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Joshua Kwesi Aikins

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Joshua Kwesi Aikins is a political scientist and Ph.D. candidate at University of Kassel and senior researcher with Berlin based NGO Citizens for Europe. His research interests include the interaction between western-style and indigenous political institutions in Ghana, post- and decolonial perspectives on ‘development,’ cultural and political representation of the African Diaspora, equality data, coloniality and the politics of memory in Germany. As an academic and an activist, Aikins is involved in various projects in both Germany and Ghana.  As a policy officer with Diakonie Bundesverband he coordinated, co-wrote and presented the parallel report to Germany’s state report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (2013-2015). As a member of the board of advisers for the Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (Initiative Black People in Germany), he contributes both policy analysis and advocacy, e.g. for data collection toward tracing, proving, and combating the effects of institutional racism. Aikins is involved in antiracist organizing, diaspora empowerment, and the ongoing struggle for a decolonial renaming of Berlin streets and a shift from colonial to anti- and decolonial commemoration in and beyond the German capital. He is co-author of the Afrozensus, the first comprehensive survey of Black, African and Afrodiasporic people in Germany, and of the framing paper “Racism and Climate (In)Justice – How Racism and Colonialism shape the Climate Crisis and Climate Action” (both published in 2021, both freely available online).

 

Updated June 2022