In 1884, the Chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck, convened a conference in Berlin to organise the division of the African continent among the industrial and military powers of the time. Fourteen European countries, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire took part in the negotiations, which lasted until 1885. The main objectives were to secure their own economic and extractivist interests and to regulate capitalism’s global assertion of power. The result was a profound dismemberment of Africa’s original political structures, which, driven by nationalism and a barbaric ethos of rule, had a lasting impact on the continent’s political, socio-economic, cultural, and spiritual development.

140 years after the Berlin Conference, it seems more than urgent to disentangle this complex of colonial appropriation, identify its after-effects, and question its epistemological legacy—all the more so as Europe searches for a new positioning in the changing geopolitical balance of power.

The Festschrift is based on the Deberlinization Conference at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (25–27 April 2025), the symbolic place where the fragmentation of the African continent originated. Activists and protagonists from the visual and performing arts, film, music, architecture, literature, economics, the humanities,social sciences, and political theory take up a transnational performative utopia and explore the possibilities of refabulating the world order and its future. Between creative action and resistance, memory and foresight, the anthology opens up perspectives on trans-African cohesion and outlines a new poetics of sovereignty.

Curated by Ibou Coulibaly Diop, Franck Hermann Ekra und Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung