Towards substantive democracy in Africa

Cycle of conferences to reinvent, bring to life and teach democracy in Africa.

The cycle of democratisation begun in the 1990s and relaunched in the wake of the Arab Spring is now over. Its intellectual foundations are in crisis, starting with the paradigm of “good governance” on which it was based. But nothing will happen unless there is a profound intellectual reconstruction. If we want to relaunch the democratic project on the continent and restore its profoundly political and historical character, we need another approach that is better rooted in the long term and rooted in the culture, memory and creativity of societies. This series of online conferences aims to give meaning to the concept of ‘substantive democracy’, using a transdisciplinary and historical approach.