Since February 2022, the Black Academy offers a platform for political and global education based on black people’s perspectives.
The information about the African continent published in the world media is very reductionist and notoriously negative: violent elections, epidemics, wars, natural disasters such as floods and droughts. What the media shows us every day is what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls a ‘single story’. The view of the continent is colonial and the continent is seen as an ‘uncivilized’ country that needs Western help to survive. The many positive events, movements, knowledge production and developments receive little global attention.
Deconstruct and Reveal
The Black Academy was therefore born to deconstruct this vision and the mental alienation associated with it and to reposition the image of black people in the media and in people’s minds. It is a digital platform that aims to highlight the expertise of people who position themselves as black in the world, to make it visible and accessible to all. The Académie Noire will thus contribute to the diversification of this unique discourse spoken of by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and contribute to the construction of a more inclusive and equitable world. International workshops, seminars, conferences, empowerment spaces and exchange programmes will be organized between Benin, Cameroon, Togo, Germany and many countries around the world in both digital and face-to-face formats.
The Black Academy is an initiative of MeineWelt e. V., an association for critical educational work for power and development-politics, and the Place for Africa Initiative, financed by the City of Mannheim within the framework of the action fund “Civil society engagement against right-wing radicalism, anti-Semitism and anti-Ziganism” and supported by the Centre for International Cultural Education of the Goethe-Institut Mannheim.
For more information and to take part in this project please write to us: info@black-academy.org