The 17th Biennial AAPS Conference and 50th Anniversary of AAPS

17 th BIENNIAL AAPS CONFERENCE 2023 AND 50 th ANNIVERSARY OF AAPS
“Geopolitics of Knowledge in the COVID-19 Era: A Window for Epistemic Tension and Self-determination in Africa?”

The African Association of Political Science (AAPS) was formed in Dar es Salam in 1973 as the continental parent body of political scientists in Africa and to serve as a platform to interrogate the state
of the politics, governance, economy, and development of African states. Since then, AAPS has promoted the systematic study and application of African Political Science scholarships. The Association has also interrogated the viability of knowledge conjectured about/for Africa.

In 2023, AAPS will be 50 years old, and this coincides with its 17th Biennial Conference which theme is “Geopolitics of knowledge in the covid-19 Era: a window for epistemic tension and self-
determination in Africa?” This theme is a pretext to identify and discuss not only the way knowledge battles framed discourses, practices, and policies but also the circulation of knowledge models and
powers during the COVID-19  pandemic.

Indeed, the Covid-19 era is a “gloomy compendium of threats” 1, a critical time not only exposing deep flaws in national health systems, the global economic and education processes, but it also exacerbated deficiencies in several countries of the world given the reality of public health as the foundation of everything else. For instance, although fighting the virus required cooperation notably in research, innovation, and knowledge sharing 3, the pandemic also revealed epistemic tensions, highlighting processes through which knowledge is gained or lost on subjects and objects and how it is
socially and geopolitically situated. In this context, it is wrong to assume that “justice is the norm and injustice the unfortunate aberration” 4. Instead, the pandemic has been a marker of distributive unfairness in respect of epistemic goods5 . Epistemic injustice, as a wrong done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower, has two expressions: testimonial and hermeneutical6. For example, Altiery et al. brought to light the testimonial and hermeneutical injustice occurring in global healthcare that signposts disregard for the Global South agency. Two occurrences in Africa are good indicators of this epistemic inequality and the disregard it produces.

The first one is the way the World Health Organization (WHO) and the world at large responded to Madagascar’s Covid Organics, a traditional preventive and curative remedy against Covid-19 at the onset of the pandemic in April 2020. Although untested by WHO, the remedy, described by President Andry Rajoelina as “our bulletproof vest in the war against coronavirus", did not eventually protect Madagascans from Covid-19 deaths, the immediate disregard and dismissal by the WHO is indicative of global epistemic injustice. President Rajoelina’s retort in this regard is instructive: “What is
the problem with Covid Organics? The problem is that it comes from Africa’’.

The second occurrence is the response of the West to South Africa’s discovery and reporting of a new Covid-19 variant (Omicron) through genomic sequencing. The speed and transparency of the country’s scientific contribution to the global good, which reflect scientific excellence, was immediately drowned by a wave of flight bans to and from Southern Africa by many Western countries. Also, the omicron variant, which was considered more contagious and evaded vaccines, was quickly analyzed as potentially correlated with HIV, reactivating the spectra of the continent’s stigmatization with HIV. It did not matter that the five Covid-19 variants at the time emerged from four different continents. Africa easily became the Covid-19 scapegoat even though it was the least affected continent (officially less than 2% of the world deaths) contrary to the grim prognosis of fatalities at the start of the pandemic. Although different contexts, these situations raise the issue of knowledge inequality, with knowledge from Africa lampooned and the continent expected simply to be a recipient of knowledge products from the West. Africa’s knowledge products that were largely subjugated in the fight against the pandemic became instruments of epistemic de-imperialization , even though Africa eventually depended on vaccines from the rest of the world for its populations. The covid-19 era and more recent
global health challenges seem to bring “strength through chaos and crisis”, enhanced by the decolonial emergency.

Indeed, the pandemic is a metaphor and a powerful signpost of these epistemic tensions, which are based on a temporality of knowledge and truth regimes. Therefore, it is imperative to critically reconsider the coloniality of being and knowledge in Africa viz-a-viz the rest of the world. The prominent feature of the knowledge decolonization and epistemic freedom might be additional myths and illusions of freedom in Africa as Ndlovu-Gatsheni suggested. The foregoing raises a key question: is the economy and geopolitics of knowledge credibility and trust challenged by a new alterity within and beyond the pandemic? And if so, how is that opening a subaltern space out for policy and practice outside the mainstream?

This conference aims to bring scholars together on a transdisciplinary platform to answer these questions and welcomes panel and paper abstracts addressing notably (but not limited to) other related
issues such as:

- Forms and expressions of global epistemic tensions in knowledge production around the pandemic(s);
- Terms and modalities of African epistemic resistance and contribution to the dignification of African geography and biography of knowledge;
- Issues in Africa’s dependency on the West for solutions to global challenges;
- Broader challenges in the decoloniality of being, knowledge and power in Africa;
- Traces of a new (or renewed) distribution of the credibility economy and impact on African scholarship;
- The gender dimensions of knowledge creation and dissemination in Africa;
- The politics of truth and trust during the COVID and other pandemics;
- Implications in terms of polity, policies, and politics in Africa and the world.

The conference shall be held from 12 - 14 October 2023 at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Activities shall include plenary and panel presentations, AAPS governance and biennial general
meetings, election of new officers for AAPS for 2023 – 2025 and a gala dinner night to mark AAPS’ 50th anniversary.

Submission

We welcome submissions from researchers from different disciplinary and comparative perspectives. The criteria for selection are originality, quality of research, and relevance.

Paper abstracts should consist of a title and 200 words that specify the research question, methodology, and main findings. As for panel proposals, an abstract of 300 words, with title and themes, as well as the names and affiliations of each panellist with the title of their paper.

Submissions can be emailed to: aaps23conference@gmail.com. Final deadline: 31 July 2023.