While it is still early, at this interim stage, to share unequivocal results, it is clear that the project’s key hypothesis, whereby the afterlives of development interventions continue to ‘haunt’ local populations and command great—if varying, even conflicting—significance, is established. Indeed, the idea has been both reinforced and refined through multiple rounds of ethnographic research and through workshops, publication projects, and other team activities. In particular, three areas can be highlighted for the development of promising new scholarly horizons:
First, the project pushes for methodological innovations that draw on phenomenological inspiration, creative methods, and critical participatory literature to bear on the study of the afterlives of development interventions. One emerging area of prominence involves the use of audio walks, in which pre-recorded audio is played while crossing an ambulatory trajectory, allowing for immersive, unexpected, and dissonance-filled ways of experiencing a place. Such walks involve embodied, affective engagement that loosens the boundaries between past and present and allows for intimate explorations of the tensions between "then" and "now." Several audio-related activities are planned for the coming years, focusing on methods, knowledge production, elicitation, and dissemination.
Second, the project is currently exploring the project-based learning potential of evoking North-South academic partnerships around the dried-up waterbeds of bygone bilateral development interventions and their long-term legacies. Such direction would take the form of an open-ended, lab-like co-learning process of joint experimentation and discovery around the multi-faceted traces and legacies of a single bygone development intervention involving both countries. This line of collaboration holds potential for understanding the many trajectories of the afterlives of development interventions, for advancing a daring conversation about long-term ties and responsibilities, and for drawing lessons for improving planning and evaluation in the context of North-South partnerships.
Lastly, in thematic terms, the project increasingly sheds light on the underexplored topic of industrialization in Africa. Industrialization long encapsulated ideas about African development, sovereignty, and economic freedom, and the image of the thriving African factory once mobilized a strive for self-sufficiency, productive diversification, and economic resilience. However, following the debt crises and the SAPs of the 1980s, today the continent accounts for merely 2% of the world’s industrial manufacturing. There are signs of genuine interest across the continent in industrial reinvigoration, yet the topic is under-researched. Four of AfDevLives’ team members work on topics related to deindustrialization/reindustrialization, and the project is developing collaborations to further pursue this line of inquiry.
