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Joshua Kwesi Aikins is a Senior Fellow and head of the Economy and Society Programme. He also leads the “Deconstructing and Addressing Colonial Continuities in German Development Cooperation.“ project which examines current policies, NGO activities and discourses around "decolonising development”, offering empirical grounding and comparative perspectives on German state-led and NGO initiatives.
APRI is based on an idea developed by Dr Olumide Abimbola and Joshua Kwesi Akins, who supported the founding activities lead by Dr Abimbola, co-authored APRIs Framing Paper “Racism and Climate (In)Jusice“ and authored “Seek Ye First the Digital Kingdom? Between Data Extractivism and Digital Self-Determination".
He is a political scientist who studied, researched and worked in both Germany and Ghana. Prior to joining APRI, he was an associate researcher in the Ghana Constitution Review Commission (2010-2011). In Germany, he was co-author of the Afrozensus, the first large scale community survey for Black, African and Afrodiasporic people in Germany. From 2013 to 2015 he coordinated the writing and finally presented the most comprehensive civil society led parallel report to Germany's state report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. He served as an expert member of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on Racism and Discrimination in the State of Thuringia from 2017 to 2019. Aikins serves on the advisory board of Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (Initiative Black People in Germany) and is is involved in diaspora empowerment and the ongoing decolonial renaming of Berlin streets as part of a shift from colonial to anti- and decolonial commemoration in and beyond the German capital.