To Lusa, Cristina d'Abril, of the organizing committee, explained that the initiative, which runs until Friday, wants to "promote scientific research work in African studies with young people from the nine Portuguese-speaking countries, from a perspective of diversifying research.
"Most of the research done recently on Africa is, above all, in Western countries, and in Portuguese-speaking African countries, the scientific work is virtually unknown and is a bit to boost this research that is being done in Portuguese-speaking countries," explained Cristina d'Abril.
According to the organizer, the aim is to "bring another look at scientific research on Africa.
The event begins this Thursday morning at the headquarters of the Union of Portuguese Speaking Capital Cities (UCCLA), with speeches by its secretary-general, Vítor Ramalho, the executive secretary of the CPLP, Francisco Ribeiro Telles, the president of the Center for Studies on Africa and Development (CESA), a research unit of the Institute of Economics and Management (ISEG), António Mendonça, and Cristina d'Abril.
Several round tables are also scheduled for the first day, covering topics such as "Commercial Exchanges and the Digital Economy in Africa," "The Repercussion of Njinga Mbandi's Reign on a Worldwide Level," and "Tradition and Modernity under the Impact of Globalization in African Countries.
The second day of the event, at the ISEG, will begin with a round table on "Digitalization in Development and Cooperation in Africa", followed by four panels of young researchers from Angola, Brazil, Mozambique, and Portugal.
Cristina d'Abril hopes that this event is "the beginning of a work" that will bear "long term fruits" and that, with future meetings, will produce "diverse research, in the long term", and the presence "in major international conferences, of researchers with quality and quantity, above all".
The organizer mentioned that the promotion of research collaboration is also one of the ideas of this initiative.
The member of the organizing committee explained that the covid-19 pandemic forced changes in the initiative, which initially foresaw "calling young people".
Thus, the organization built this first edition as "a way to pull and encourage some people, bringing these experts and motivating for the next meetings" that they intend to hold in the future.
About these future editions, Cristina D'Abril hopes that they will have a "more academic" approach.
The organizer launched an appeal for participation, saying that, regardless of age, the important thing is that the participants are involved "in this diversity in the research area".
The issue will be open "to all people" and spectators will be able to speak.
"We try to make this a hybrid conference and also include people, for example, who are in Cape Verde, East Timor or Brazil and want to speak," she explained.
