Webinar 'General Labour History of Africa Workers, Employers and Governments, 20th-21st Centuries'

The General Labour History of Africa is an initiative of the ILO Regional Office for Africa. The current volume, which covers the 20th-21st centuries, was published in the framework of the ILO’s Centenary celebrations in 2019. The book fills a gap in the literature on labour history and labour studies, as it is the first comprehensive book on African labour history. The aim of the edited volume is to better understand the historical processes of transformation of African labour over roughly 100 years. The volume brings together renowned experts and highlights a number of key issues, such as wage labour, informality and migration, it traces the evolution of labour in key sectors and sheds light on the history of the ILO’s engagement in Africa. This book is a part of a trilogy. The editors are now working on a volume covering the period from 1600 to 1900.  A third volume will focus on African labour history from antiquity to 1600.

Chair: 

Ken Chamuva Shawa, Senior economist, ILO Regional Office, Africa

Speakers:

Cynthia Samuel-Olonjuwon, Director, ILO Regional Office, Africa

Andreas Eckert, Humboldt University, Berlin

Presenter:

Stefano Bellucci, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam and University of Leiden

Discussant:

Silke Neunsinger, Labour Movement Archives and Library, Stockholm

Bios:

Stefano Bellucci is Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, where he leads several projects on global labour history with a special focus on Africa. He is also a lecturer in African History and Labour Studies at Leiden University, the Netherlands.

Andreas Eckert is Professor of African History at the Humboldt University and Director of the International Research Center for Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History, both in Berlin.

Silke Neunsinger is Associate Professor in economic history and Coordinator of Research at the Labour Movement Archives and Library in Stockholm. She has been a researcher in the Department of Economic History, the Centre for Feminist research, and the Department of History at Uppsala University, Sweden.