A new grant will allow the Asian Studies and the African Studies programs to collaborate in researching and discussing diplomacy, trade and development between the two regions.
The Africa-China Initiative, a joint project funded by a $50,000 year-long grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, will offer a series of coordinated events geared toward members of the Georgetown community, policymakers and the public. The events will consist of speakers with expertise in Africa-China affairs. The program will also oversee the creation of a policy working group composed of experts in the field.
The state of international politics makes it impossible to separate the two regions from one another, making increased joint research on Africa-China relations a priority, according to Helena Kolanda, director of the Asia Program at the Henry Luce Foundation.
“One can’t think about China and the United States in a bilateral context anymore,” Kolanda said in an interview with The Hoya. “Both countries are global powers and have connections and impact all over the world. Part of the interest in this initiative was the fact that it was going to be working across the China-Africa, Africa-China space.”
The goal of the speaker series and the policy group is to clarify the narrative surrounding Africa and China, according to Yoon Jung Park, professor in the African Studies Program and program director of the Africa-China Initiative.
“Both of these activities ultimately have the aim of correcting some of the misconceptions, myths, and rumors around Africa-China engagements and foregrounding African views and experiences,” Park wrote in an email to The Hoya.
The events will be co-sponsored by other Georgetown departments, as well as external partners like Howard University’s Center for African Studies, and will consist of speakers with expertise in Africa-China affairs. Additionally, the policy working group will conduct outreach to targeted policymakers and practitioners.
The significance of cooperating on African and Asian studies is that stereotypes will be corrected, according to Park.
“We want to ensure that our audiences are aware that there are multiple perspectives and priorities that may not necessarily align with US- or European-centered views,” Park wrote. “As Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche has stated, there is much more than ‘a single story.’”
Adiche is an author and speaker from Nigeria who has delivered two popular TED Talks, “The Danger of a Single Story” in 2009 and “We Should All Be Feminists” in 2012. The former focuses on dispelling the monolithic view that all Africans have the same story, something that the Africa-China Initiative aims to correct.
By engaging in joint research and discussions through the Africa-China Initiative, studies in each individual region will be strengthened, according to Michael Green, director of the Asian Studies Program.
“We can learn quite a bit about the variables shaping China’s development approaches going forward by appreciating the agency of African leaders and citizens,” Green wrote in an email to The Hoya. “This will also help us broaden our study of global China, and the interaction of China with other major powers like Japan or France in outside of the usual East Asian and European areas of focus.”
Similarly, the joint program will explain China’s policies and engagement in Africa through a lens that takes African perspectives into account, according to Park.
“African agency is another topic that has received quite a lot of attention in recent years,” Park wrote. “My own area of work focuses on migration and race relations, both in African countries and in China; we will explore this as another possible panel or roundtable event.”
According to Kolanda, the Africa-China Initiative will offer valuable perspectives by expanding its participants beyond academia.
“Knowledge is not the purview of academics alone,” Kolanda told The Hoya. “There are practitioners in the NGO sector, civil society, business and government who are all touching upon these issues and have knowledge that needs to be shared.”
