By Ojemire Benjamin Daniel, PhD Student, Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance

Africa Day 2020 focused on migration within Africa and the challenge of Afrophobia — a form of xenophobia directed by Africans toward other Africans.  Fatima Kyari Mohammed, the African Union ambassador to the United Nations, spoke passionately about the continent’s successes in transcending the issue. Mohammed, the luncheon keynote speaker, said Africans should celebrate their differences and “transform this thinking into positive action.”

This year’s event theme was titled, Challenges to Pan Africanism: Afrophobia and Migration Across Borders” to reflect the African continent’s attempts to achieve integration and unity across its deeply pluralistic and diverse borders in spite of the challenges that mitigate its success. It was hosted by the McCormack Graduate School’s Africa Scholar Forum (ASF) – a campus-wide academic platform for faculty who are teachers or scholars of the study of Africa- and that is chaired by McCormack’s Associate Dean and Professor of international relations, Rita Kiki Edozie. Held on March 6th, with welcoming addresses from Professor Edozie, Interim Chancellor Katherine Newman, Interim Provost Emily McDermott, Vice Chancellor Gail DiSabatino, and Dean David Cash, this year the all-day event was delivered through four components – a keynote plenary African-menu luncheon speaker, a keynote plenary panel of Greater Boston scholars of African Studies, an UMass Boston doctoral student panel, an evening keynote speaker, and a gala evening cultural extravaganza that included an African-inspired fashion show and an Afrobeat DJ.

UMass Boston ASF faculty, Dr. Nada Ali, a senior lecturer in the department of womens, gender, and sexuality studies, and Professor Quito Swan, also William Trotter Institute Director, and other scholars from Harvard, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, and SUNY Geneseo Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, and SUNY Geneseo  debated the relevance of race and neocolonialism as a factor of Africa’s global migration trends and a spearheading of South African challenges in receiving African migrants. Organized as the Pan African Graduate Student Association(PAGSA), several doctoral students from McCormack Graduate School, the College of Liberal Arts, and the School of Global and Social Inclusion, whose dissertations engage critical topics in African affairs, spoke to these policy issues in relation to the problem of African xenophobia. Evening keynote speaker, Rahman Oladigbolu, a Boston-based, Nigerian filmmaker showed scenes from his film on African immigrants’ experiences in the United States, Soul Sisters.

With luncheon and evening reception food prepared by local Boston Nigerian, Somalian, and Cape Verdes restaurants, and an evening African cultural show; the all-day event marked another successful affair at the UMass Boston campus which hosts a sizeable number of African immigrant, international, and heritage students.