The Global Africa reading group aims to facilitate critical discussions and dialogues on topics pertaining to ‘Africa’ and the Global South as a whole. In this, it strives to create a scholarly community that encompasses and accommodates the multitude of studies of and from Africa, and an avenue for keeping abreast with the academic developments pertaining to our theorised notion of ‘multiple Souths’. Combining aspects of a reading group and a seminar, Global Africa aspires to bring together esteemed international guest speakers with the China Africa Fashion Power project team, other African studies, humanities, and social sciences scholars based at  Dutch universities, as well as interested PhD and Master students.

About the ERC project China Africa Fashion Power

Fashion is a significant economic force globally and one of the most poignant indicators of cross-cultural exchange. Thus, the China Africa Fashion Power project uses everyday fashion (clothes, textiles, accessories, hair) as the lens to investigate how China’s global power is manifested, negotiated, and resisted in people’s daily life in Africa (Kenya and Mozambique).This will be studied by critically examining Africa-China networks of everyday fashion production, trade, retail and consumption, using a multi-disciplinary, multi-method, multi-sited, and multi-scalar approach. Thereby, the five-year-project aims to  theorise how everyday fashion is created, circulated, valuated, and consumed in and through Global Souths Value Chains connecting Guangdong, Nairobi, and Maputo.

Time schedule: The Global Africa seminar will be held from 3:00-4:30pm on Fridays, 14^th February 2025,  28^th March 2025, 11^th April 2025, and 20^th June 2025. The event for Friday 14^th February 2025 will take place in Room D1. 18A, Oudemanhuispoort 4-6, Amsterdam . All subsequent sessions will be in Room 0.16, BG1 Turfdraagsterpad 9, Amsterdam. All speakers will present in person.

Attendance: Online Attendance via Zoom will be possible for most sessions. Drinks and snacks will be served.

For enquires: f.m.m.atchulo@uva.nl and j.e.vonpezold@uva.nl

Friday 11th April 2025 (0.16 BG1): Afro-Sino Tech Futures

Speakers are Dr. Seyram Avle and Dr. Wei Wang. The session will be moderated by Dr. Tommy Tse (UvA).

Seyram Avle will give a talk titled ‘Other Futures? Afro-Sino Entanglements in the Digital Age’. She is an associate professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She researches on digital technology cultures and innovation across parts of Africa, China, and the United States. Her work primarily takes a critical approach towards understanding how digital technologies are made and used, as well as their implications for issues of labour, identity, and futures.

Wei Wang will give a talk titled ‘Predict the unpredictable? The futile data colonialism and techno-developmentalism in China’s industrial innovation’. He is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the China Africa Fashion Power project at the University of Amsterdam. His research explores China’s multi-dimensional global influences on Africa through ethnographic fieldwork. He currently focuses on how everyday fashion products are designed and produced in China and eventually reach African markets.

1. Friday 20th June 2025 (0.16 BG1): Book Salon

Speakers are Dr. Andrea Pollio and Dr. Maria Repnikova. The session will be moderated by Dr. Carwyn Morris (Leiden).

Andrea Pollio will give  a talk on his book Nairobi, techno-capital: Global China and the Silicon Savannah. He is assistant professor of Economic and Political Geography at the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, and a research associate of the African Centre for Cities at University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is a former Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow at both institutions. He is one of the founding editors of Platforms & Society, and a co-curator of UTA-Do - Urban Theory Workshop-Africa.

Maria Repnikova will give a talk on her book China’s Image-Making in Africa: Competing for Soft Power in the Shadows of the West. She is an expert on China, an Associate Professor in Global Communication, and the inaugural William C. Pate Chair in Strategic Communication at Georgia State University. She is the author of the award-winning book, Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism (Cambridge 2017), as well as the recent, Chinese Soft Power (Cambridge Global China Element Series). Other than working on China, Maria Repnikova does comparative work on information politics in China and Russia.