ABOUT INAUGURAL UBUNTU CONFERENCE 2024

Ubuntu Conference will be held in one of Africa’s best kept touristic secrets: the picturesque city of Mutare, nestled in the majestic Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe. Leading and emerging heritage studies scholars, scientists, political scientists, cultural anthropologists, cultural artists, linguists, archaeologists, economists, historians, theologians, philosophers, social scientists, community leaders, and activists will explore the indigenous Black African worldview known as Isintu/Chivanhu/Setso/Mila, which has now been reduced to a simplistic (mis-)understanding of Ubuntu as universal human decency or humaneness and interconnectedness (Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu).The more holistic and multi-pronged conceptualisation of Ubuntu that will emerge from this conference will help establish how best the concept and worldview salient in it can be deployed as the foundation shaping relationships, knowledge, values, practices, and meaning-making among people of African descent. Doing so provides the much-needed space to capture, process, represent, and preserve both the experiences and ongoing struggles for self-determination and self-expression among Black African and other Indigenous communities.

THEME: UBUNTU IN THE 4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (4IR)

Whereas the globalised world has now entered the 4IR, it has been argued that much of Black Africa is yet to fully experience, let alone benefit from, any other previous industrial revolutions. Paradoxically, however, dominant and hegemonic notions of that 4IR routinely refer to ‘Ubuntu’ as the spirit in which that revolution is being conducted. The fact that Ubuntu is a (A)Bantu/Vanhu/Batho/Watu word suggests that Black Africa is a (co-) leader of the 4IR responsible for ensuring that it is human-centered, ‘humane,’ and humanizing. Alternatively, it suggests Black African complicity in and approval of that revolution.

Further, in this 4IR age, the emergence of dynamic tech-driven productivity, the digitalization of life, and the prioritization of capital accumulation have given rise to social problems peculiar to the 21st century. As economic rationality takes precedence over social and human rationality, the wealth gap between producers and consumers in the contemporary goods/services market has widened. Economic choices have induced and normalised dehumanizing discourses, policies, and practices at both micro and macro levels of society, including but not limited to labour market relations, administration of polities within and across borders, migration patterns and human settlements, family structures, and spirituality. Now more than ever, humanity must find solutions to the existential threat caused by the increasing isolationism and individualism of unchecked profiteering

Delegates are therefore particularly encouraged to engage with the overarching theme of the conference.