Joint Workshop with University of Namibia

Workshop Theme: Commodifying the ‘Wild’: Conservation, Markets and the Environment in Southern Africa

2^nd – 5^th September 2019

UNAM Katima Mulilo Campus

The University of Namibia (UNAM) and the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 228 Future Rural Africa (University of Bonn, University of Cologne) jointly work on a set of diverse research topics focussing on approaches to future-making for and with rural Africa. From a position of marginality and precarity, rural Africa has been elevated to the centre stage of development agendas and developmental visions during the past decade. Agricultural intensification on the one hand but also conservation have been proposed as developmental trajectories. It has been widely acknowledged that land in one way or another, as wilderness or as agricultural prime land, has a vast potential within the concert of global value chains. Our workshop focusses on the commodification of what is deemed (or remade) as wilderness and of commodities that are labelled as wild and authentically African (such as game, forests, herbal medicines etc.). With its focus on conservation sciences UNAM’s Katima Mulilo Campus is an appropriate place to discuss the manifold potentials and challenges connected to this process of commodification.

The joint workshop between UNAM and CRC 228 will consist of three parts: (a) an academic workshop, (2^nd and 3^rd September 2019) (b) and a learning workshop for Namibian and German PhD and MA students (4^th September 2019). (c) outreach activities engaging local stakeholders in developmental issues pertaining to the commodification of the wild (5^th September 2019),