Expert meeting on the “Development of a Glossary of ‘Decolonial’ Concepts, Paradigms and Categorizations applied to Africa”

UNESCO will organize an Expert meeting on the “Development of a Glossary of ‘Decolonial’ Concepts, Paradigms and Categorizations applied to Africa” in Kigali, Rwanda, from 29 April to 1 May 2019. This meeting aims to define a conceptual framework that would identify problematic or biased concepts and notions that need to be revised or replaced by “decolonial” terms.

It is part of the second phase of the General History of Africa (GHA) Project, which UNESCO launched in 2009 following the completion, in 1999, of the first eight volumes of this collection.

The second phase aims to update the GHA collection and contribute to the renewal of history teaching in African countries, in order to promote the process of regional integration and contribute to the African cultural renaissance.

More specifically, the meeting will address the following points:
• review and validate the proposed conceptual framework and methodology for the approach to identify the concepts and problematic terms applied;
• review, complete and validate the proposed list of commonly used biased or derogatory terms to be deconstructed and replaced; and,
• propose concepts, ideas and categorizations of African inspiration that can contribute to the plurality of representations of the world.

In this way, the meeting pursues the efforts made in the context of the General History of Africa (GHA) to renew not only knowledge about Africa by providing an African perspective on the continent's own history, but also the vocabulary used by the social and human sciences to reflect African and Afro-descendant realities.