ABSTRACT
A rich literature has developed on World Social Forums (WSFs), re-gional Social Forums, and other transnational contentious gatherings. Scholars have carried out surveys on their composition and participation (Agrikoliansky and Sommier 2005; della Porta and Tarrow 2005c; Reese et al., Chapter 4). But few studies have addressed what is at stake with the localization, both geographic and symbolic, of the World Social Forums. Why observe this WSF in particular? First of all, even if the other WSFs also took place in the South, the 2007 WSF was the first World Forum held in Africa, if one excludes the polycentric Social Forum of January 2006, held in Bamako, Karachi, and Caracas. The organizers of this Forum were not unaware of the stakes in making African voices heard in the WSF process, especially since Africa is perceived as the continent most victimized by globalization. Reflecting on Africa at the WSF in Nairobi means at the same time thinking about the emergence of an African alterglobalism,1 incarnated inter alia by the African Social Forum (ASF). It also
implies reflections on the diversity of transnationalized African networks (both in organizational and ideological terms), on the tensions between the latter, and on the complex relationship they have to Northern and other Southern (such as Asia and Latin America) activists. The African alterglobal movement, if anything, is a field of multiple tensions.
