Talk:Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa

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I just went to a session on the archive of CAFA at the new archive Mayday Rooms at 88 Fleet street London on sunday 24th November with George Caffentzis in attendance. This committee was formed in reaction to the privatisation of Nigerian (and African) universities as an early stage of the 'structural adjustments' demanded by the IMF and then World Bank in the Eighties. This wave of privatisation led to widespread student protests sometimes fierce. In 1989 a meeting of academics in Kampala issued a document on African education which was known as the Kampala Agreement. We read passages of this at the meeting. One notable thing was that academic freedom was defined as universal access to free education rather than as the freedom of an academic to structure his or her own teaching. CAFA was formed in 1991 and was active for 15 years. Part of its mission was to track the student movement that put up resistance to structural adjustment and this was found to be widespread across Africa. CAFA made connections with the Anti-globalization movement of that time. Szczels (talk) 11:33, 26 November 2013 (UTC)