CAAS 2025 Conference is Coming.

Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Africa

While we are particularly keen to receive submissions that address the conference theme (and subthemes) in different ways, multidisciplinary papers from all African studies are strongly encouraged.

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Call for Proposals

Africa is at a crossroads of immense opportunities and significant challenges. Despite having sixty percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, vastly distributed natural resources, and the fastest-growing youth population globally, Africa experiences multidimensional poverty, structural inequalities and exclusion, shocks and stressors (such as disasters, environmental degradation and climate change, food insecurity, violent extremism, economic volatility and epidemics), and epistemic injustice. For over six decades, actors at different levels, including governments, the private sector, academics, policy-makers, community leaders, civil society, etc., have proposed diverse recommendations, initiatives, and action plans to respond to the continent’s challenges. Despite multisectoral responses, Africa’s development aspirations seem like a rollercoaster ride. Consequently, commentators have made all kinds of prognoses: “Africa is doomed, Africa is rising. Africa is bleeding, Africa is thriving. Africa holds the key to the future.” (Kabou 1991; Van Wolputte, Greiner, & Bollig 2022).

The 2025 Canadian Association of African Studies (CAAS/ACEA) conference will be a platform to review the outcomes of past attempts to address Africa’s growth obstacles and to rethink current narratives, projects, and innovations geared towards unlocking the continent’s potential. Hence, the theme: Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Africa.

The 2025 CAAS/ACEA conference theme builds on past editions: “Sustainability and Sustainable Development: Past, Present and Futures” (2024) and “African Reckonings and Futures” (2023).  In “Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Africa,” CAAS provides a launchpad for Africanist constituencies (including academics, community groups, public intellectuals, and African studies practitioners writ large) based in Africa and its Diasporas to review existing and explore new models, approaches, designs, and interventions that can help understand, rethink, or imagine Africa within local, regional, continental and global contexts. CAAS seeks conversations from both the “town and gown” that prioritise Indigenous knowledge systems and African popular culture while encouraging insights inspired by Western epistemologies, provided that such insights are appropriately critiqued.

CAAS acknowledges the existence of multiple avenues and outcomes in making Africa. Thus, we invite panels, roundtables, individual presentations, performances, and unconventional sessions examining the multifaceted challenges and opportunities of Africa and its Diasporas, and providing actionable insights to drive meaningful change. Proposals may address how different sectors can contribute to achieving peace, prosperity, and progress in Africa. This includes:

● Strategies for fostering inclusive society, crisis prevention and resilience, conflict resolution, enhancing security, and exploring integrated infrastructure and energy development. Contributions may also include innovations in agricultural development, poverty reduction, sustainable environmental management, and the impact of climate change. Further, we seek insights into how trade and industrial development, economic integration, and private sector growth can drive regional prosperity.

● On the epistemic front, CAAS particularly welcomes proposals seeking to restore African perspectives and agency in research on Africa, especially within the context of gender, class, race, colonialism, inclusive education, identity construction, and languages, among others. We invite proposals that critique the foundations of our intellectual labour, including the questions we ask, theories we privilege, methodologies we consider scientific, how we generate and disseminate knowledge, the curriculum we design, and the collaborations we initiate. Proposals aligned to our theme may also invoke Western frameworks as long as these are rigorously critiqued and centred on a genuine restoration of the epistemological autonomy of Africa and its Diasporas.

● CAAS also welcomes submissions exploring the implications of migration and labour mobility on intra-African trade, tourism, and global intellectual exchanges. Proposals on governance, democracy, human rights, and gender equality are also pivotal to understanding how to make African societies stable and just. Health and nutrition are also crucial topics, focusing on addressing issues related to builtenvironments, malnutrition, non-communicable diseases, and improving overall health outcomes. Additionally, contributions to youth development, encompassing health, employment, innovation, and entrepreneurship, are welcome to highlight the role of young people in making Africa’s present and future.

While we are particularly keen to receive submissions that address the conference theme (and subthemes) in different ways, multidisciplinary papers from all African studies are strongly encouraged.

Diversity Statement: CAAS is committed to equity and diversity and welcomes applications from women, visible minorities, Africa-based scholars, scholars at all ranks and career stages, persons with disabilities, and persons of any sexual orientation or gender identity. CAAS is enriched intellectually, socially and culturally by the presence and participation of people from diverse backgrounds. Students, especially graduate students, are also encouraged to submit abstracts for consideration. In conjunction with CAAS, the Canadian Journal of African Studies (CJAS) is actively seeking to further diversify the journal’s content and operations to reflect CAAS’s membership and engage more closely with knowledge production from the continent at the epicentre of the journal’s focus. The journal remains committed to its mandate to publish scholarship in both English and French. Organisers of conference panels are encouraged to submit proposals for publication of papers as a special issue of CJAS. Details, instructions and examples of previous special issues can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rcas20/special-issues.

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