*CfP workshop *Revisiting Dams in Africa**

*June 17–19, 2018, Maputo, Mozambique*

**

*Point Sud Centre,****Goethe-University of Frankfurt/DFG and Centro de 
Estudos Africanos, University Eduardo Mondlane*

The construction of high dams in Africa has tremendously increased since 
the turn of the new millennium. In colonial and postcolonial Africa dams 
have been perceived as the main engine of modernity, serving the urban 
economy and industries, and eventually spurring the electrification of 
nation states and granting the transmission of energy across the 
continent. During the last two decades, the emergence of new global 
players in funding and building dams (e.g. China), as well as the global 
concern for climate change, has reinvigorated the interest in dams as a 
source of clean and renewable energy, serving poverty reduction and food 
security. However, present and past dam constructions have also 
generated massive displacements, impoverishment of the affected 
communities and environmental hazards.The controversial legacy of large 
dams has not yet been satisfactorily revisited in a way that connects 
issues of state, society, environment, developmental paradigms and their 
related knowledge production.

African dams are still governed by imported visions of modernization, 
neo-liberal and developmental state models that do not consider the 
specificity of the region and the wider sociopolitical conditions within 
which these projects are pursued and implemented. That is the 
problematic knowledge gap we aim to fill by bringing together different 
disciplines and actors who are closely, yet separately, involved in 
those debates. During the last decades, a diversified set of actors such 
as environmentalists, civil society, and affected communities are 
gradually trying to take part and shape the way in which the projects 
are being planned and implemented.

Dams by their very nature connect different issues ranging from 
environmental, engineering, economic, political, legal, and social 
dimensions. However, in this interdisciplinary workshop, we want to 
focus on the state-society-environment nexus by paying particularly 
attention to African dams’ historical trajectories, current experiences, 
and future aspirations. This dynamic nexus is shaped by the following 
aspects on which the workshop concentrates:

•Revisiting the debates over African dams and energy futures

•Infrastructures’ socio-political processes and development-induced 
displacement

•Escalating civil or affected people's unrest and protests, global 
anti-dam networks

•New visions for Africa’s development (competing developmental models, 
neoliberal vs. East Asian developmental state) and China’s involvement 
in dam building

•Questions of social responsibility (for people, environment, by whom).

We invite empirical or theoretical contributions from across the social 
sciences to explore experiences of dam-induced displacement and to 
analyze the complex relations between planning/implementation processes 
and socio-political processes by focusing on the 
state-society-environment nexus and the resulting question of 
responsibility. By attending to dam-related complex assemblages of 
heterogeneous knowledge and actors at various levels we wish to go 
beyond the de-contextualized, de-historicized and de-politicized legacy 
we observe in the dam-related literature and the developmental paradigms.

The primary aim of the workshop is to provide a platform for discussing 
state-society-environment relations and their involved actors. The 
workshop aims to open multiple dialogues between disciplines, young and 
senior researchers, and scholars and activists, to enrich the debate and 
to strengthen research networks. The call for papers addresses 
particularly junior researchers working on newly built or planned dams 
in Africa.

Each participant contributes a paper to thematic sessions. The workshop 
is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and takes place in the 
framework of the Point Sud Centre for research on local knowledge, which 
will account for lodging and reasonable travel expenses. The workshop 
will be held at the Centre for African Studies, Eduardo Mondlane 
University, Maputo. As an outcome of the workshop, we envisage a joint 
publication.

If interested, please send a 300-word abstract to Tamer Abd Elkreem 
<[log in to unmask]>, Valerie Hänsch 
<[log in to unmask]>, Inês Macamo Raimundo 
<[log in to unmask]> and Eléusio Viegas Filipe 
<[log in to unmask]> by March 10, 2018.



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