CDD-West Africa Hosts Press Briefing Ahead of Frantz Fanon Centennial Conference in Jos

The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD-West Africa) is pleased to announce the upcoming Frantz Fanon Centennial Conference, scheduled to take place from 27 to 28 November 2025 at the University of Jos, Plateau State.

The Fanon Centennial Conference, hosted by the Centre for Democracy & Development (CDD-West Africa) and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), in partnership with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the University of Jos and the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD), will mark 100 years since the birth of Frantz Fanon, one of the most influential anti-colonial thinkers of the 20th century. Holding under the theme “Fanon and the African Condition: Reflections on an Enduring Legacy,” the gathering will convene leading scholars, researchers, policymakers, writers, activists, and students from across Africa and the Global South.

Fanon’s searing analyses of colonialism, race, mental health, class, and alienation continue to shape contemporary struggles for justice and liberation. His works resonate deeply with the continent’s current challenges, democratic reversals, governance failures, youth-led protests, and shifting global power dynamics. The Centennial invites a re-engagement with Fanon’s enduring questions: Why do structures of inequality persist after independence? What does liberation mean beyond the flag? How can citizens reclaim dignity in societies still shaped by systemic exclusion?

The two-day hybrid conference will feature a keynote address by Professor L. Adele Jinadu, alongside over 70 academic papers across ten thematic streams, featuring roundtables on labour, gender, and decolonial thought, and intergenerational dialogues that bridge senior scholars and emerging voices. In addition to engaging Fanon’s contributions to philosophy, psychiatry, and Pan-Africanism, the conference will reflect on his relevance to contemporary politics, culture, resistance, innovation and the place of Africa in the global order.

The choice of Jos as the host city is symbolic. Jos is a city long associated with activism, civic resistance, and class struggle. Partnering with the University of Jos aligns with CDD-West Africa’s commitment to decentralising knowledge production and strengthening critical scholarship beyond neoliberal power centres.

Importantly, the Fanon Centennial Conference will unfold during the global 16 Days of Activism against Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV). While not framed as part of that SGBV campaign, the conference offers a timely opportunity to explore how Fanon’s ideas help us interrogate the structures that enable colonial violence, patriarchy, and economic subjugation. Fanon reminds us that true liberation must transform not only political systems, but also the intimate and social spaces where inequality is reproduced. As such, both the 16-Day Action Campaign and this Centennial Conference speak to a shared project to build a world where nobody is treated as inferior, disposable, or violable.

As Fanon wrote: “What matters is not to know the world but to change it.” With this conference, we invite scholars, citizens, and institutions. The conference seeks to re-evaluate Fanon’s contributions through interdisciplinary and transnational lenses, exploring themes such as African subjectivity, identity, racism, violence, and the quest for a ‘New Humanism’. Central to the discussions will be alternative epistemologies, structural transformation, Pan-Africanism in a rapidly changing global context, and radical forms of resistance. Scholars, activists, artists, and policymakers are thus invited to participate in envisioning new pathways for Africa’s futures to reflect, reconnect, and reimagine the unfinished work of African liberation. 

CDD-West Africa and CODESRIA and their collaborative partners in this look forward to welcoming delegates, partners, and members of the press to Jos for what promises to be a milestone event.

SIGNED

Dauda Garuba, PhD.
Director,

CDD-West Africa

For media enquiries or conference participation, please contact Faridha Salihu-Lukman, Communications Officer (fslukman@cddwestafrica.org or 0810 625 9235). Press statements are also available at www.cddwestafrica.org/press-releases, and other reports cited and referenced are available at www.cddwestafrica.org. CDD-West Africa is available on social media platforms with the handle CDDWestAfrica.