The University of Pretoria's (UP’s) Centre for Asian Studies in Africa (CASA) recently held its second successful annual symposium, bringing together academics from universities in South Africa, Europe, the United States of America and Asia for three days of intensive discussion of Asia-Africa connections in a time of radical geoeconomic and geopolitical change.

The symposium, which ran from 21 – 23 August on UP's Hatfield Campus, was organised as part of a visit to UP by Prof Ching Kwan Lee, a renowned sociologist and leading global China expert based at UCLA, who was appointed as Extraordinary Professor affiliated with CASA last year. It was supported by the National Research Foundation.

Focused on the theme ‘Mapping Asia-Africa Connections in a Changing World Order’, the symposium hosted delegates from Kyoto University and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan; Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and Seoul National University, Korea; Peking University, China; the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands; Georgia State University in the US; Mumbai University, India; and the University of Cape Town, Stellenbosch University, Rhodes University and UP, South Africa.

The event – which comes amid a profound shift in Africa's trade partnerships over the past two decades, in favour of Asia – served as a platform for discussion of Asia-Africa connections. These intersect along multiple lines: in development assistance and diplomacy; in migration and media practices; via the investment of venture capital; even in the fashion industry.

The rich proceedings from the symposium will be curated as high-profile academic publications, and the symposium made it clear that there is substantial scope for further collaboration between CASA and its many partner institutions and academic colleagues whose work traces the Asia-Africa axis of the world-system.

"Knowledge production in the university sector is currently taking place in a context of deep and turbulent geoeconomic and geopolitical transformation, and our intellectual activity must respond to this context in critical and impactful ways," said Professor Alf Gunvald Nilsen of UP's Department of Sociology, who is also Director of CASA.

"CASA has kept a keen eye on how economic and political power equations between the Global North and Global South are being recalibrated and rebalanced, becoming increasingly dense and progressively more consequential in terms of shaping future development trajectories and finding solutions to significant and interconnected global challenges."

This imperative is reflected in CASA's motto, ‘Knowledge from the South for a Changing World’, which has informed its work since its establishment late in 2022 as a hub for research in the field of Asian