Democracy Curriculum: research and training program

The African continent faces a deficit of empirical and multidisciplinary research on democracy. What’s more, university curricula in this field are based on imported and ill-adapted models. This program aims to foster the development of endogenous capacities for analysis, research and training on democracy on the continent. The aim will be to build a shared inventory of knowledge and methods, tools for epistemic autonomy, and training paths that support and set in motion the actors of democracy. In particular, the seminar will enable the acquisition of new tools and methodologies for social inquiry, with a view to rehabilitating description (or ethnography). And it will build original curricula that have an impact on the reinvention of democracy.

By recovering the power to describe its own experience today, Africa will be able to say something about itself that is no longer imposed from outside. It is by providing forums for reflection and the construction of thought and tools on democratic innovation that democracy will be set in motion.

This seminar will be a place for reflection and intensive learning, specializing in new forms of social inquiry into innovation and democracy in the African context, as well as a place for pedagogical reflection on how to teach and share these approaches in Africa. It welcomes young doctoral students, teachers and researchers with a passion for field surveys, keen to experiment with tools and methods for observing and analyzing social facts, and producing knowledge with practical relevance.