Bantaba 2024: The Year of Sankofa

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Afrika SIG Bantaba 2024: Enacting Sankofa to Regenerate Power through Collective Action

Proposal

The Bantaba has been Afrika SIG’s signature event since 2017. Our inaugural year was focused on Education in the African Union's Agenda 2063 and spent time unpacking, problematizing, and exploring possible directions. In 2018, we considered reconstructing North-South relationships based on post-colonial African perspectives. Then in 2019 we discussed ways to decolonize Education for Sustainability and questioned what exactly needed to be sustained. By 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we again focused on African perspectives, but asked what does education look like beyond the human. As the pandemic continued throughout 2021, we discussed the urgent need for all to be mindful of our social responsibility in contemporary Africa and interrogated the roles of civil society, the academy, and philanthropy. As the pandemic persisted in 2022, we began to revisit and take stock of where we stood regarding the old but persisting call made by many African scholars and thinkers of both the 20th century and current to break away from the deeply colonial and Eurocentric education systems left behind by colonial powers. Much thinking and educational reforms have been undertaken in Africa to bring about an education system that is in sync with African cultures and value systems and that meets the aspirations of the people in a world that is ever evolving in the production of new knowledge and technologies. Thus, we visualized the ideal of an Afrocentric education system. By 2023, we found Africa At The Crossroads and decided to Claim the 21st century through equitable education, transdisciplinary skills development and integrated strategies for transformation. Now in 2024, we are ready to enact Sankofa to Regenerate Power through Collective Action. For this we will seek to learn from past efforts as we celebrate effective efforts implemented over the past 7 years and collectively plan our next steps.

Authors

• Rhonesha L Blache, BLACHE Education, LLC

• Martial Dembélé, University of Montreal