IFRA - Nairobi

🔥 Opportunity Alert!

🔖 Call for Panels - ECAS2027 'African Prism' conference

As Europe’s largest and most international conference with an African focus, ECAS2027 – the 11th European Conference of African Studies – is inviting panel proposals from scholars of all relevant fields within African Studies.

⌛Deadline: 27th September 2026

🔗 For more information about the requirements, processes, formats allowed and disciplinary streams, click on the link: https://www.ecasconference.org/2027/call-for-panels/

🔥 Opportunity Alert!

🖊️ Call for Abstracts: G.O.R.I.L.L.A Conference at Makerere University

The 4th International Conference on Geographical Science for Resilient Communities, Ecosystems and Livelihoods under Global Environmental Change (GORILLA), aims to support the Global Development Agenda 2030 by exploring how emerging geographic oriented science can bridge gaps between policy and practice, tackle sustainable development challenges and opportunities at local, regional, national and global scales. With a transdisciplinary approach, the conference will provide a platform for discussing pressing sustainability and resilience issues through conceptual, empirical, and theoretical conversations. Approximately 400 participants are anticipated to engage in this collaborative effort towards sustainable development.

The 4th International GORILLA conference will be organized around the following subthemes;
✅ Geographies of Climate Change Resilience: Contradictions and Opportunities
✅ Environmental Risk and the increasing Polycrisis
✅ Geospatial Artificial Intelligence for Sustainability of Livelihood
✅ Emerging Geographic Technologies and Innovations for Resilience
✅ Green-based transitions for sustainable livelihoods
✅ Cities of the Future: Reimagining Urbanity in the Age of Innovation and Sustainability
✅ Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Nature-based Solutions
✅ Biodiversity, Biogeography and Ecosystem for Societal Resilience
✅ Early Warning Systems and Anticipatory Actions for Resilient Communities
✅ Geographies of water systems resilience
✅ The changing geography of agrifood systems
✅ Climate mobility, displacement and natural resource conflict

Submission of Abstracts:
We invite you to submit a 250-word abstract targeting one of the conference sub-themes. The abstract should articulate the investigated problem, the methods employed, major results and conclusions from the study. Abstracts can be submitted for either oral or poster presentation.

Abstracts should be submitted online on this website. Follow the link: https://gorilla.mak.ac.ug/user/login?destination=/conf-mgt/forms/24

The abstracts will be reviewed in real-time and feedback on acceptance will be given to the proponents after being subjected to a peer review process.

Important dates:
Deadline abstract submission: 31st July 2026
Latest Notification of abstract: 30th August 2026

🔥 Opportunity Alert!

🖊️ Call for Papers - Literature, Colonialism and Postcolonialism in Eastern Africa

Submissions from both written and oral literature, addressing any of, but not limited to, the following topics are invited:

• Colonialism in Literature
• Literature in Colonial Contexts
• Literature and Nationalism
• Literature and Intellectual Liberation
• Literature and Nation-Building
• Literature, Colonialism, and Slavery
• Poetry, Media, and Colonialism
• Literature and Postcoloniality
• Literature and the Impacts of Colonialism in Society
• Kiswahili, Independence and Liberation
• Literature, Publishing, and Colonialism; and
• Other closely related themes

🔗 Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be submitted to [email protected] no later than Monday, June 1, 2026.

🔥 New Mambo! article out

Rethinking the Interpretative Limits of Theatre for Development and the Politics of Nation-Building in Post-Socialist Tanzania by Stanley Elias Kiswaga , PhD

Abstract: This article rethinks the interpretation of Theatre for Development (TfD) in Tanzania, particularly in relation to its role in nation-building during what I term the “post-socialist” period. Whereas dominant frameworks have positioned TfD as simply a form of resistance to the state or collaboration with it, this article explores the more complex and negotiated ways in which TfD has operated in practice. Drawing on the historical trajectory of University TfD initiatives, interviews, and performances, this article examines how practitioners navigated state power, paternalistic agendas, and grassroots participation. The article introduces the concept of a poetics of negotiation to describe indirect and largely non-confrontational modes of political engagement. Through strategies such as nostalgia, satire, and symbolic ambiguity, TfD reflected on the disappointments of socialism and the promises of neoliberalism, while also articulating alternative, everyday imaginings of the nation. Foregrounding conviviality as an analytical lens, the article highlights everyday negotiations shaped by unequal power relations. It particularly argues that while convivial engagement enabled limited forms of agency, it also constrained overt political critique, repositioning University TfD as a negotiated and politically bounded cultural practice in “post-socialist” Tanzania.

🔗 https://mambo.hypotheses.org/5865

🔥Event Alert

📌 Roundtable - Confronting global visions of women scientists in African contexts

📅 22nd May 2026
⏲️ 10am-12pm

🔗 The roundtable will also be streamed live and can be accessed via the following link : https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87267675430?pwd=TabWA2qlMRZiu82pTLdrp7Pb1KlbG6.1

Day 5️⃣ and 6️⃣

The time had come to apply the methodological skills acquired during the first few days of the summer school. The researchers went out to Gatanga and Ngethu to conduct interviews with the elders, chiefs, and Project Affected Persons (PAPs).

Day 4️⃣ of the COMHIS Summer School

Prof. Luca Jourdan and Dr. Eliud Biegon gave talks on how researchers can enrich their methodology. Dr Biegon discussed the use of archival sources, while Prof Jourdan explored the ethical principles and ethnographic research in war zones.

Day 3️⃣

The researchers enriched their methodological approaches through the thematic presentations, given by Dr Bossissi Nkuba and Dr Claire Médard on conflict and resource management in eastern DRC and land tenure interview methods, respectively.

Day 2️⃣ of the summer school was nothing short of insightful! We would like to thank the African Institute for Capacity Development (AICAD) for hosting us during introductions and presentations.

We look forward to the fieldwork activities 🔥

🔥The first summer school of the year started on 12th May!
We would like to welcome the researchers from the DRC 🇨🇩, and we look forward to networking and the discussions throughout this learning opportunity