About us

As observed by Professor Molefi Kete Asante, “our African universities are the repositories and dispensers not of our ancestral knowledge and philosophy but of Europe’s. The fact that European knowledge is in the system is not the problem, but that such knowledge is at the center of most African curricula is an immediate danger that privileges white [Western] scholars in those institutions and marginalises Africans and African knowledge”. Through various historical and contemporary local and international machinations, both the politics and political economy of knowledge have underprivileged Africa’s contributions in almost all fields of inquiry. As such, the task of studying African knowledge and practices and repositioning them from the periphery is both a grand and urgent one. Our Centre thus seeks to pursue inter-disciplinary, un-disciplinary and even anti-disciplinary critical research and exchange of insights/findings on African peoples and places (past and present) as well as their standing in and relation with the world.

One would ask what difference it makes whether to study Africa from Africa as viewed by Africans or from the various centres for African studies in Europe and America. There is certainly knowledge to be acquired either way, but it may not be the same. But place indeed matters in knowledge production. Although researchers often underline their objectivity, research and politics of knowledge are often informed by interests and positionality. Our study of Africa is rooted in the interest of achieving self-understanding and decolonisation through a pursuit of knowledge mainly driven from within Africa and guided by endogenous imperatives and lenses. This does not rule out working with other people from outside Africa, but we are keen on holding the concerns of the African world as our priority. Put differently, ours is not just another knowledge-scrutinising and knowledge-producing Centre for African Studies only different by location. Nor does it simply afford a research gaze at Africa(ns) as an object of indifferent study. As a centre for and not simply a centre of, we are instead embedded and purposeful at finding ways of taking Africa(ns) forward epistemologically first and foremost, and then in material and pragmatic senses as well. On the admission of the above ideal, we are open to working with a healthy synergy of African continent-based and non-continent-based scholars to animate scientific life in initiating and furthering enriching research on Africa and generating insights that could as well inform social policy and practice in Africa.