ECAS2019 Patrick Chabal roundtable
Channel: NomadIT
Date: 18/06/2019

Is Africa’s future capitalist?
Chair: Victoria Uwonkunda (BBC Africa) 
Panelists: Atieno Ndomo (independent consultant, social policy specialist), Rehad Desai (director, Everything Must Fall), Sangu Delle (entrepreneur), Hazel Gray (CAS, University of Edinburgh)

Named after the late Patrick Chabal, a past President of AEGIS, the keynote roundtable is a centrepiece of ECAS2019, providing the opportunity for panelists to roam widely and to tackle some big ideas. The topic under discussion is Is Africa’s future capitalist? This question is intended to be provocative and to provide a framing that will enable the panelists to reflect on a wide spectrum of possible outcomes. By ‘capitalism’ we have in mind not just an economic system – although that is fundamental – but something that has social and cultural meanings as well. The participants are invited to consider different variants of capitalism, as well as radical alternatives.

The topic under discussion is timely, as the viability of capitalism re-emerges as a central theme in public discourse and academic study alike: triggered in part by questions of environmental sustainability, resource constraints and galloping global inequalities. As the continent that is par excellence resource rich and set to experience an unprecedented demographic boom, Africa is bound to find itself at the centre of global debates over the next century. With a very youthful population, one can anticipate a flourishing of cultural creativity and innovation that is already apparent in the creative industries. Ideas about the future have been creatively imagined over many decades in the film, writing and music of Afrofuturism, and have entered into popular culture in recent years through films such as Black Panther and in the work of authors such as the Africanfuturist Nnedi Okorafor. In grasping the opportunities and tackling the constraints, Africans will fashion their own varied futures in ways we might already anticipate. In bringing together figures who come from very different walks of life, we anticipate a lively, informed and constructive debate that will set the tone for ECAS2019 as a whole.