African Futures Lab’s mission is to raise awareness of racial injustices across Africa and Europe and empower civil society actors, as well as public and private entities, to demand justice and achieve reform.
African Futures Lab was founded in the aftermath of the 2020 global Black Lives Matter protests because historical and contemporary racial injustices between Europe and Africa were being overlooked by agendas that were tackling global inequalities.
Created in the wake of the decolonisation process of African States in the late fifties, the international development sector has rarely considered the need to address the consequences of colonialism and the current manifestations of a global system of racial domination. Social, economic, political and environmental inequalities between the two continents have always been considered as the result of unequal development between European and African societies or because of dysfunctional State institutions.
This lack of interest in racial issues has allowed Eurocentric policies inherited from colonial policies to persist with little interest in the rights and interests of African populations and to maintain the domination of former colonial powers’ interests in Africa.
Drawing on the co-founders (Dr Liliane Umubyeyi and Dr Amah Edoh) experience in the international development sector and in racial justice mobilizations, the African Futures Lab was created to increase the understanding of the ways in which racial injustices intersect with social, economic, environmental inequalities between Europe and Africa and to advocate for subsequent policy reforms.