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Reimagining personal and collective experiences of disability in Africa

Abstract

This paper explores understandings of disability in Africa through the personal and collective experiences of a group of postgraduate students at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. The students, as disabled people themselves or practitioners working in the field across Africa, were required to capture their understanding of disability on the continent in a poster, set as a summative assessment task. What emerges from the students' posters provides valuable insights into the complex social, political and economic factors that influence and shape the experience of disability in Africa. The paper argues that these insights are especially important to existing conceptual thinking around disability and its importance to discussions on Africa and its development. It suggests that grappling more carefully with the experience of disability in Africa brings much needed voices from Africa and the global South into the field of Disability Studies and deepens these debates in valuable and necessary ways.

More information

Type
Journal Article
Author
Howell C
Lorenzo T
Sompeta-Gcaza S