Aman Sium
Dreaming Beyond the State: Centering Indigenous Governance as a Framework for African Development
The Bartlett Pan-African Indigenist Collective shares Dreaming Beyond the State by Aman Sium.
Dreaming Beyond the State: Centering Indigenous Governance as a Framework for African Development . Image generated by Galila Khougali.
ABOUT
Aman Sium argues that African futures must be imagined outside the framework of the colonial nation-state.
In this deeply reflective chapter, he draws on Indigenous governance traditions across Africa, such as consensus councils, communal land stewardship, and spiritual leadership, to offer a decolonial alternative to Western statehood. The paper critiques the limits of current governance reforms and proposes instead a politics rooted in ancestral knowledge, autonomy, and responsibility. Sium’s work urges a radical shift in how “development” is conceptualised, placing Indigenous sovereignty, care, and relationality at the centre.
WHO
This reference was recommended by the Bartlett Pan-African Indigenist Collective.
The Collective is a space for critical dialogue, activism, and scholarship that foregrounds Pan-African Indigenist ways of knowing, being, and creating. Formed by members of the Bartlett community dedicated to uplifting the voices, knowledge, and cultural legacies of people of African heritage and their respective Indigenous communities and lands, it aims to challenge colonial legacies and inspire transformation within institutional structures, research and curricula. By integrating creative and scholarly practices, the Collective works to restore narratives that have been silenced or misrepresented. Their work advances decolonial efforts in higher education by creating inclusive spaces and centring diverse African knowledge systems. Bartlett Alternative recognises the Collective’s vital contribution to broadening intellectual and cultural horizons through radical inclusivity and exclusivity, and thanks them for sharing resources that foreground lived experience, land-based knowledge systems, and epistemic justice.
Department Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment
Share your references and work with us! Help shape our collective curriculum.
Get in touch!LIBRARY
A growing library of references recommended by staff and students across the Bartlett
view all
