EXCLUSIVE: ECOWAS Brown Bag Seminar to interrogate Africa’s place in emerging global order By Raymond Enoch
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is set to host a high-level Brown Bag Seminar featuring renowned Pan-African scholar and international affairs expert, Professor Adekeye Adebajo, as the keynote speaker.
The second edition of the ECOWAS Directorate of Political Affairs’ Brown Bag Seminar, scheduled for Wednesday, October 7, 2026, at the ECOWAS Commission Headquarters in Abuja, will focus on the theme: “The New is Not Yet Born: Global Africa in the Age of Chimerica.”
The seminar, according to information obtained by our foreign affairs correspondent, is expected to provide a platform for critical reflection on Africa’s position and strategic interests in an increasingly complex global order shaped by shifting geopolitical and economic relations.
Adebajo, a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship in South Africa, brings extensive experience in African affairs, conflict resolution, peacebuilding and international relations to the engagement.
The respected scholar has served at the highest levels of international policy and conflict-resolution institutions, including as Director of the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation at the University of Johannesburg between 2017 and 2021 and Executive Director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town from 2003 to 2016.
His academic and policy work has focused extensively on Africa’s place in the international system, peace and security, regional integration and the continent’s historical and contemporary political challenges.
Adebajo is the author of 10 books, including The Splendid Tapestry of African Life: Essays on A Resilient Continent, its Diaspora, and the World, The Curse of Berlin: Africa after the Cold War, UN Peacekeeping in Africa and Building Peace in West Africa: Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea-Bissau.
He has also edited or co-edited 11 books, among them The Pan-African Pantheon: Prophets, Poets, and Philosophers, which won the Best Edited Book Prize of the African Studies Association of the United States in 2022, The Black Atlantic’s Triple Burden: Slavery, Colonialism, and Reparations, and West Africa’s Security Challenges.
Beyond academia, Professor Adebajo has served on United Nations missions in South Africa, Western Sahara and Iraq, giving him first-hand exposure to some of the continent’s most complex peace, security and diplomatic challenges.
He holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford in England, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and remains an influential public intellectual and commentator on African and global affairs.
He is also a columnist for The Guardian in Nigeria, Business Day in South Africa, The Gleaner in Jamaica and Project Syndicate in the United States and Europe.
The choice of Adebajo as keynote speaker is expected to add significant intellectual weight to the ECOWAS seminar, particularly at a time when West Africa and the wider continent are navigating profound geopolitical, economic and institutional changes.
The theme, “The New is Not Yet Born: Global Africa in the Age of Chimerica,” is expected to provoke discussion on the evolving balance of global power and what the emerging international order means for Africa, particularly amid changing relations between major global powers and the growing push for greater African strategic autonomy.
The seminar is billed for 12:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 7, 2026, at Meeting Room 835, ECOWAS Commission Headquarters, Abuja.
The event is being organised by the ECOWAS Directorate of Political Affairs as part of its continuing efforts to promote informed policy dialogue on issues shaping the region and the continent.
