In November 2016, the Nyerere Resource Centre (NRC) organized a short course training on “Financialisation of Land and Ecology”. Participants in the training included Civil Society activists from across the region and young lecturers form local universities. Topics covered included Introduction to Capital Accumulation, Financialisation and the Global Economic Crisis and Struggles over land, ecology, livelihoods and social reproduction among others. The training was facilitated by two Lecturers, Prof. Marjorie Mbilinyi from Tanzania and Prof. Carlos Castel-Branco from Mozambique.
The training was delivered in form of Lectures, Seminars and Tutorials where moderated sessions allowed participants both in plenary sessions (seminars) and tutorials (small groups) to dig deep into lectured topics by asking questions, exchange of views and perspectives without necessarily seeking consensus on issues. While on one side lectures on Capital Accumulation and Financialisation happened to be very eye opening and enlightening for most participants, discussions and debates during the last two lectures on Struggles over Land, Ecology and Livelihoods also attracted the interest of many participants, especially activists from the Civil Society. I was more intrigued by the discussions on the Global Economic crisis and the absence of or a need to create alternatives to the current system which seem to be structurally guaranteed to fail even in the future.
One of the participants at the training, Mr. Bravious Kaheyza, attended a follow up seminar on public debt where he made a presentation and webbed the content of the course in his presentation.
After the training, one of the Lecturers at the Training, Prof. Carlos Castel-Branco from the Institute of Economic and Social Studies in Maputo, Mozambique, sat down with Prof. Issa Shivji of NRC in this one hour interview to discuss the pitfalls of raising Public Debt and what Financialisation of the world economy means, especially for the third world countries.