World Social Forum 2011 opens in Dakar

This Sunday afternoon hundreds of social activists (essentially leftist groups) will march through some streets of the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to launch the World Social Forum (WSF).

It is the biennial gathering in which these groups proclaim and explain that there is another world order apart from capitalism and globalization, piloted (in their view) by the world leaders and business executives who meet at approximately the same time in Davos for the World Economic Forum.

Africa is playing host for the second time (Nairobi 2005 was the first) and the organizers would want the fundamental questions about the continent’s economic and social development, its security and its relations with the rest of the world to be central to the Forum’s debates.  

Incidentally, this is happening at a time when the north of the continent is boiling. A popular uprising which was sustained through the use of social networking tools toppled a more than two decades old regime in Tunisia while protesters are defying Hosni Mubarak’s 30 year old rule in Egypt.

Would the Forum provide techniques, ideas and tools to further such “revolutions” across the continent given that many of those who partake in it don’t tend to have a soft spot for leaders like Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak?

 

We’d have to wait and see but it seems the Forum organizers know with whom they stand, if we go by their concept note on the WSF 2011 website:

“The African ruling classes have generally been complicit in the fate that neoliberal economics and the hegemonic powers have inflicted on the continent.  They are also responsible for the state of civil liberties and for the institutional instability, as well as for the predatory economies that operate in just about the whole of Africa,” the note said.

“In this context, the Forum must present a great opportunity to intensify the struggle against neo-liberal policies,  given that Africa illustrates one of the World Bank’s and the IMF’s greatest failures during three decades of intervention by them,” the organizers added.

This line is very much in keeping with the views of the members of the African Social Forum such as Kenya’s Wahu Kaara (see video above) who, two years ago in Belem, Brazil, campaigned for the World Social Forum to be hosted in Africa again.

In any case, it’d interesting to know what the various African and southern forums have gained since the last Forum. What’s happened to the Economic Partnership Agreements between Europe and Africa, for instance?

I was in Amazonian town of Belem in Brazil to cover the last summit. At the time, the international financial crisis was whipping most western countries and thousands of anti-globalisation activists attending the Forum believed it was the end of capitalism, and the neo-liberal politico-economic model.

It would be interesting to know what attendees of the Dakar Forum would have to say about the nature of the world today. Has capitalism died or where their predictions a tad too early? Surely, there will be several symposia and events to discuss that topic in the next six days in Dakar.

But as it is customary with the World Social Forum, there should also be theatre, song, poetry, music and dance as seen in the following souvenir clip from 2009 in Belem.

Comments

[kursy-szkolenia-plc.pl]

Pretty! This was an extremely wonderful post. Thank you for supplying this information. My website kursy-szkolenia-plc.pl

[online casinos]

Very good post! We are linking to this particularly great post on our site. Keep up the good writing. online casinos

[casino]

It's not my first time to pay a visit this web page, i am browsing this site dailly and take fastidious information from here every day. casino

[イタリア ブランド 財布]

ここ5 設計ソースが含まれます、共通バッグ、財布、クラッチ、およびデザイナートートバッグバッグ。実績毛皮製品それ、すばらしい、完全長さミンクのコートまたは単にエキゾチックな毛穴や皮膚ハンドバッグは確かに資産を一般的に来るを持つ、かなり価格Entreeneurshi ですか？ 何かだったをこいつらで持っていたを以降、子供の頃からそのとき人買った、些細なが適切なハウスホールドダウン タウン ブルージュ （ベルギー） の自然作業可能性がありますによって開始。