The future of African Studies: what we can do to keep Africa at the heart of our research

Abstract

Over the past two decades, Africa has returned to academic agendas outside of the continent. At the same time, the field of African Studies has come under increasing criticism for its marginalisation of African voices, interests, and agendas. This article explores how the complex transformations of the academy have contributed to a growing division of labour. Increasingly, African scholarship is associated with the production of empirical fact and socio-economic impact rather than theory, with ostensibly local rather than international publication, and with other forms of disadvantage that undermine respectful exchange and engagement. This discourages our engagement with Africa as a place of intellectual production in its own right. By arguing that scholars can and should make a difference to their field, both individually and collectively, the article suggests ways of understanding and engaging with these inequalities.

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Journal of African Cultural Studies
ISSN: 1369-6815 (Print) 1469-9346 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjac20
The future of African Studies: what we can do to
keep Africa at the heart of our research
Insa Nolte
To cite this article: Insa Nolte (2019): The future of African Studies: what we can do
to keep Africa at the heart of our research, Journal of African Cultural Studies, DOI:
10.1080/13696815.2019.1584552
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2019.1584552
Published online: 11 Mar 2019.
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The future of African Studies: what we can do to keep Africa at
the heart of our research
Insa Nolte
Department of African Studies and Anthropology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades, Africa has returned to academic agendas
outside of the continent. At the same time, the field of African Studies
has come under increasing criticism for its marginalisation of African
voices, interests, and agendas. This article explores how the complex
transformations of the academy have contributed to a growing
division of labour. Increasingly, African scholarship is associated
with the production of empirical fact and socio-economic impact
rather than theory, with ostensibly local rather than international
publication, and with other forms of disadvantage that undermine
respectful exchange and engagement. This discourages our
engagement with Africa as a place of intellectual production in its
own right. By arguing that scholars can and should make a
difference to their field, both individually and collectively, the
article suggests ways of understanding and engaging with these
inequalities.
Over the past two decades, Africa has returned to the academic agenda outside of the con-
tinent. At the same time, the field of African Studies has come under increasing criticism
for its marginalisation of African voices, interests, and agendas (cf. Medie and Kang 2018).
A highly visible and yet seemingly intractable division of labour has emerged between
academics based across Africa and those based outside the continent. While some of
the most prominent scholars in our field are of African origin, the current landscape of
scholarly labour tends to reduce the relative presence of voices by African scholars,
often muting or even silencing them.
1
At the same time, the intellectual labour of scholars
based outside of Africa, usually in the parts of Europe or North America collectively
referred to as the ‘West’or the ‘global North’, retains a privileged position. This discourages
an engagement with Africa as a place of significant intellectual production in its own right.
This article argues that while the exclusion and marginalisation of African scholars has
complex historical roots, its also reflects more recent changes to academic practice in
© 2019 Journal of African Cultural Studies
CONTACT Insa Nolte M.I.Nolte@bham.ac.uk Department of African Studies and Anthropology, University of Bir-
mingham, Birmingham, UK
As noted below, the text of this article is based on my presidential address at the 2018 ASAUK conference in Birmingham on
13 September 2018. My argument benefited greatly from my participation in a panel on ‘Ethical Collaborations: North-
South flows’at the same conference on 12 September 2018, which was organised by Carli Coetzee and also included
Divine Fuh, Toby Green, David Kerr, Ambreena Manji, Caroline Mose, Grace Musila, Duncan Omanga, and Ola Uduku. I
am also grateful for comments by Reginald Cline-Cole, Marco Di Nunzio, Leslie Fesenmyer, Juliet Gilbert, Rebecca
Jones, Laura Martin, Benedetta Rossi, and Kate Skinner.
JOURNAL OF AFRICAN CULTURAL STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2019.1584552

universities both in Africa and outside of the continent. For scholars based in the UK and at
other non-African institutions, an active and pro-African engagement with existing aca-
demic structures therefore needs to be based on a reflection of the conditions that con-
tribute to a growing gap between research produced by scholars in African and non-
African institutions. As in all academic disciplines, the working practices and experiences
that anchor our intellectual labour legitimise the questions we ask and the methodologies
that produce empirical facts, theoretical insights, and other forms of knowledge.
Focusing on our ability as scholars to transform academic debate on Africa, this article
also highlights the possibilities for alternative practices and approaches. It emphasises
that, even though institutional processes encourage certain forms of research, we have
personal control over many aspects of our work. We also have collective agency as aca-
demics, and through academic institutions such as journals, funding bodies, and
Learned Societies including African Studies Associations, and even as activists and lobby-
ists. The article invites both African and non-African scholars to take ownership of a debate
that recognises and engages with the divisions in our field rather than naturalising and
perpetuating them. By drawing on the ethical and intellectual discourses that underpin
our commitment to learning about Africa, we can share our experiences and expectations
of respectful exchange with a view to transforming them.
This article reflects my own experiences and reflections as a European immigrant to the
UK, and as a UK-based scholar of Nigerian and especially Yorùbá history and culture. After
afirst degree in Berlin, I spent most of my academic career in the UK Higher Education
system, and in particular in the collaborative and interdisciplinary atmosphere of the
Department for African Studies and Anthropology (formerly Centre of West African
Studies) at the University of Birmingham. My thoughts are equally shaped by my research
focus on Nigeria, which has enabled me to join different academic networks over the
course of my career. As an honorary member of staffat Adeyemi College of Education,
Ondo, I have had the privilege of sharing some experiences and points of debate with
Nigerian colleagues.
Drawing on the diverse and yet highly particular influences that have shaped my own
intellectual trajectory, I do not presume to represent an objective view on Africa, or on
African Studies as a global practice. I am uncomfortable with the fact that discourses
about ‘Africa’often obscure the diversity and dynamic that characterises life in many
parts of the continent. I am also aware that African Studies as a field has long been charac-
terised by a focus on countries south of the Sahara –a focus this article does not transcend.
Finally, an exploration of disparities between ‘African’and ‘non-African’scholars disregards
the significant differences between university systems within Europe, between the UK and
US, and between the study of Africa in the ‘West’and Asia or South America. And finally,
many of us, including myself, work across a range of different settings. Yet generalisations
about Africa –and scholarship from Africa –are also uncomfortable because they reflect
historical and structural discrepancies that continue to shape our work as academics. As
the terms central to this analysis reflect both the wider inequalities that have produced
African Studies as a field and our ability to engage with them, I understand my discomfort
with them as unavoidable.
The text of this article is based on my presidential address at the 2018 ASAUK confer-
ence in Birmingham on 13 September 2018. While I am delighted that the conference was
able to attract and support the attendance of 188 scholars from across Africa, most
2I. NOLTE

conference delegates were, like myself, based in institutions outside the continent. Much
of my argument is shaped by conversations with, and publications by, African scholars, but
for obvious reasons I cannot offer a view grounded in an Africa-based academic trajectory.
My reflections on how we need to change our practices are therefore primarily directed at
colleagues based in universities in the UK and other European or North American
countries. They may however resonate with scholars at certain institutions on the conti-
nent, including South Africa. Clearly, the article cannot provide an exhaustive discussion
of scholarly practice, and nor will all the issues highlighted here be relevant for all parts
of a highly diverse field. But by emphasising the collaborative nature of all knowledge pro-
duction, the article invites all scholars to reflect on our engagement with different cultures
and regions of Africa in the context of the institutional structures that shape this engage-
ment. Our willingness to reflect on academic methods and agendas in the context of the
conditions that shape academic lives is central to our ability to transform what we do.
The next two sections of the article provide an overview of the history of African
Studies, first tracing the debates and political constellations that have shaped African
Studies in the UK and beyond from the 1960s to the 1990s, and then discussing how
more recent changes in Higher Education have recast relationships between African scho-
lars and academics based outside of Africa. The second part of the article sets out how we
can challenge the divisions of labour that have been encouraged by this process, and
highlights the need to emphasise the importance of mutual respect both individually
and collectively.
Decolonisation and the rise and fall of African Studies
Reflecting the predominantly European origins of contemporary academic disciplines,
most early knowledge about Africa was closely linked to the slave trade and later to the
colonial and political projects of the UK and its mostly (but not exclusively) European pol-
itical rivals (cf. Zeleza 2009, 120–2). While most African countries have been independent
for nearly as long as they were colonised, the legacies of these unequal encounters con-
tinue to reverberate, not least because Africans and members of the African diaspora con-
tinue to be affected in multiple ways by racist fantasies and projections (cf. Eddo-Lodge
2017). Attention to the trajectories of the past –and their silencing in different contexts
–must therefore remain an important aspect of all scholars’engagement with Africa.
Colonial forms of knowledge production about Africa were transformed by the antici-
pation of independence across most of Africa following the Second World War. As a part of
the world that was not directly involved in the Cold War during the 1950s and 1960s, many
Africans saw their continent as an alternative to both West and East. African politicians like
Kwame Nkrumah, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Leopold Senghor rejected the assumptions that
underpinned European rule in Africa and suggested that the continent’s ability to
pursue its citizens’economic and political wellbeing was dependent on Africans’self-
knowledge (Gordon 2004).
The discourses emanating from Africa at independence inspired scholars around the
world to challenge debates that refused to acknowledge, or even explicitly denigrated,
Africa. The most dramatic disputes in the UK involved anti-colonial historians like
Thomas Hodgkin and Basil Davidson, who successfully challenged notions that, without
documentary evidence similar to that referred to by historians of Europe, African history
JOURNAL OF AFRICAN CULTURAL STUDIES 3

had to be dismissed.
2
Kenneth Dike drove the disciplinary debate forward by promoting
the use of oral evidence and emphasising the importance of Africa’s internal dynamics.
Scholars like Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Djibril Tamsir Niane, Betwell Allan Ogot, Jacob Ajayi, Adu
Boahen, and Ali Mazrui played an important role in addressing the wider ignorance
about African history, in particular through the UNESCO’s General History of Africa,
launched in 1964.
The end of colonialism also transformed academic relationships between Africa and
Europe. In the aftermath of the Second World War, African scholars built up a Higher Edu-
cation sector on the continent that pioneered the self-confident study of African history
and culture. Partly in the desire not to lose expertise on Africa to these new institutions,
several UK Universities established African Studies Centres in the 1950s and 1960s.
3
Recognising the limitations of Western disciplinary approaches to Africa, interdisciplinarity
became the intellectual norm in the field. Collegial networks across continents reflected
shared intellectual or theoretical commitments. Linking up scholars across the UK, but
also including the Africa-based scholars with whom they engaged in debate and collabor-
ation, the African Studies Association of the UK (ASAUK) was founded in 1963. The Associ-
ation quickly attracted several hundred members and a first annual conference held in
Birmingham in 1964 was attended by 79 members, plus fifteen guests and observers
(Fage 1989, 404–9).
By the mid-1970s, however, the tide was turning. Following the often unrealistic expec-
tations associated with political independence, the realisation that the slave trade and
colonialism had left lasting legacies led to a re-evaluation of Africa’s history and future.
Walter Rodney, who was educated in Jamaica and London before teaching in Tanzania
and then returning to Jamaica, argued that Europe’s wealth was derived from the active
underdevelopment of Africa (Rodney 1972). Building on his insights, scholars of African
societies played an important role in understanding the long-term differences between
Europe and Africa as part of global patterns of inequality and domination. Such
approaches in turn inspired new approaches to the dynamics of transformation in
African societies ‘from below’(cf. Alpers and Roberts 2002).
The engagement with Africa ‘from below’also resonated with wider debates about the
possibilities of understanding, and representing, marginalised groups in an academic
context dominated by culturally European ideas and practices (cf. Spivak 1976). Deconstruc-
tionist approaches contributed to a growing debate about the processes through which
hegemonic ideas of Africa were created (Zeleza 2009, 127). Scholars began to recognise
that monologic conceptions of truth, evidence and data prevented them from engaging
with the assumptions and ideas that shaped lives in different parts of Africa at a basic level.
However, declining investment in the study of Africa limited the reach of such ques-
tions at the time. Crucially, the introduction of overseas tuition fees also reduced
the UK’s appeal to African students, not least because during Africa’s‘lost decade’of
the 1980s, unfavourable exchange rates meant that study or research trips to Europe or
the US became unaffordable. While some African Studies Centres benefited from invest-
ments aimed at maintaining Britain’s commercial and diplomatic links with Africa (Fage
1989, 412–3), most reinvented themselves, usually by expanding disciplinary undergradu-
ate provision, and often through a theoretical focus on Development. In the UK and
elsewhere, even established scholars who had begun their academic careers by focusing
on Africa moved towards more comparative and generalised approaches.
4I. NOLTE

Immediately after the end of the Cold War, both political and academic interest largely
focused on the former communist world. Reflecting on the ostensible success of global
capitalism in the 1990s, economists and development experts shifted emphasis from
the control of market forces to their liberation. Poverty on the African continent came
to be seen as an apparent failure of self-reliance. In popular and academic discourse,
Africa was increasingly understood as a continent in crisis (cf. Hyden 1996). This implied
that it had little to offer to those who studied it.
The decline of UK academic interest in Africa from the 1970s was partly balanced by
increasing interest in Africa in the US, where the field of African Studies had originally
largely excluded Africans or African-Americans (Allman 2018 Presidential Lecture).
However, following the Civil Rights Movement, scholars from more diverse backgrounds
began to assert the validity of their engagements with Africa (cf. Yelvington 2018). This
helped to attract African scholars to the US, who were often linked to the continent
through personal and family ties, and embedded in research networks with strong
roots on the African continent. Scholars of African origin were indispensable to the emer-
gence of Africana Studies, which combined a focus on both the African continent and its
diasporas (cf. Zeleza 2004; Olukoshi 2006, 534).
In the UK, a combination of personal idealism and access to excellent research
resources enabled some established scholars to maintain their focus on the African con-
tinent. With a new generation taking on the leadership of the Royal African Society, a
joint membership agreement with the African Studies Association of the UK ensured
the ongoing financial viability of the ASAUK. But more importantly, the internationalisation
of Higher Education also brought excellent African academics to the UK. While this group
remained relatively small (cf. McCracken 1993, 243), scholars including Raufu Mustapha,
Ola Uduku, Tunde Zack-Williams and Reginald Cline-Cole developed traditions of scholar-
ship that aimed to hold Africa’s new political elites to account, helped to normalise the
study of Africa in areas where the continent had previously been ignored, and, like in
the US, affirmed the study of Africa’s diasporas as part of African Studies.
Africa’s ambivalent return to research agendas in Europe, North America,
and beyond
By the early 2000s, the realisation that the end of the Cold War would not automatically
produce a more peaceful world facilitated greater interest in Africa both in Europe and
North America. Growing Chinese and Asian investment across Africa stirred political and
economic anxieties that pointed to the continent’s political and economic importance.
At the same time, new developments on the continent, from the return to majority and
civilian rule in many African states to the blossoming of the so-called Third Wave of
African literature, inspired a new generation of researchers. Equally, the realisation that
Africa will be home to the largest number of young people by 2050 has confirmed its cen-
trality for global demography.
In the UK, the continent has also become a more important focus as Britain seeks to
recast its position in the world following its decision in 2016 to leave the European
Union. The growing political interest in Africa is reflected in the growth of relevant confer-
ences, networks, journals and publications, supported by old and new funding streams.
The establishment of the Global Challenges Research Fund in 2015, which supports
JOURNAL OF AFRICAN CULTURAL STUDIES 5

development-oriented research on and in countries eligible for Overseas Development
Assistance from the UK, has further expanded opportunities for academic research.
While it is important to engage critically with both funding rationales and practices
(Mandler and Manji 2018), the recognition of the importance of the world’s second
largest, youngest, and second most-populous continent for the UK it is both welcome
and reassuring.
The growing national and international interest in Africa has revived African Studies
Associations across the world. Central to the success of the Africa-Europe Group for Inter-
disciplinary Studies (AEGIS) in bringing together scholars across European borders, it has
also significantly contributed to the expansion of the African Studies Association of the UK
(ASAUK). The ASAUK’s 2000 biennial conference attracted over a hundred delegates
attending 26 panels, and in 2018, the same conference accommodated over 800 delegates
and 166 panels. Similarly, members of the Association reported the completion of
altogether five doctoral theses and 16 books on Africa to the ASAUK Newsletter on
2000. In 2018 the same Newsletter listed 99 successful doctoral theses and announced
the publication of 43 books (ASAUK Newsletter 2000a-d, 2018a-d).
The changing external environment for Higher Education also created opportunities for
scholarship on Africa. In the UK and elsewhere, universities were no longer seen solely as a
priority in their own right but as institutions that contributed to the achievement of pol-
itically determined goals, such as the growth of business, innovation, and skills. Univer-
sities came to be identified as key drivers of a newly defined knowledge society, and
thus became service providers rather than producers of knowledge for its own sake
(McArthur 2011). In the context of growing political interest in Africa, both the abolition
of student number control in 2012 and the incentive for universities to grow their
income expanded possibilities for researchers and institutions keen to maintain or
develop a research focus on the continent.
At the same time, the landscape of academic collaboration shifted, because the intro-
duction of market-inspired principles transformed the interpersonal dynamics of knowl-
edge production. The long-term evolution of research funding away from posts to
grants has meant that fixed-term and part-time contracts have become the norm for
early career academics (Baez and Boyles 2009). As these structural changes contributed
to greater precarity within academia, both in the UK and elsewhere, they challenged
the ability to maintain the long-term academic networks, collaborations, and relationships
that are often foundational to truly innovative research. Equally, many colleagues feel
pressured to weigh the cost of collegiality and inclusivity against the imperative of produ-
cing the deliverables that determine their ability to obtain the next grant.
This trend has been reinforced by an increasingly divided publication landscape. As
online publication and availability made international communication and debate easier
from the 1990s onwards, English was confirmed as the main language of contemporary
academic production. Anglophone journals largely based in the UK and North America
continued to internationalise in organisation and orientation. In contrast, most African
journals outside of South Africa continued to be primarily available in print. The
growing divisions between ostensibly ‘local’(i.e. African-published) and ‘international’
scholarship have been naturalised in both African and non-African discourses, even
though they reconstitute non-Africans as experts on the continent in a manner that repro-
duces colonial and racial hierarchies.
6I. NOLTE

At the same time, the under-representation of African academics in the UK academy
persists (cf. The Guardian, 7 September 2018). Academics from Black and Minority Ethnic
(BME) backgrounds are not only disadvantaged by bias and discrimination, but also by
narrow curricula that marginalise research questions central to the experiences of staff
and students from such backgrounds (cf. RHS, 18 October 2018). Beyond the study of
African societies, the ongoing emphasis on methods and epistemologies rooted in
Euro-American traditions means that insights about the world beyond the continent are
rarely shaped by African scholars. This falsely suggests that, as Sadia Qureshi sums up caus-
tically, ‘white men write about universal truths while people of colour are only expert in a
narrow field –usually to do with questions of their identity and heritage’(Qureshi 2018).
As new funding structures encourage more hierarchical relationships between junior
and senior staff, they also increase the differences between African scholars and those
based in the UK and elsewhere outside of Africa. Yet it would be misleading to understand
existing inequalities solely as a result of changes in the UK and other non-African environ-
ments. In many African countries, the decline of government support, the privatisation of
higher education, and the decrease of relative academic incomes, have had stark effects. In
some contexts, academic life was also significantly affected by the fact that large numbers
of scholars emigrated to the US or elsewhere (Furniss 2005, 447).
Although working conditions for African scholars vary greatly depending on their insti-
tution and country, the overall disparities between scholars in African and non-African
countries influence opportunities, working conditions, and publishing patterns (Nyamnjoh
2004). By tending to exclude African scholars, these differences affect both the interperso-
nal relationships that constitute collegiate networks and the practical and theoretical
orientations that sustain such networks (cf. Guyer 1996). This has had an intellectually con-
servative effect, and while many scholars are aware of the disconnect between the ideas
that dominate academic debate and the understandings that shape African lives and com-
munities, we need to do more to address it. The remainder of this article sets out how we
can develop grounded approaches that sustain and validate the engagement with such
‘epistemic disarticulations’(Musila 2017).
Rethinking the divide between empirical and theoretical research
The growing division of labour between African scholars and those based outside the con-
tinent is at least partly linked to the constraints shaping competitive research funding.
Most funding bodies are embedded in a national or regional institutional landscape,
and decisions about what constitutes research quality are likely to reflect the discourses
and concerns relevant at that level. Especially where grants are disbursed predominantly
in responsive mode and submitted at short notice, funded research is therefore likely to
reflect epistemologies understood as relevant by the funding institutions (cf. Chubb and
Watermeyer 2017).
Research funding is not exclusively provided by funders based outside of Africa. Most
importantly for the field of African Studies as it is currently constituted, the Council for the
Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) provides significant
resources for research by African social scientists, which is complemented in some parts
of Africa by more regionally focused organisations.
4
Most African universities support
research, and many countries, including Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and South
JOURNAL OF AFRICAN CULTURAL STUDIES 7

Africa offer significant funding to researchers at national levels. However, as university
finances are linked to per capita income across the world, the resources available to
African researchers tend to reflect the relative economic position of the continent (cf.
Roser and Ortiz-Ospina 2018).
The dominance of funding based outside of Africa politicises the ostensible difference
between empirical and theoretical work. Prevailing perspectives constitute those who
understand the epistemological expectations of grant providers as thinkers and theorists.
In the context of funding for collaborative research, this means that questions about Africa
are framed in the context of debates relevant in those countries, but not necessarily in
Africa (cf. Mamdani 1989). Once theoretical approaches are widely accepted, it is concep-
tually easy to conceive of empirical research as primarily confirming or illuminating
aspects of such approaches. This logic encourages arrangements whereby African
researchers contribute to larger research projects as research assistants or consultants
who provide the relevant empirical evidence, while ‘external Africanists’interpret Africa
to the world, and vice versa (Olukoshi 2006, 533).
A growing emphasis on the socio-economic benefit, or impact, of research has encour-
aged the emergence of a research culture more directly engaged with social concerns, but
it has also contributed to an instrumentalisation of academic labour. In addition to limiting
academics’ability to engage critically with certain sectors of society, the ‘impact agenda’
puts researchers under pressure to produce research whose social benefit is easily recog-
nisable to funding agencies and research evaluators (cf. Chubb and Watermeyer 2017).
This means that in collaborative research endeavours, academics based on the African
continent are often pushed into roles as facilitators of impact, which is however measured
according to external standards.
Where such divisions of labour become naturalised, they impose severe limitations
on the production of knowledge because they encourage the ‘extraversion’of
research, i.e. a focus on theoretical questions and political concerns that arise
outside of Africa (Hountondji 2009,128).Thisprocessoftengoeshandinhandwith
a silencing of conceptual categories of African origin, thus further reducing wider aca-
demic discourse to English (cf. Coetzee 2013). In this way, Africa is treated as little
more than a ‘reservoir of raw fact’,whichismadetofit the theories and truths pro-
duced on the basis of European and North American knowledge and praxis
(Comaroffand Comaroff2012,1).
In order not to understand developments and processes on the African continent
‘extractively’, i.e. through the mining of data that is then understood through apparently
objective models that originate elsewhere, researchers need to engage in depth with the
complex challenges and achievements of African individuals and communities (Ndhlovu
2008). The most natural starting point for scholars committed to engaging with African
debates is to read the work produced by their Africa-based colleagues.
Importantly, all engagements with African texts must be based on close and critical
readings. Where texts by African authors appear to have little direct bearing on the theor-
etical concerns that dominate debate outside of Africa, non-African scholars must resist
the temptation to understand them only as empirical source material. As scholars we
recognise that we cannot understand social phenomena without paying attention to
the debates and ideas from which they emerge. Just as all scholars engage critically
with historical or political sources about Africa, often reading them against the
8I. NOLTE

conventions of their time and place, we must assess the texts produced by all colleagues
within the context of the wider debates of which they are part (cf. Barber 2007).
Importantly, globally marginalised debates afford an epistemologically privileged foun-
dation from which one can ‘rethink hegemonic forms of knowledge in mainstream
research’(Adams 2014, 471). The engaged reading of, and reflection on, the scholarship
of African colleagues is confirmed by the incorporation of such scholarship in research pro-
jects and grant applications –incidentally, not only in research about Africa! But if our
research on Africa implies that scholars based on the African continent have not made
any meaningful contributions to its study, it is particularly important that we reflect care-
fully on possible reasons for this.
The engagement with African scholarship also needs to illuminate our publications. As
Carli Coetzee notes, bibliographies and citations reflect on our scholarship because they
‘are a clear and transparent way of showing who is invested in a certain kind of knowledge,
and in whom we in turn invest’(2018, 108). Collectively, low levels of citation of African
scholars reflect on disciplinary relations of power because they suggest that their voices
‘do not command attention’, including in debates about the continent on which they
are based (Briggs and Weathers 2016: 471). The same logic applies to teaching, and to
requesting books and access to journals based on the African continent through UK
libraries. Once such literature is available, its presence can encourage and enable students
and colleagues to expand their own reading practices.
Whether based outside of Africa or not, as researchers we must also share the experi-
ence of empirical research. Our physical presence in different research contexts exposes us
to crises that are salutary for our understanding of the experiences of the subjects of our
research (Cramer et al. 2015, 159). This can include the practical challenges involved in
obtaining food and (hot) water, reliable public transport, and internet access as well as
the difficulties that may arise out of having to negotiate complex social and political
environments. At the same time, empirical research offers tacit insights ranging from
the experience of the bodily practices that shape everyday interactions to the jokes that
both suspend and confirm appropriate social relationships (Douglas 1975). The impor-
tance of an empirically grounded understanding of the places and communities we
research lies in the ambient and non-disciplinary nature of personal experience, and in
its ability to disrupt our assumptions.
Equally importantly, most empirical research requires researchers to have at least a
working knowledge of African language(s) and sociolects, including local Creoles or
‘Pidgins’. In order not to silence those African groups and individuals whom our research
seeks to understand, we need to recognise the categories and insights such languages
offer to African groups and individuals (Ngũgĩ2000). As many Africans speak several
African languages, or a combination of African and European languages, we also need to
engage with the overlapping meanings that are created in multilingual settings to under-
stand how the subjects of our research themselves conceptualise their actions and beliefs.
In many cases, the slippage between conceptualisations on the ground and academic
research questions is intellectually productive. A sustained engagement with the practices,
debates, and concepts mobilised in different African settings enables us to re-assess our
own ideas, practices and positionalities (Henderson 2009). The reflexive and transforma-
tive nature of knowledge production confirms not only the importance of ongoing
exchanges with African academics and intellectuals, but also the need to engage critically
JOURNAL OF AFRICAN CULTURAL STUDIES 9

with ‘current metanarratives’of research (Englund and Leach 2000; see also Fage 1989,
400–3).
Encouraging reciprocity and collaboration in academic publication
As the growing division of scholarly labour was accompanied by the emergence of ‘inter-
national’and ‘local’categories of publication, ongoing changes in academic publication
continue to transform publishing practice in highly diverse ways. In addition to a large
number of ‘international’journals from South Africa, an increasing number of journals
from Eastern and West Africa fall into this category –both because they are easily acces-
sible online and because they offer their readers cutting edge content. However, in many
UK and US universities, academic careers are not furthered by publication in Africa-based
journals. In contrast, many African universities request that academics publish in both
‘local’and ‘international’– or, in Nigerian parlance, ‘on-shore’and ‘offshore’–journals.
As a result, the intellectual labour of engaging with different discourses and publishing
paradigms is primarily borne by African scholars.
Although African scholars published more articles than their British colleagues in some
UK-based journals during the 1980s and in the early 1990s (McCracken 1993, 242–4), the
number of articles by African authors published in UK and other international journals has
dramatically declined since then. Recent research on publishing in the field of African poli-
tics suggests that the share of articles by Africa-based scholars has fallen from about 25
percent to ca. 15 percent between 1993 and 2013 (Briggs & Weathers 2016: 485). As
Africa-based publishers have been operating under severe constraints since the 1980s
(Bgoya 2014), African scholars are becoming increasingly peripheral to the study of
their own continent in many supposedly international debates (Pailey 2016).
The asymmetric publication landscape partly reflects the differences between the
working conditions of scholars based on the continent and those based elsewhere.
While many African academics have adopted ingenious strategies for research and publi-
cation that rely on both external and local resources (Olukoju 2002), excellent research is
sometimes consciously limited or appropriated by vested interests –including, at times,
Government (Adebanwi 2016; Arowosegbe 2016; Ogen and Nolte 2016). Non-African
researchers committed to empirical research also come under pressure from African poli-
ticians or businesses (Cramer et al. 2015), but their institutions are far less likely than those
of their African colleagues to be affected by such interventions.
Scholars, publishers, and librarians whose work focuses on Africa have recognised these
changes as a threat to scholarship. The Association of African Universities has emphasised
the need to renew investment into the sector, and in countries ranging from Nigeria to
South Africa, Higher Education has received increased government funding. Starting in
2004, the African Studies Association of the UK began to work closely with institutions
such as funders, the British Council, Universities UK, and the Association of Commonwealth
Universities, to develop new frameworks for Africa–UK collaboration (Furniss 2005). While
such initiatives have initiated highly useful conversations (cf. Association of Common-
wealth Universities 2009), much remains to be done.
Global initiatives to provide free or reduced-cost online access to scholarship to low-
income countries and ongoing software development have vastly increased the possibili-
ties for research in many African countries. Even so, many African academics only access
10 I. NOLTE

virtual technologies and research platforms with difficulty. Also, while Open Access pub-
lication can make a powerful difference to African scholars, it comes with costs as well
as benefits (Mandler 2014). An elegant way of ensuring mutual access to literature for insti-
tutions in collaborative networks and projects is to set up Shared Access to (online) library
resources. This could easily be achieved if funders and policy makers emphasised the need
for such reciprocity. However, even the most comprehensive Open or Shared Access policy
means little if low-bandwidth internet access imposes significant costs on online searches
(Olukoshi 2006, 537–40).
In many contexts, the growing pressure to publish also means that scholars tend to
compare or generalise rather than to explore their material in depth. While generalis-
ing approaches may ostensibly offer wider or more theoretical insights, recourse to
widely accepted abstract arguments can also enable researchers to gloss over a lack
of local knowledge and language skills. In such contexts, what appears as a theoreti-
cally engaged discussion can simply be a shortcut to filling gaps of knowledge and
structuring bewildering evidence, in order to ensure publication (cf. The Guardian
2017). Thus the pressure to publish can act as an effective censorship of diversity
(Waters 2004).
An emphasis on ‘theory’also contributes to the declining acceptance rates of African
scholars by emphasising theoretical debates at the expense of in-depth knowledge. In
the field of politics, Briggs and Weathers note that articles by African-based authors in
international Politics journals tend to be more focused on individual countries and com-
munities while non-African scholars tend to produce more comparative work and also
generalise more (2016: 485–6). The de-facto difficulties faced by many African scholars
in accessing books and journal articles mean that they can find it harder to position
their work in the wider field and to engage with the theoretical arguments that dominate
international debates. This doubly undermines scholarly discourse, first because it reduces
African authored publications, and second because it insulates scholars like myself from
the scrutiny of our African peers.
As reviewers and editors of most international journals, non-African scholars often
determine what gets published. Similar concerns apply to editors of Special Issues or
edited collections published outside of Africa. Even where individuals are open to compet-
ing perspectives, the limited views of what constitutes valid scholarship may rule out sub-
missions from the continent (Nyamnjoh 2004). Including larger numbers of African editors
and reviewers into the global publishing landscape would be an important step forward.
Seeing an African name or affiliation among editors’names would help journals to reach
out to Africa-based authors who might not have considered submitting their work there.
This is particularly important for journals with low numbers of African-authored articles,
whose African readers may have formed the opinion –rightly or wrongly –that their
texts would not be welcome.
Including larger numbers of African editors and reviewers could also help to develop
reviewing practices that encourage all authors to recognise and address the gaps in
their research (Coetzee 2018). A pro-African editorial policy must include more active strat-
egies towards increasing the number of African authors. It may be appropriate in some
cases to aim for a minimum quota of African-authored articles, and in others to insist
on active support from publishers and reviewers. Thus journal editors could specify that
reviews suggesting revision should include lists of further reading, and include pdfs or
JOURNAL OF AFRICAN CULTURAL STUDIES 11

photocopies of recommended texts. Beyond that, it would be a clear recognition of pub-
lishers’corporate responsibilities to make their publications freely available to authors
whose work is under review.
5
Given that African scholars are often forced to publish in their second or third language, it
may be reasonable for journals or publishers to make additional copy-editing funds avail-
able to authors for whom English is not a first language. A pro-African editorial policy
would also emphasise the importance of engaging with African languages and debates.
It is therefore important for journal editors not only to support authors of single-case
research to draw out its wider implications. They equally need to interrogate authors of
comparative or theoretical research about the degree to which they have taken the con-
cepts and practices of different linguistic, cultural, and historical groups into account.
One way of actively soliciting African contributions is the organisation of writing work-
shops: since 2009, the African Studies Association of the UK has organised writing work-
shops aimed at African authors, usually in African countries, where African scholars
work in intensive sessions with editors of international journals in order to produce
papers that will be ready, or near-ready, for publication. Similar workshops have been
organised by numerous Africa-focused journals, the African Studies Association of the
US, and the African Studies Association of Africa.
But it is also reasonable to expect that scholars outside of Africa submit their work to
journals and collections published on the African continent. Many Africa-based journals
reach significant audiences online, while also being actively circulated in print form to
local libraries during departmental research seminars and conferences. Positions as
reviewers or editorial board members of Africa-based journals will enable scholars
outside the continent to participate actively in scholarly debates in the countries of
their research.
For books and monographs, all scholars should consider co-publication with African
publishers from the very beginning. While there is no one-size fits all solution, it is often
possible to come to mutually beneficial arrangements if such ambitions are raised early
on in conversations with publishers, and if authors are committed to advertising and
popularising their work on the continent.
6
As producing an African edition can involve
difficult negotiations, UK universities could encourage collaborative publication strategies
by recognising the importance of texts published in areas of scholars’research in research
strategies, promotion panels, and in the context of the UK’s Research Excellence Frame-
work’s engagement with (African) Area Studies.
Building networks of respectful exchange
The inequalities that shape academic life in different parts of the world mean that African
and non-African scholars are affected differently by the conditions that govern inter-
national or collaborative research. Importantly, collaboration between the UK and Africa
is hampered by restrictions on scholarly travel that affect African scholars disproportio-
nately. Visa refusals are humiliating and discouraging for African colleagues who are
often planning to travel to the UK at significant expense to themselves or their depart-
ments. They are also painfully embarrassing to UK-based scholars like myself, not least
because we are deprived of being able to return the hospitality we so often enjoy
when we visit the countries of our research.
12 I. NOLTE

It is extremely worrying to see the refusal of visas to academic colleagues who have
absolutely no intention of staying in this country, and who have credible funding arrange-
ments in place. In many cases, decision-making in relation to visas shows an unacceptable
bias, both by gender and by nationality. Since 2016, the US has seen a steep drop in visas
that has disproportionately affected Muslims, immigrants of colour, and people from Africa
(Politico 2018), but visa regimes in Europe and Canada have also increasingly disadvan-
taged Africans.
7
Moreover, even as the African Union’s ambition to establish free move-
ment for all Africans, originally planned for 2018, has made intra-continental travel
easier, some nations –including South Africa and Nigeria –continue to require visas
from a majority of African countries (BBC News 2018). Such practices undermine the
free academic exchange that is foundational to the ability to pursue intellectual ambitions
and research agendas relevant to Africans.
In the UK, this matter is too important to simply seek relief in voicing our concerns
among friends and colleagues, or on social media: as in other fields of academic
concern, we must act to call out and challenge existing practices. Importantly, we have
a collective voice not only as members of civil society and voters, but also through our pro-
fessional institutions, including a wide network of African Studies Associations around the
world. Since 2016, the ASAUK has served as a hub for visa complaints and concerns, and it
exchanges information on this issue with other African Studies Associations in the world. It
is working closely with the Royal African Society and the All Party Parliamentary Group
(APPG) for Africa to highlight how visa refusals and delays affected our African colleagues
and our shared commitment to the study of the continent.
8
Without detracting from the
need to provide individual support to our African colleagues during visa applications, our
membership and participation of African Studies Associations in the UK and elsewhere
strengthens the collective voice for the reform of current visa practices.
We also need to recognise that scholars from Africa are affected in often unforeseen
ways by rules and regulations originally established in the UK, Europe, or North
America. In the UK, research funders tend to subject scholars and institutions across the
globe to exactly the same conditions. While this is appropriate in many cases, the insis-
tence of funders that the operational, ethical, and financial documentation and processes
of African universities match that of UK institutions implies that the processes that have
been developed in different African contexts are not trustworthy or adequate. The stan-
dardisation of practices that have emerged in the UK context for Africa reconfigures
relations of power as relations of competence. In this context, too, the failure to recognise
the inequalities that shape academic work not only naturalises but reproduces existing dis-
parities (Adams 2014).
In my personal experience, the notion that scholars everywhere work under the same
conditions can lead to absurd situations. A typical example is the provision by many
funders that clothing is not an acceptable research expense. In one case this meant
that Nigerian scholars with whom I attended an African Studies conference held in India-
napolis in November 2014 were unable to claim back expenses for warm coats, appropri-
ate shoes, hats, scarves, and gloves from the funder of our joint research.
9
Similar
provisions also apply to American or European researchers working in Africa, but the rela-
tively high cost of warm clothing, its lack of use value in tropical parts of the world, and the
often significant differences in income mean that such provisions often affect African and
non-African scholars very differently. In the case above, both my Nigerian colleagues and I
JOURNAL OF AFRICAN CULTURAL STUDIES 13

experienced the notionally equal treatment of all scholars as contributing to the de-facto,
if unintended, financial disadvantage of many African scholars.
International mobility is a key ingredient not only to our discipline but to research and
education in general. Yet the assumption that research environments outside of Africa
offer a better base for research on Africa is misleading. While African scholars who
spend time at non-African institutions often benefit from access to well-resourced libraries
and participation in wider debates about Africa, non-African scholars tend to gain deeper
insights into university life and politics in the countries of their research. This in turn makes
it easier for them to engage with research produced in these countries on its own terms.
So while it is wonderful to see that the number of graduate scholarships and opportu-
nities specifically reserved for African scholars in the UK has increased in recent years, it is
worrying that many UK-based graduate students can only spend short periods of time in
Africa. Split-site PhD programmes or co-supervision arrangements could contribute to the
emergence of a new generation of younger scholars whose research networks epitomise
the collaborative nature of African Studies. In a sector driven strongly by market consider-
ations, such initiatives would however require significant commitment from the relevant
funding agencies.
Teaching Fellowships, Research Fellowships, and Knowledge Exchange programmes
can also enable early career scholars from outside Africa to gain experience at an
African university. Established scholars can apply to hold honorary or visiting positions
in African universities. Where such appointments come with real commitments to gradu-
ate and undergraduate teaching, programme development, or administration, they offer
unique insights into the debates and conditions that shape academic practice on the
continent.
But UK scholars can also become more mobile in other ways. Often in response to the
issues discussed above, many of us have already increased our involvement in workshops
and conferences on the African continent. The growing number of excellent events on the
continent suggests that these are able to attract large and highly diverse audiences of
African scholars.
10
Moreover, co-organising workshops and conferences with African col-
leagues and mentors is an excellent way for us as individuals to learn from them.
Conclusion
African Studies cannot exist in any part of the world without the active presence and lea-
dership of African scholars and institutions. In order to keep Africa at the heart of our
research, scholars based outside of Africa must engage with the historical and ongoing
inequalities that shape our engagement with the continent. While many of the challenges
we face extend far beyond our scholarly community and are thus outside our direct
control, we can make a difference, collectively and as individuals. An active and ethical
scholarly life in our discipline includes the engagement with the inequalities that shape
our interpersonal relationships and research networks. While many of the constraints
we face are beyond our immediate control, we can decide how to engage with theoretical
and epistemological questions, we can commit to spending time on the African continent
to research and exchange ideas with intellectuals and scholars, we can adopt and support
pro-African editorial policies, and we can act individually and collectively to emphasise the
importance of mutual respect.
14 I. NOLTE

While Africa-centred research practices have a clear ethical dimension, they are also
essential to the ability to develop grounded theories and to take intellectual risks. The
study of African social and historical dynamics often offers insights that challenge estab-
lished disciplinary boundaries, and thus drives innovation and the emergence of new
fields of knowledge (Bates, Mudimbe, and O’Barr 1993). Moreover, an increased focus
on the African continent encourages debates about the epistemologies that motivate
the production of different types of canonical knowledge. In this way, the study of
Africa is central to the production of insights and approaches that transcend the normative
dominance of European concepts. Needless to say, the production of more plural forms of
knowledge is important for scholarship beyond Africa.
Equally importantly, we know that African debates and events matters beyond primar-
ily academic concerns: debates emanating from the continent, such as #RhodesMustFall –
incidentally also the title of the 2018 winner of the Fage and Oliver Prize of the African
Studies Association of the UK (Nyamnjoh 2016)–have revived discussions about how
to address the domination of European and North American voices not only in the
academy, but in public life more generally. The importance of such debates is further
confirmed by the continent’s growing demographic importance as the century progresses.
By supporting and engaging with such debates, scholars of Africa have a unique opportu-
nity not only to shape public discourse but to do so with a view to a meaningful future.
And finally, many of the issues raised here are not limited to the study of Africa. Debates
about the conditions of knowledge production and the possibility of respectful exchange
are important for research on all parts of the world where academics labour under greater
constraints than in most European or North American settings, and/ or for all societies
where the concepts that shape social and intellectual practices are significantly different
from those established in ostensibly international academic discourse. Diversity and differ-
ence are central to the human experience, and insofar as our research contributes to our
understanding of human lives, we need to engage with epistemologies, methods, and
voices from a wide range of backgrounds. Only a critical engagement with multiple
ways of knowing can contribute to academic practices and debates that are truly represen-
tative of humanity.
Notes
1. By African scholars I refer to scholars based on the African continent. African diaspora scholars
and other scholars of African origin play an important role for the intellectual engagement
with Africa, and often face constraints based on misrecogition and discrimination. Although
some scholars move seamlessly between positions in Africa and outside the continent, the
differentiation is useful to explore the environments and constraints of research in African
institutions.
2. This argument was notoriously put forward by Hugh Trevor-Roper, then Regius Professor of
History at the University of Oxford.
3. This included the Centre of African Studies at the Univerity of Edinburgh in 1962, the Centre of
West African Studies at the University of Birmingham in 1963, the Centre of African Studies at
the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the Centre of African Studies at the Uni-
versity of Cambridge in 1965.
4. This includes the West African Research Association (WARA), and the Organization for Social
Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA).
JOURNAL OF AFRICAN CULTURAL STUDIES 15

5. A good example of the recognition of such corporate responsibility is the STAR initiative,
which currently offers researchers in Africa, South Asia, and many parts of South East Asia
free access to up to 50 publications by Taylor and Francis for up to a year.
6. To make co-publication in Africa easier for their members, African Studies Associations in the
US and UK are currently involved in the negotiation and formulation of an ‘Statement of Prin-
ciples’which commits publishers who sign up to it to making available –for a fee –the pdfs of
books on African countries to publishers in those countries. See ‘Statement of Principles for
the Sale of Rights in African Territories’, accessed 9 September 2018 from http://www.asauk.
net/activities/policy-engagement/. It would be helpful to follow up with a similar conversation
enabling African publishers to find outlets for co-publication in Europe.
7. See The Guardian, 26 September 2017 [for UK visa practice]; Schengen Visa Information, 10
April 2018 [for Schengen countries]; The Globe and Mail (Canada), 9 July 2018 [for Canada].
8. Based on its experiences wth visa denials at the 2018 conference in Birmingham, the ASAUK
produced an official report to the APPG for Africa (African Studies Associationof the UK,
January 2019).
9. I am grateful to the funder for engaging with this point in a very thoughtful manner, and with
a view to changing future practice. I also appreciate that the College of Arts and Law at the
University of Birmingham agreed to cover the reseach expenses of my Nigerian colleagues.
10. In addition to subject- and area-specific networks, please allow me also to suggest the confer-
ences of the African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA). Founded in 2013, the ASAA is cur-
rently led by the formidable Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Professor of African and Gender
Studies at the University of Ghana, and offers a supportive atmosphere, interdisciplinarity,
and chance to catch up with colleagues associated with African Studies around the world.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Insa Nolte http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8003-9989
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