages, toponyms, ethnonyms and anthroponyms to a new understanding of the continent’s past and the living heritage of the diasporas? Which examples are representative?

– The problems posed by African terms have now been identified (not resolved): collection, transcription, harmonization and so on. What solutions could be found upstream of the drafting of the educational textbooks – glossaries, lexicons, dictionaries, teachers’ handbooks?

– What position should be taken concerning the use of languages and terms in African languages in the textbooks? Should it be cautious, ground-breaking or both?

Theme 4: Pedagogical use, receptiveness and implications

It would be supremely useful to consider the characteristics of the end use, receptiveness to and educational uses of the GHA. It was initially designed for Africa and also interests diasporas of African descent and African migrants outside the continent. Lastly, as many interested people, researchers and intellectuals wish to gain sound knowledge of Africa, so the material produced should be designed for the whole world.

The socio-demographical, political and educational characteristics and purchasing power of the target readership are significant in drafting works adapted to readers and learners. Hence the following questions may therefore be addressed:

– What is the significance of end use of the pedagogical use of the GHA? In terms of substance, form, themes? Are Africa, diasporas of African descent, African migrants, the whole world, compatible with a decolonized approach to the “common core” of African history?

– What are the relevant characteristics of young Africans, who are supposed to be the main target of GHA? Socio-demographical characteristics? Educational capital? Interest in African history? Openness to the world? Familiarity with concepts such as slave trade, democracy, sustainable development and African federal State? Relationship to iconic figures (Mandela, Sankara, Cabral, Malcolm X) and global stars?

– Do the characteristics of young Africans imply that some educational formats should be prioritized (pictures, comic strips, 3D, radio)? What about ICT (information and communication technology) for education? Acknowledgment of informal, popular education (literacy)? Are non-academic material and research produced by diasporas suitable for this educational content?

– How can the sizeable demand for history from persons above the age of 30 in Africa and elsewhere, be met in non-formal settings? And the demand for decolonized African history coming from Afro-Brazilians, Afro-Americans and West Indians?

These are some of the questions which should be discussed at this workshop – which will take place before the meeting of the drafting teams – in order to enable a fruitful exchange with knowledgeable experts, on the necessity of decolonizing concepts and paradigms applied to Africa.