TOAfrica summer school

Background

The TOAfrica summer school offers Master’s students and professionals an introductory framework to the African continent with particular attention to the Sub-Saharan regions, that in recent years have undergone impressive changes: demographic and economic growth, fast urbanization, internal and external mobility, the development of digital technologies, artistic creativity, social, cultural and religious transformations, but also conflicts and environmental, health and political crises. A new landscape which has repositioned the continent in the global perspective, generating interest in international observers and investors.

TOAfrica summer school 2021

In its second edition, the TOAfrica Summer School addresses the topics of environment and conflicts in Africa, in connection with internal and transnational mobility and with socio-cultural transformations that have been transforming the continent during the last decades. 
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In Africa, the colonial period corresponds to a profound transformation of the relationship between societies and environments. Historically, the introduction of cash crop economies and industrial extraction of natural resources is accompanied with the rooting of State apparatus, infrastructures and means of communication, centralized and highly bureaucratic models of environmental governance. After independence, most African states opted for continuity. However, long and repeated droughts have hit the bcontinent since the 1960s, revealing the intense processes of degradation of soils and ecosystems, and the limits of the predominant political-economic models in terms of ecological and social sustainability. In the most recent decades, the reduction of public intervention in the agricultural, fishing and mining sectors has followed the broader tendencies of deregulation and economic liberalization; in the meantime, heterogeneous and unfinished paths to decentralization of natural resources management have been introduced. 

Impoverishment of rural areas, processes of de-agrarianization, intensification of conflicts and inequalities linked to resources, and increased human migration are some of the main effects of these unprecedented environmental and social crisis that seem to have become chronic. These processes are shaped by local particularities, but take place within a context of extensive transnational interrelationships and global warming. What are the main challenges of the present and uncertain prospects for the future? The TOAfrica Summer School offers an in-depth analysis of these dynamics, exploring them within the frame of growing global and national inequalities in relation to environmental and climate changes. 

Against this background, the TOAfrica Summer School brings together scholars from different disciplines and practitioners, and offers lectures, roundtables and workshops that provide students with a critical knowledge on the topics of environment in Africa, while at the same time giving practical insights and a hands-on approach to learning.

Read more about TOAfrica here

How to apply 

Key dates and application rounds

Applications will open on the 29th March. Those interested into a scholarship must apply by the 10th May, while the general deadline for all application is set on the 20th May 2021 (11:59 PM, Italian time). Early applications are strongly encouraged.
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29th March 2021 – Applications open.
10th May 2021 – Deadline for scholarships’ applications.
20th May 2021 – Deadline for all applications.