The Oldenburg Working Group on Colonial Continuities is inviting people to two events in February. The Working Group writes:
“Colonialism, plants, animals and landscapes: together with Renzo Baas, we look – just as the title of his 2019 book aptly puts it – at Namibia as a space of desire and take an excursion into Namibia’s literary landscape during colonialism, apartheid and the liberation struggle.”

5 February 2026, 6.00 pm: “Taking Roots in a Desert. Gardens in the German Colonial Imagination.”
Joining the discussion online from Accra, Ghana, will be the German literary and cultural scholar Renzo Baas, who specialises in postcolonial literature.
Cine k, Bahnhofstraße 11, 26122 Oldenburg

18 February 2026, 6.00 pm: German Missionary and Colonial Pedagogy in Togo and Its Influence on Indigenous Educational Practices and Social Relations.
Guest speaker: Prof. Dr Sena Yawo Akakpo-Numado, National Institute of Educational Sciences, University of Lomé, Togo
Cine k, Oldenburg
With the founding of the first school around 1850 in Aného on the so-called Slave Coast in West Africa, a network of mission schools gradually developed.
The conquest of the region by Germany in 1885 and the establishment of the German colony of Togo enabled the emergence of a missionary and colonial school system that served almost exclusively the interests of colonisation until the outbreak of the First World War. This German missionary and colonial pedagogy had a lasting influence on indigenous educational practices and social structures. Local people who had attended these schools gained access to new employment opportunities and thus enjoyed a relatively improved social position and higher status within colonial society. This complex situation was further reinforced by the subsequent French colonial school system and continues to have an impact to this day.

Prof. Dr Sena Yawo Akakpo-Numado has been a lecturer at the National Institute of Educational Sciences at the University of Lomé since 2006.
As a specialist in comparative education, his work focuses on education policies and the development of education systems in developing countries that are confronted with very high demand for education, limited financial resources and a highly dynamic and increasingly challenging global environment. Since 2016, he has headed the Technical Working Unit at the Togolese ministries of education responsible for implementing the national education plan, and since 2019 he has also been Director of the Institute of Educational Sciences at the University of Lomé.