On 28 February, the Centre for Asian Studies in Africa (CASA) wrapped up its second joint symposium with the Innovation Foundation for Democracy, a pan-African organisation dedicated to fostering research and innovative ideas regarding democracy in Africa. The symposium, titled ‘Democracy as a community of life: transregional dialogues across Asia and Africa’, brought together a large number of participants from Asian and African countries. The event aimed to explore what reclaiming and reimagining democracy might look like across these two continents, which together are home to nearly 70% of the world’s population.

‘Our discussions took place across three intensive and engaging days and were hugely successful,’ says CASA director Prof Alf Gunvald Nilsen. ‘It is abundantly clear that there is a real craving for thinking about democracy in new and innovative ways, especially from the standpoints of Asia and Africa, where most of the world’s population live their lives and build their futures.’

The symposium started with a keynote lecture by Achille Mbembe, a research professor at Wits University and a leading public intellectual in Africa today. Prof Mbembe’s lecture explored what it might mean to create democracy as a community of life. Setting the stage with a broad historical perspective, he pointed out that both Asia and Africa have historically been arenas in which people have fought to expand the meaning and compass of democracy and to overcome disenfranchisement and authoritarianism.

‘In an age where many are losing faith in democracy as a form of government that ensures representation and recognition, Prof Mbembe’s argument exemplifies the kind of thinking needed to reclaim and reimagine democracy in radical and expansive ways,’ says Prof Nilsen.

‘Our symposium was also designed to approach the question of democracy from unconventional angles. Participants were invited to discuss the democratic potential of lifemaking in urban margins in both Asia and Africa, as well as the democratic potential inherent in the ways that migrant communities challenge the border regimes of nation-states across the two continents. We also discussed how recent waves of protest in countries like Kenya, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have given rise to new political communities and how literary and visual imaginations can help us craft new vocabularies that enable us to engage with each other about what democracy could and should be,’ Prof Nilsen adds.

The symposium also transcended the boundaries of academia, featuring a conversation between journalists from India and South Africa that focused on the importance of independent media platforms in times of autocracy. Additionally, there was a screening and discussion of a documentary film depicting recent democratic protests in India. ‘CASA always strives to broaden the scope of its conversations by engaging stakeholders beyond the University. To remain relevant as a public institution, we must engage with individuals who play vital roles in the crucial debates of our times,’ Prof Nilsen argues.

Prof Nilsen reflects on a particularly meaningful interaction he had with a participant as the symposium came to a close. ‘As we were winding up and saying our goodbyes, one symposium participant remarked that, throughout our conversations, the USA and Europe had not been a reference point at all. I think this is the real power of transregional dialogues between Asia and Africa—that we create spaces in which our realities, challenges, and potentials are the focus of attention and in which we look to ourselves, and not to the West, for solutions for the futures we have to make for ourselves.’

The proceedings of the symposium will be compiled into a special issue of an academic journal. Discussions regarding the thematic focus of next year’s joint symposium with the Innovation Foundation for Democracy are already underway.