Reimagining Africa - with Felwine Sarr
Join us for an open conversation with Prof. Felwine Sarr, exploring the ideas behind his book Afrotopia and how they resonate today.
How can we move beyond dominant narratives of development and reimagine Africa on its own terms? What knowledge counts, and who decides?
Join us for a public conversation with Prof. Felwine Sarr, one of Africa’s leading contemporary thinkers, as he reflects on the ideas in his influential book Afrotopia and what has changed since its publication. Against the backdrop of global aid cuts, shifting power dynamics, and the urgent need to decolonize knowledge production, Sarr invites us to reimagine Africa’s future through a new, self-determined lens.
Felwine Sarr is a Senegalese economist, philosopher, and writer. He currently holds the Anne-Marie Bryan Distinguished Professorship of Romance Studies at Duke University, after teaching at Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, Senegal. His work spans economics, epistemology, African philosophy, and cultural restitution. Sarr is the author of numerous publications, including Afrotopia (2016), Restituer le patrimoine Africain (2018, with Bénédicte Savoy), and L'Économie à venir (2021, with Gaël Giraud).
Date: Wednesday, 22 October 2025
Time: 18:00–19:30, followed by an apéro
Location: ETH Zurich (main building), Room E3, Rämistrasse 101, 8092 Zurich
Moderator: tbc
Language: English
Organized by NADEL – Global Cooperation and Sustainable Development in collaboration with the Visiting Professorship of French Literature and Culture.