In Episode #7 of The Power Shift: Decolonising Development, Dr Eyob Balcha Gebremariam, scholar activist specialising in decolonial African development, joins Kate Bird and Charmaine McCauley to discuss the politics of knowledge production, Eurocentrism, the metaphysical Empire and pluriversality. Eyob leaves listeners an important message about epistemic diversity and the power of acknowledging multiple histories and the dark underside of civilisation and development.

Eyob Balcha Gebremariam is an Ethiopian scholar-activist. His areas of research, teaching and activism are the politics of knowledge production in, on and about Africa, decolonial knowledge production, African political economy, and the politics of development. Eyob has a doctoral degree in Development Policy and Management from the University of Manchester. He is a Research Associate at the Perivoli Africa Research Centre (PARC) at the University of Bristol and an adjunct professor of African Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), John Hopkins University. He was a Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he convened and taught postgraduate courses on African Development and African Political Economy. Eyob received the 2022 Thandika Mkandawire Prize for Outstanding Scholarship in African Political Economy.

If you’re interested to find out more about Eyob’s work, take a look here:

• LinkedIn
• Perivoli Africa Research Centre

Examples of Eyob’s work:

• Reflections from teaching African Development using decolonial perspectives at LSE (blog Kate mentions at the beginning of the episode that prompted her to learn from Eyob)
• Coloniality, Development and Science (Eyob’s recently released blog mentioned at the beginning of the episode)
• The Primacy of Epistemic Justice
• Jobs as geopolitical frontier in Africa
• Centring African research actors' perspectives in research partnerships
• The Carrot and Stick of Ethiopian ‘Democratic Developmentalism’: ideological, legal and policy frameworks

Resource recommendations
Read:

• ‘How to Write About Africa’ – Binyavanga Wainaina
• Fricker, Miranda (2007) Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Clarendon Press.

Watch:

• Anti-racism: When you picture Doctors Without Borders what do you see?