Where will the conference be held?

The conference will be held in Entebbe, UGA, providing an African setting for discussions on the diaspora and transatlantic studies.

What is the format of the conference?

The conference is structured as an in-person event, facilitating direct engagement and networking among participants in Entebbe.

When does the conference take place?

The conference is scheduled for a two-day period in the fall, offering an intensive program of discussions and presentations.

International Conference on African Diaspora and Transatlantic Studies (ICADTS-2026)

Name: International Conference on African Diaspora and Transatlantic Studies (ICADTS-2026)
Start: 2026-09-10T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-09-11T00:00:00Z
Location: Entebbe

Sep 10–11, 2026Entebbe, UgandaIn-person

Registration open

The International Conference on African Diaspora and Transatlantic Studies (ICADTS-2026) will convene in Entebbe, UGA, offering a platform for in-depth discussions on the multifaceted aspects of African diaspora and transatlantic relations. This event aims to bring together scholars, researchers, and practitioners to explore historical, cultural, social, and political dimensions of these interconnected themes. The conference provides a critical forum for examining the enduring legacies and contemporary dynamics shaping the African diaspora experience globally. Participants will engage with diverse perspectives, contributing to a broader understanding of identity, migration, and the intricate ties between Africa and its diaspora.

Committees & topics

Topics
The African Diaspora: Forced Migration and Global Communities · Transatlantic Connections: Trade, Empire, and Exchange · Cultural Resistance in the African Diaspora · Pan-Africanism: From Liberation Movement to Continental Politics · Global Solidarity and the African Diaspora · Postcolonial Memory and the Politics of the Past · Identity, Race, and Belonging in the African Diaspora · The Black Atlantic: A Transnational Cultural World

Why it matters

Understanding the African diaspora and transatlantic studies is crucial for contemporary international relations and cultural diplomacy. The historical movements of people from Africa have profoundly shaped societies across the globe, influencing demographics, cultural practices, economic systems, and political landscapes. This conference directly addresses these complex interactions, highlighting their ongoing relevance.

The discussions at ICADTS-2026 will contribute to a more nuanced appreciation of global interconnectedness. By focusing on the diaspora, the conference underscores the importance of recognizing diverse voices and experiences in shaping international narratives. This perspective is vital for fostering inclusive policies and promoting mutual understanding among nations.

Furthermore, the conference's location in Entebbe, UGA, offers a unique vantage point from which to consider these topics. It grounds the discussions within an African context, encouraging participants to reflect on how the continent's past and present interact with the experiences of its diaspora. This geographical focus can enrich the dialogue, moving beyond traditional centers of diaspora studies.

How to prepare

Delegates preparing for ICADTS-2026 should focus on developing a strong understanding of the historical trajectories and contemporary challenges faced by African diaspora communities. This includes researching the various waves of migration, the socio-economic conditions that spurred them, and the cultural adaptations that followed. Familiarity with key academic debates within African diaspora studies will be highly beneficial.

Effective participation will require an ability to engage with diverse viewpoints and to articulate how historical contexts inform current issues. Consider how different national and regional experiences within the diaspora intersect with broader transatlantic themes. Preparing case studies or analyses that bridge these geographical and thematic divides can enhance contributions to the discussions.

Given the focus on transatlantic studies, delegates should also be prepared to discuss the political, economic, and cultural exchanges between African nations and countries with significant diaspora populations. This includes understanding the impact of colonialism, post-colonial relations, and contemporary efforts towards collaboration and development. Reviewing concepts such as What Is Stakeholder Mapping? and Dynamic Analysis can help in structuring arguments and understanding complex interdependencies.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Uganda

Host nation with a rich history of migration and regional influence.

Role in topic

As the host country, UGA provides a crucial African perspective on diaspora and transatlantic studies, offering insights into regional migration patterns, cultural preservation efforts, and the impact of global connections on East Africa.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

The African Diaspora: Forced Migration and Global Communities

The African diaspora refers to the dispersal of peoples of African descent across the globe, principally through the transatlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries, during which an estimated 12.5 million Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas. Smaller but historically significant diasporas also formed through the trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades, and through later voluntary migrations during the colonial and post-independence eras. Today, the African Union formally recognizes the diaspora as its 'sixth region,' acknowledging communities in the Americas, Europe, the Caribbean, and Asia as integral to continental development. Contemporary debates focus on questions of citizenship, dual nationality, reparations, and the economic role of remittances, which now exceed official development assistance to many African states. Initiatives such as Ghana's 'Year of Return' (2019) and 'Beyond the Return' campaign illustrate efforts to formalize ties between the continent and its diaspora. The UN's International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024) further institutionalized recognition of diaspora rights and contributions, though implementation has been uneven across member states.

Key players

Transatlantic Connections: Trade, Empire, and Exchange

The transatlantic system that emerged from the late 15th century onward bound Africa, Europe, and the Americas in a triangular trade defined by the forced export of African labor, the extraction of New World commodities such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton, and the export of European manufactures. This system underwrote European industrialization, the plantation economies of the Americas, and the demographic transformation of three continents. Ports such as Liverpool, Nantes, Lisbon, Luanda, Elmina, Charleston, and Salvador da Bahia became nodes in a tightly integrated Atlantic economy. After abolition in the 19th century, transatlantic connections persisted through colonial administration, missionary networks, labor migration, and intellectual exchange. In the 20th century, figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Aimé Césaire, and Kwame Nkrumah built explicitly transatlantic political and cultural movements. Today, scholarship on the 'Atlantic World' examines these enduring linkages, while contemporary policy debates address reparations, the restitution of cultural objects looted during the colonial period, and the legacies of slavery in modern institutions, including universities, banks, and insurers.

Key players

Cultural Resistance in the African Diaspora

Cultural resistance has been a defining feature of African diaspora history, encompassing the preservation, adaptation, and reinvention of African cultural forms under conditions of slavery, colonialism, and racial discrimination. Enslaved peoples retained linguistic, religious, musical, and culinary traditions despite systematic efforts at erasure, producing syncretic forms such as Vodou in Haiti, Candomblé in Brazil, Santería in Cuba, and the spirituals, blues, and jazz traditions of the United States. Maroon communities in Jamaica, Suriname, and Brazil's quilombos represented direct political resistance rooted in cultural autonomy. In the 20th century, movements such as the Harlem Renaissance, Négritude, Rastafarianism, and the Black Arts Movement articulated cultural resistance as a vehicle for political consciousness. More recent expressions include hip-hop's global diffusion, Afrobeats, and contemporary literary and cinematic movements that contest stereotypes and reclaim historical narratives. Debates persist over cultural appropriation, the restitution of looted artifacts held in Western museums, and the role of state institutions in either supporting or commodifying Black cultural production.

Key players

Pan-Africanism: From Liberation Movement to Continental Politics

Pan-Africanism emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among diaspora intellectuals as a movement for the political unity, dignity, and self-determination of African peoples worldwide. The 1900 Pan-African Conference in London, organized by Henry Sylvester Williams, and the series of Pan-African Congresses led by W.E.B. Du Bois between 1919 and 1945 laid its ideological foundation. The 1945 Manchester Congress, attended by Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta, directly linked the movement to African decolonization, which accelerated after Ghana's independence in 1957. The Organization of African Unity, founded in 1963, institutionalized Pan-Africanism at the state level, though it was constrained by Cold War politics and the principle of non-interference. Its successor, the African Union, established in 2002, broadened the agenda to economic integration, embodied in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), and explicitly recognized the diaspora. Contemporary Pan-Africanism contends with debates over sovereignty, the legacies of military coups in the Sahel, currency reform, relations with former colonial powers, and the unfulfilled vision of deeper political union.

Key players

Global Solidarity and the African Diaspora

Global solidarity with Africa and its diaspora has taken many forms, from 19th-century abolitionist networks linking British, American, and Caribbean activists, to 20th-century anti-colonial and anti-apartheid movements that drew support from Asia, Latin America, the Soviet bloc, and progressive constituencies in the West. The Bandung Conference of 1955 and the Non-Aligned Movement provided platforms for Afro-Asian solidarity, while Cuba's military and medical internationalism in Angola, Mozambique, and elsewhere illustrated active state-level support for liberation struggles. In the contemporary period, global solidarity has crystallized around the international resonance of the Black Lives Matter movement following 2020, debates over reparations led by CARICOM and the African Union, climate justice claims by African and small-island states, and demands for the restitution of cultural heritage. Tensions remain between rhetorical solidarity and concrete policy outcomes, particularly on debt relief, vaccine equity, migration policy, and reform of the UN Security Council, where Africa remains without permanent representation.

Key players

Postcolonial Memory and the Politics of the Past

Postcolonial memory concerns how societies remember, commemorate, and contest the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and racial violence. In Africa and its diaspora, this includes the memorialization of the Middle Passage at sites such as Gorée Island in Senegal and Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, truth commissions on colonial-era abuses, and ongoing demands for apologies, reparations, and the return of looted cultural property such as the Benin Bronzes. France's 2017 acknowledgment of colonial crimes in Algeria, Germany's 2021 recognition of the Herero and Nama genocide in Namibia, and Belgium's expressions of regret regarding the Congo mark cautious shifts in former colonial states. Memory politics also operates within former colonial powers, where debates over statues, street names, museum collections, and school curricula have intensified. The UN's Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, established in 2021, provides an international venue for these claims. Disputes persist over the form and scope of redress, the relationship between memory and contemporary racial inequality, and whether symbolic acknowledgments translate into structural change.

Key players

Identity, Race, and Belonging in the African Diaspora

Questions of identity have been central to African diaspora experience, shaped by the rupture of forced migration, the imposition of racial categories under slavery and colonialism, and ongoing negotiations of belonging in multiethnic societies. Concepts such as 'double consciousness,' articulated by W.E.B. Du Bois, Négritude as developed by Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor, and later frameworks such as Afropolitanism and Afrofuturism, reflect successive efforts to theorize Black identity beyond the categories imposed by Euro-American modernity. Contemporary debates engage with the diversity of African-descended populations, including longstanding diaspora communities, recent African migrants, and mixed-heritage populations. Tensions exist around census categories, citizenship and naturalization policies, anti-Black racism in Europe and the Americas, intra-diaspora differences, and the politics of return migration to the continent. Identity also intersects with gender, class, religion, and sexuality, complicating any singular notion of 'Blackness' or 'Africanness.'

Key players

The Black Atlantic: A Transnational Cultural World

The concept of the 'Black Atlantic,' articulated by Paul Gilroy in his 1993 work of the same name, frames the cultures of African-descended peoples in the Americas, Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa as a single transnational formation forged through the experience of the Middle Passage and modernity. Rather than treating Black cultures as derivatives of national traditions, the Black Atlantic emphasizes the constant circulation of people, music, ideas, and political projects across the ocean — from abolitionist correspondence to jazz tours, reggae's global travels, and contemporary digital networks. The framework has shaped scholarship on slavery, diaspora, and modernity, and informs contemporary cultural and political projects, including transatlantic museum exhibitions, festivals such as FESTAC and Carifesta, and academic networks linking African, Caribbean, European, and American institutions. Critics have noted that the original formulation underemphasized Lusophone and Hispanic Atlantic worlds, women's contributions, and African continental agency — gaps that recent scholarship and policy increasingly seek to address.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for International Conference on African Diaspora and Transatlantic Studies (ICADTS-2026).

Recent reporting to ground your prep

AMVCA 2026

DR Congo, M23 Rebels Sign Humanitarian Pact

Black Coffee's O2 Show: South African Music's

Reviving Identity

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Gender Dynamics Across Cultures

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Cross-Cultural Communication

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Uganda September 2026

By committee

Frequently asked questions

International Conference on African Diaspora and Transatlantic Studies (ICADTS-2026)

Sep 10–11, 2026Entebbe, UgandaIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
The African Diaspora: Forced Migration and Global Communities · Transatlantic Connections: Trade, Empire, and Exchange · Cultural Resistance in the African Diaspora · Pan-Africanism: From Liberation Movement to Continental Politics · Global Solidarity and the African Diaspora · Postcolonial Memory and the Politics of the Past · Identity, Race, and Belonging in the African Diaspora · The Black Atlantic: A Transnational Cultural World

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Uganda

Host nation with a rich history of migration and regional influence.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

The African Diaspora: Forced Migration and Global Communities

Key players

Transatlantic Connections: Trade, Empire, and Exchange

Key players

Cultural Resistance in the African Diaspora

Key players

Pan-Africanism: From Liberation Movement to Continental Politics

Key players

Global Solidarity and the African Diaspora

Key players

Postcolonial Memory and the Politics of the Past

Key players

Identity, Race, and Belonging in the African Diaspora

Key players

The Black Atlantic: A Transnational Cultural World

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for International Conference on African Diaspora and Transatlantic Studies (ICADTS-2026).

Recent reporting to ground your prep

AMVCA 2026

DR Congo, M23 Rebels Sign Humanitarian Pact

Black Coffee's O2 Show: South African Music's

Reviving Identity

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Gender Dynamics Across Cultures

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Cross-Cultural Communication

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Uganda September 2026

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

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Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

International Conference on Leadership, Human Rights, and International Security

International Conference on Migration, Diaspora and Transnationalism

10th International Public Procurement Conference (IPPC10)

International Conference on Organized Crime, Terrorism, and Law Enforcement Strategies (ICOCTLES)

International Conference on Human Rights, Genocide, and Mass Violence (ICHRGMV - 26)

International Conference on Conflict Resolution in Post-Authoritarian Societies

Frequently asked questions