The sixth Rethinking Economics for Africa Festival 2023 brought together student activists, academics, labour representatives, civil society organisations and members of the public from across Africa and beyond.
Held amid deepening poverty, unemployment, debt distress, environmental degradation and climate breakdown, the Festival sought to expose participants to alternative economic thinking and policy responses. It also recorded the Festival’s largest participation from elsewhere on the African continent to date.
Three plenaries and 28 general sessions were organised across four streams:
- From Climate Crisis to Climate Action
- Intersectional Feminism: The Struggle for Equality
- Global Financial Architecture and Heterodox Macroeconomics
- New, Alternative, and Hidden Forms of Work
Sessions examined market-based responses to climate change, climate finance, food systems, energy democracy and just-transition partnerships. Feminist sessions addressed land, livelihoods, feminist political economy, gender-based violence and the development of a feminist manifesto for REFA.
Participants also considered Africa’s position in the global financial architecture, debt crises, regional integration, taxation, inflation targeting and the expansion of BRICS. Discussions about work explored digitalisation, migration, racial capitalism, worker organising, social reproduction and the limitations of conventional labour-market analysis.
Workshops, documentaries, book discussions, artistic displays and civil society stalls complemented the formal sessions. By combining intellectual, emotional and creative forms of engagement, the Festival sought to deepen understanding of economic crises and their possible solutions.
The Festival strengthened regional connections and advanced REFA’s aim of making economics more pluralist, accessible and relevant to the realities of African societies.
DOWNLOAD THE 2023 PROGRAMME BOOKLET
