African Pasts for African Futures in a time of Radical Environmental Change: Notes on History and Policy in Africa's Reconstruction

David Schoenbrun

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/N2MN11

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African Pasts for African Futures in a time of Radical Environmental Change: Notes on History and Policy in Africa's Reconstruction

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Writing this keynote address has been a fraught and sobering experience, heightened by an acute feeling of stepping outside my scholarly comfort zone in east and central African history before the 19th century CE. The discomfort encouraged me to shift positions, in this case from that of a scholar writing for a familiar audience to that of a critic embracing the risks and rewards of producing useful knowledge of Africa’s past. The critic itches to reveal what is implicit in or hidden by a particular argument or claim. That urge frames this exploration of why historical knowledge is central to African responses to radical environmental change. This question guided the composition of a year-long gathering of six Africa-based scholars, in 2002- 2003, under the auspices of the Program on International Cooperation in Africa.3 In turn usingphilosophical, historical, and hortatory terms I will indulge the chance to risk some thoughts on this large issue in a working paper. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development, adopted at a July 2001 summit meeting of African heads of state, explains that Africa’s people are determined “to extricate themselves and the continent from the malaise of underdevelopment and exclusion in a globalizing world”.4 Historical knowledge, policy-making, and reconstruction all haunt this determination. Do the goals of NEPAD reveal the special interests in posing fundamental questions shaping relations between the production of historical knowledge and the formation of policy? Do they reflect only one, very narrow, perspective on the relationship between the businesses of producing historical knowledge and making policy? Is there, in fact, a condition of general crisis between them, as suggested in the original call for Fellows announced by PICA (See Appendix 1)? Is it even worthwhile to ask about the relationship between historical knowledge and policy-making when so many are hard at work using both to meet the challenges of Africa’s future? Scholars and practitioners worry about the distinction between scholarship and political advocacy for good reason. Scholarship differs from advocacy because it embraces a commitment to incremental accumulations of knowledge drawn from analyzing and interpreting an empirical record, and a will to revise that knowledge in the light of new information. Advocacy embraces a commitment to a particular position or interest, devising strategies to promote or defend it that change in the light of new configurations of political power or resource flows. The precious boundaries between them are porous; they must not prevent us from marking unmarked categories and from telling histories of unequal power relations. Marking categories like popular historical knowledge and telling histories of poor rural communities constantly render the dividebetween scholarship and advocacy, between history and policy, a problematic one. The apparent absence of a complex sense of the past informing the stories we tell about the future in Africa raises considerable anxiety for scholars of Africa today. Is this absence something that afflicts only the young, the politically numb, those dumb with fear or those far from strife? Is the onus of historical relevance fairly placed on historians’ backs? Or, must those who excuse historical knowledge explore the grounds on which they do so and the consequences of absent pasts for their futures? The younger generation in Africa today—whether they have gone through formal educational systems or not—are rather disinterested in academic histories of Africa. If historical knowledge will have a role to play in policies shaping Africa’s future, we should think about the implications of this condition of youthful disinterest for their engagement with the future. Which of the established themes in African history resonates—or falls flat—in contemporary Africa?

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