CRC-TRR 228 Receives research funding for additional 4 years

Bonn, Germany, 25 November, 2021

The Collaborative Research Center (CRC-TRR 228), Future Rural Africa project has received the funding approval for an additional four years (2022 – 2025), by the German Research Foundation.

These funds will ensure continuity of Future Rural Africa’s overarching research objectives of studying the impact of land use changes, social-ecological transformations and future making endeavours in the rural areas of Kenya, Tanzania, and Namibia. The CRC will continue to work closely with junior and senior researchers from the Universities of Cologne and Bonn, the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC), the German Development Institute (DIE), as well as research institutions and local universities in the three African countries.

Responding to the news, the spokesperson of the research canter (2018 – 2021) – Prof. Dr. Detlef Müller-Mahn, Department of Geography, University of Bonn, spoke of the new study areas which the project will be building on in the coming years, \”In the first funding phase, we focused on the rather tense interwoven processes of agricultural intensification or expansion, of conservation areas. In the second funding phase, the focus will be expanded to include the process of \’infrastructuring.\’\”

The usage of the term \’infrastructuring,\’ is in response to the rise of large-scale Mega-infrastructure projects which have placed marginalised rural areas of Kenya, and Tanzania as frontiers of development in the region.

The incumbent spokesperson of the project, Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig from the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cologne, welcomed this new focus area, a term he defines as, \”the planning and construction of large-scale infrastructures, which are seen as a further driver of land use change and socio-ecological transformation processes in rural Africa.\”

The SFB-TRR 228 promotes cooperation with researchers and scientific institutions in Africa and strives to consolidate the Cologne/Bonn location as a leading center of innovative research in the emerging field of future studies and socio-ecological research in Africa.

Spokesperson: Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig from the Institute of Ethnology at the University of Cologne

Co-speaker: Prof. Dr. Britta Klagge, Institute of Geography at the University of Bonn.

This press release can be downloaded here.

Additional information available in the following websites:

1. German Research Foundation (DFG)

2. University of Bonn

3. University of Cologne

4. Department of Geography, University of Bonn