Unpacking Foreign Military Presences in Africa: Understanding the issue with the Chagos Islands & Diego Garcia

Responding to current issues, these workshops aim to shed light on military presences operating in Africa and ways Africans grapple with them. To support teachers in contextualizing military groups’ activities in Africa, we are offering a webinar series to delve into not only into various military groups’ roles, including The Wagner Group, the U.S. Africa Command, U.S. Military bases, China, and France. The webinar series explains basic definitions, provides clear contextualizations to understand the role of these forces in various contexts on the continent. Webinars will take place throughout the 23-24 academic year. Each webinar will:

• Situate the groups in a larger geopolitical context and in relation to competing military groups on the continent
• Identify countries and places of operation and give examples of consequences of this operation, and of African resistance and criticism.
• Discuss why teachers should know about this military activity as responsive global actors.

During this workshop, we will view John Pilger’s documentary Stealing a Nation, meet with key activists who have been working on the Chagossian struggle, and meet with Chagossian refugees in Mauritius.