Reparative Learning Grant

The Reparative Learning Grant (RLG) is a learning-in-action process to develop a praxis for transformative reparative wealth redistribution rooted in internationalist solidarity, worldmaking* and addressing the historical, present and future harms of imperialist wealth accumulation.

The RLG seeks to move beyond wealth holders interrogating their relationship to their wealth, identity, class, race and privilege and instead prioritises collaborative internationalist action, research, and learning funded by an initial learning grant of €100,000. This grant comes from a larger wealth endowment generated through the colonial pharmaceutical industry’s extraction and processing of quinine*, one of the major tools of imperialism that powered the colonisation of Africa.

We will be working with and be led by anti-colonial and anti-imperialist Black and Global South organisers, researchers, organisations and communities of reparatory and liberatory interest. Pharmakina*, one of the world's principal producers of quinine, has historically been directly linked to the wealth endowment, therefore, our initial priority will be working with organisations and communities from and located in DRC.

The RLG aims to practice and create a blueprint for transformative reparative wealth redistribution.

If you are currently involved in reparative Global South work, and are interested in participating and/or learning more about this grant, please contact: tiff@arisingquo.com.

Worldmaking: The decolonial project of building a new political and economic world order characterised by self-determination, sovereignty, and relations of non-domination and solidarity. (See Reconsidering Reparations, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò).

Quinine: Historically, (as of 2006) was a first-line agriculturally mass produced, (initially fuelled by colonial plantation economies), medication treatment for malaria, first extracted in 1820 from the bark of a Cinchona tree, Peru and is still being used today as flavouring in tonic water. Quinine is frequently cited by historians as one of the major 'tools of imperialism' that powered colonial empires. Due to the extraction, and over-harvesting, the removal of quinine-rich species from the Andes has changed the genetic structure of cinchona plants, reducing their ability to evolve and change. (See research by Nataly Allasi Canales, Quechua Amazonian evolutionary biologist).

Pharmakina (Bukavu, DRC): Established in 1961, Pharmakina, since 2019, produces about 100 tonnes of processed quinine a year, or about 30% of global demand. (Economist, 2019).