Successful completion of the workshop on the topic "Ordinary Infrastructures" in Dakar

10/29/2025

After five intense days full of new impressions, the workshop in Dakar came to an inspiring conclusion. Diverse discussions, excursions and keynotes provided stimulating impulses. They were lively, multilingual and firmly anchored in the local urban context.

Raffael Beier and Sophie Schramm (both IPS) co-organized the workshop "Ordinary Infrastructures: African Articulations of Urban Infrastructures beyond the Other", hosted by Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN) in Dakar, Senegal and funded by Point Sud (through funding of the DFG). The workshop was co-organized with former IPS-colleague Moritz Kasper as well as Amadou Dramé, Austin Dziwornu Ablo and Wangui Kimari.

Over five days from 21-25 October 2025, more than thirty anglophone and francophone scholars from Africa, Europe, and the Americas came together for intensive paper discussions, insightful excursions, and two engaging keynotes by Sidy Cissokho (Université de Lille) and Armelle Choplin (Université de Genève). The participants – including many early-career scholars – explored diverse infrastructures in their ordinariness, combining in-depth observations of local realities and an ambition to contest African exceptionalism. Our conversations were kind and productive, lively and multilingual, and deeply grounded in situated (urban) contexts – from Johannesburg and Kinshasa to Nairobi and Addis Ababa to Accra and Dakar.

This would not have been possible without Marko Scholze and Issa Fofana of Point Sud, and without the support of Mamadou Akila Bodian from IFAN, whose dedication and hospitality made this week unforgettable. Overall, the week was an inspiring reminder of what collective reflection and collaboration across regions and languages can achieve.

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