Event
50 Years of Transitions in Southern Africa and the Development Challenges ahead
Photo: Unsplash /
Kyle Glenn
Date: November 15, 2024
On 15 November 2024, the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) and the Department Centre of Historical and Political Studies on Africa and the Middle East of the University of Bologna will be hosting conference entitled ‘’50 Years of Transitions in Southern Africa and the Development Challenges ahead’’.
2024 represents the 50th anniversary of a turning point in Southern African political history: ‘’ the Carnation Revolution in Portugal that paved the way for the independence of Angola and Mozambique. Since then, struggles to end white minority rule in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe have been further intertwined with the Cold War dynamics and with the transformations of the development paradigms adopted by various independent countries in the region’’. Further, the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994 symbolized a new political turning point where the international community shifted its approach towards the (Post) Washington consensus.
Following these complex transformations in the past decades, it is imperative ‘’to reflect on the results of both democratization processes and development prescriptions based on market liberalization in order to grasp current and future challenges for local development and international cooperation.’’