Professor Adekeye Adebajo, a distinguished scholar, author, and advocate for pan-African thought, as well as a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, was a featured participant at the Open Book Festival, held in Cape Town from 5 to 7 September 2025. He participated in two panels across the Festival, “From Pan Africanism to the Black Atlantic” and “Inherited Systems”, and he provided incisive perspectives on African literature, geopolitics, and decolonial scholarship.

Photo by the Open Book Festival, September 2025

On 5 September 2025, he joined Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, speaking to Maneo Mohale about rethinking the identity and social frameworks that guide how Blackness and Africanness are understood. The next day, he joined Rebecca Gore, Adekeye Adebajo and Edgar Pieterse in a panel on “Inherited Systems”, where Alexandra Dodd moderated a discussion on the colonial structures we are born into and that we either uphold, resist, or remake.

These authors explore how systems define the parameters of justice, survival, and hope—and what it might take to transform them.
 

Photo by the Open Book Festival, September 2025

The event provided a platform for Professor Adebajo to discuss his recent publications, The Splendid Tapestry of African Life (Jacana, 2025) and The Black Atlantic’s Triple Burden: Slavery, Colonialism and Reparations (Jacana, 2024). These publications contribute to the discourse on how African writers and thinkers continue to challenge inherited colonial frames and offer new ways of imagining the continent’s future. 

You can watch Professor Adebajo’s panels on the Open Book Festival YouTube page. 
 

Black and African: https://youtu.be/aS_uq9mrjfU?si=WvjHGYzV24myE19i

Inherited Systems: https://youtu.be/ssDtBrdMwQU?si=owGHN7DyZbKDuKZH

The Open Book Festival is an annual literary event in Cape Town featuring panellists from all over the writing and publishing spheres. It is a place where writers and audiences are brought together and meaningful discussions are made possible. The 2025 iteration affirmed its role as a leading platform for literary exchange, showcasing the best of African writing and featuring diverse and engaged panellists and audience.