Practical Action Towards a Pluralist Economics Curriculum
The third Rethinking Economics for Africa Festival was the first to be held online, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Its theme, Practical Action Towards a Pluralist Economics Curriculum, focused on equipping students, academics and civil society organisations to transform how economics is taught and learnt.
The pandemic exposed and deepened existing racial, gender and economic inequalities while highlighting the limitations of conventional economic thinking. Against this backdrop, the Festival created a space to question long-held assumptions about economics and its role in shaping society.
More than 230 people applied to participate in the online workshops. The programme began with a public opening plenary, followed by interactive sessions organised around four streams:
- labour and work in economics;
- gender in economics;
- the natural environment in economics; and
- economic inequality.
Within each stream, participants compared mainstream and alternative economic approaches, considered teaching and assessment methods, shared curriculum resources and discussed strategies for achieving institutional change.
Rather than limiting the discussion to critiques of existing economics curricula, the Festival emphasised practical action. Participants exchanged teaching materials, pedagogical approaches, organising experiences and lessons from curriculum-reform initiatives in different countries.
Film screenings and facilitated discussions provided further opportunities to explore the relationship between economic theory and lived experience. Despite moving online, the Festival retained its commitment to participatory learning, movement-building and making economic debates accessible to non-economists.
The 2020 Festival demonstrated how collaboration across institutions and borders could support a more pluralist, socially relevant and environmentally sustainable economics discipline.
