Research, ideas, and leadership for a more secure, peaceful world

Past Event
Seminar

The Illusion of Change: Analyzing the Struggle for Emancipation in Postcolonial Africa

Open to the Public

In their short lives as independent states, most African countries underwent two major societal shifts expected to drastically cut the roots with previous governance models and bring about a progressive project of emancipation. Yet both transitional periods represented two lost opportunities to give birth to meaningful change. Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique will be analyzed as case studies of postcolonial states which experienced both political transitions

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come-first served basis.

Date: Time: - Location: Littauer Building - Belfer Center Library, Room 369
An unidentified man votes in Guinea-Bissau, June 19, 2005. The West African state's first presidential election since a 2003 coup had 13 contenders vying for the top post, including the man the military ousted two years ago.

About

In their short lives as independent states, most African countries underwent two major societal shifts expected to drastically cut the roots with previous governance models and bring about a progressive project of emancipation. Yet both transitional periods represented two lost opportunities to give birth to meaningful change. The first occurred as the new states were becoming free from colonial constraints, when the liberation project was supposed to unfold, but was converted into an authoritarian socialist model of government; and the second took place in the beginning of the 1990s, when the liberal democratization wave swept through the continent and dethroned the widespread single-party system but generally turned out to uphold the power configurations previously in place.

The main purpose of this research is to trace what happened to the goal of emancipation in Africa, and to democracy as the means to achieve it, by unveiling how structures of domination remained hegemonic and prevailed. Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique will be analyzed as case studies of postcolonial states which experienced both political transitions and, notwithstanding original promises and aspirations, failed to change power relations in any fundamental way, to the detriment of the overwhelming majority of their populations.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come-first served basis.