Joint public lecture at the University of Ghana

The public lecture was arranged as a part of the Urban Enclaving Futures’ (UEF) second project workshop held in Accra in February 2020. The project teamed up with the Department of Geography and its sister-project African Metropolitan Futures (AMF) to arrange the lecture.

Enhancing collaboration between universities

“The UEF project is one of the major steps by AMF network members towards knowledge co-production on African cities. The overall goal is to produce practical knowledge for policy with the AMF as the platform for knowledge dissemination not just to policy makers and academics but to society as a whole”, says Dr Austin D. Ablo from AMF.

The collaboration between the University of Ghana and the University of Bergen is critical for enhancing the impacts of research, and has been especially strong since UEF established its collaboration with the University of Ghana and AMF in 2018. The Urban Enclaving Futures project is expected to finish in 2022, but the collaboration will be carried forward.

Lecture on urbanization and resilience governance in Africa

The lecture, held at the University of Ghana, had a great number of students and researchers attending. Welcome remarks were made by Professor Martin Oteng-Ababio, the Head of Department of Geography and Resource Development. The moderator was Dr Ebenezer F. Amankwa. Professor Samuel Agyei-Mensah from the Provost College of Humanities was the chairperson. Also present was Emerita Professor Elizabeth Ardayfio-Schandorf.

The guest lecture was given by Professor Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, and titled A lesser human? Utopic registers of urban reconfiguration in Africa. Looking into the urban Anthropocene in Mozambique, Bertelsen discussed ‘resilience governance’ in Mozambique and explored the involvement of utopic registers as responses to such developments.

Following Bertelsen’s lecture was a presentation by Dr Austin D. Ablo on the African Metropolitan Futures Network, a research network hosted by the Department of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana, with support from the University of Bergen. The African Metropolitan Futures explores the future-oriented African epicentres of urban expansion and transformation, as well as their global reach and connectivities. See here for more information on the project.

Lastly, a presentation was given by Jason Sumich, Univeristy of Essex, on the project Enclaving: Patterns of global futures in three African cities. Read more about the project here.