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Africa Knows! It is time to decolonise minds

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Accepted Paper: E32-07. To panel E32.

Title of paper:

Author:

Christiane Stephan (University of Bonn).

Short abstract paper:
This paper discusses everyday practices in dealing with Covid-19 through a conceptual perspective of dealing with uncertainty and aspiring futures. With this Kenyan-German research we want to contribute to African knowledge production on navigating uncertainty and innovating amidst crises.

Long abstract paper:
Together with the Covid-19 pandemic, the containment measures installed in Kenya starting in March 2020, have produced severe challenges to economic and social life within Kenyan society. As dealing with 'Corona' has strongly impacted the informal economy, lives in the poorer estates of urban centres are immediately affected. Whereas much attention is given to slums in African capitals like Accra, Cape Town or Nairobi, this research looks into the everyday lives of slum dwellers in Nakuru, an uprising city in Kenya's Rift Valley.

Everyday life in Nakuru has been transforming following the COVID-19 containment measures enforced by the national government and city councils in March 2020. These measures set in motion transformations that span across various networks and scales of the urban and include household, family, and other intimate relationships. We want to explore urban uncertainties and innovations in COVID-19 Kenya by engaging with perspectives on the post-colonial city and postcolonial feminist citizenship that allow to 'disarticulate the city as the site of masculinist and colonial publics' (Varma 2012: 2).

Weaving together threads of empirical work and conceptual ideas allows us to analyse current practices of navigating uncertainty, of aspiring and innovating amidst crises in Nakuru.

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