Jeremiah O. Arowosegbe’s research while affiliated with University of Leeds and other places

How has historical scholarship fared in Africa? What is the state of decolonization and deconstruction historiography in the production of historical knowledge on the continent? What role does the state play in aiding or undermining historians’ access to official historical data and the production of historical knowledge in postcolonial Africa? This article engages these questions. It harps on the reconstruction of African intellectual history as a daunting postcolonial challenge, and argues that historians on Africa need to engage with and reexamine the development of the discipline of history in Africa in relation to the debates on decolonization and the enterprise of history-writing in the production of historical knowledge and historical scholarship across the continent. This illuminates the understanding of the history of contemporary Africa. It also throws fresh light on the continent’s remote past as a way of establishing its connections with the present. Complementary to the problems of writing the history of contemporary Africa, this work argues that to appreciate and understand the problems of history-writing on Africa, we need to focus on the development and limitations of the discipline across the institutional sites of the universities in postcolonial Africa.

Studies of academic freedom have mostly focussed on Europe and North America. Yet, any consideration of the societal crises in Africa cannot ignore the collapse of its universities and the very concept of academic freedom on the continent. Much had been expected of the universities. In Africa, the early post‐independence universities took off on internationally competitive and solid foundations—thanks to the heritages and traditions bequeathed them by the colonial powers that established them. In these societies, the expectations associated with the formation and performance of the universities have their foundations in the historical evidence furnished by the definitions of success in the West. However, the postcolonial orientations of the universities in Africa have proceeded along different pathways. Ideas taken from one milieu to another can develop in unpredictable ways and may satisfy needs other than those served in their places of origin. Institutions transplanted from one society can be influenced by the practices prevalent in the receiving societies. The forces acting upon such interactions are complex. The resultant transformative impacts are also unpredictable. An appreciation of context is therefore compelling. This article discusses the crisis in Nigeria's political economy and its continued impact on the public universities from the late 1980s to the 2020s [Correction added on 26 July 2024, after first online publication: Preceding sentence has been amended for correctness.]

Extensively ignored by the literature on the subject, recent interest in the fate of academic freedom in Africa is linked with shared concerns about the exploding nature of its societal crises. The collapse of political integration and social cohesion; the decline of the civil society and the implosion of conflicts; the rise of authoritarian, non-developmental populist regimes amid extreme poverty; and the worsening material conditions of the populations are major indications of such crises. Nowhere are these crises worse illustrated than in the universities where constrained funding, infrastructural collapse, massive brain drains and strained relations with the state inhibit the production of knowledge. This article reflects on the trajectory of the universities in postcolonial Africa. It draws on the national public universities in Nigeria and accounts for the changes and continuities underlying their performance against the backdrop of hostile material conditions and uncongenial political control, which not only remain disruptive but continue to undermine institutional autonomy and the integrity of scholarship in the universities across Africa.

Violations of academic freedom are on the increase in Africa and are attracting organised resistance from academic unions across the continent. Africa has one of the worst records of attacks on academic practitioners in the world. In the early post-independence period (the 1960s and 1970s), these took the form of the politicisation and state control of the academies. In the 1980s and 1990s, the context was defined by the impact of the contradictions in the character and nature of the state, the crisis in its political economy and the role of international financial institutions and local elites. The present context is characterised by state repression and by resistance from academic unions. The resultant crisis is connected to the economic hardships experienced by the general population and the neglect of universities. This plays out in tense relations between most state officials and the universities.

The federal solution has been widely discussed in relation to political systems where the articulation of major cleavages, differences, and pluralities threatens political integration and stability. The relationship between conflict, development, and federalism, however, has been poorly accounted for in the literature on federalism. Existing theories about the utilitarian value of federalism thus face serious challenges, especially with respect to post‐colonial Africa. The relationship between conflict, economic development, and federalism in the African context needs to be carefully examined from the perspective of governance, as well as the impact they have on society‐state relations. This article discusses the impact of ethno‐linguistic, ethno‐regional, and ethno‐religious conflicts on economic development in Nigeria – informed by the inequalities, insecurity, and poverty prevalent in the country – and examines the relevance of the federal solution for mitigating such centrifugal pressures as well as other divisive and violent tendencies.

Intellectuals are in a strict sense a product of the societies in which they are historically located and from which they could not assume a sense of themselves as an independent social force. Nor could they have developed an intellectual trajectory entirely peculiar to them as exclusively autonomous of the state. Their challenges, compromises and failings therefore, cannot be objectively evaluated in absolute disregard of their realities and social options. Rather, these must all be measured in clear reference to the determinate circumstances in which they operate—bearing in mind the material conditions encountered and transmitted to them from their past traditions. Drawing on the role of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in building and defending the academies and societies in Nigeria, this article discusses the engagement by African intellectuals with the decolonization project and their quest for academic freedom and institutional autonomy in their relations with the state. As an itinerary for future research, it shows that far from being democratically transformatory, given its character, namely, its lack of autonomy, its non-developmental orientations and other underlining problems endemic in its pathologies, the nature and role of the state in Africa in relation to decolonization, knowledge production and the universities, are subversive. Such subversion induces class conflict and socio-economic inequalities. It undermines ideational governance, institutional stability and respectful engagement with Africa as an autonomous location and original source of intellectual production, among other components of the pan-Africanist liberatory project.

Although ethno-territorial struggles affect the manner in which political authority is constituted and legitimised throughout the world, their impact on the trajectories of power and the state in Africa have not received the attention deserved in the literature on political development and state building. In majoritarian agrarian societies, land tenure, just like the granting of usufruct rights to water, shapes economic and political dynamics. Conflicts over land and struggles over access to the key resources of agricultural production – fertile soils, green vegetation and water – are widespread throughout Africa and are likely to intensify in the light of ongoing climate change-induced production constraints. Drawing on archival and ethnographic data on the farmer-herder conflicts between Fulani pastoralists and Tiv agriculturalists in Tivland, north-central Nigeria, over land and water resources, this study establishes how the struggles over agricultural resources, governance and political power have shaped the violent transformations in colonial and post-colonial Nigeria.

Democratization has proceeded in Africa in terms of implementing multiparty democracy. However, there are still major challenges with this process across the continent. By examining the contribution of the intellectual to election administration in Africa vis‐à‐vis the political obligation of the citizen to the state, the knowledge of political science plays a significant role in resolving the challenges mitigating against democratic consolidation in the continent. This article interrogates the responsibilities of university academics in election administration from 1959 to 2019 and recounts the impact of such interventions for democratization and political stability in Nigeria. Our enquiry reveals that many of the problems undermining election administration are clearly beyond the interventions by these academics. The constraints and limitations of university academics in their efforts as instruments of large‐scale political change in Nigeria are connected largely with the fact that no institution or segment of the society is insulated from the power associated with politics in Nigeria. Accordingly, beyond election administration and also beyond the role of the intelligentsia therein, Nigeria's political ecology must undergo significant holistic changes to deliver a credible, fair and transparent electoral process. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Colonial practices of ethno-racial segregation impacted grievously on conflict and state building in Nigeria. While such practices have continued to undergird postcolonial contexts of institutional fragility and state weakness, their impacts are yet to be accounted for in the literature on economic and political development in Africa. This article examines the colonial constructions of Fulani, Hausa and other groups ethnically not indigenous to Yorubaland as migrants and minorities, through their denial of land rights; dispossession and marginalization using customary law, indirect rule and other institutionalized instrumentalities of the colonial ethnographic state. It accounts for the continuing impacts of such struggles over land for citizenship, state fragility, state weakness and the forging of nationhood in Nigeria. How have colonial constructions of the customary affected resource-based conflict and postcolonial conceptions of citizenship and inter-ethnic relations? Drawing on archival and ethnographic data generated in Yorubaland, Nigeria, on the conflict between Hausa-Fulani migrant pastoralists and indigenous Yoruba agriculturalists over land, this work underlines how the struggles over agricultural resources, governance, land and political power have continued to affect the manner in which political authority is constituted in colonial and postcolonial Nigeria.

The editors invited this article, and the subsequent four response pieces, as a contribution to the debate on knowledge production in Africa and African studies, which was a critical issue in the late colonial and post-independence African universities, and which has continued to be a concern of leading African scholars in the decades since. Here the contributors examine questions regarding the political economy of knowledge production in universities in postcolonial Africa, reflecting on historical and contemporary challenges. What factors undermine knowledge production in Africa? What roles can African universities play in 'decolonizing knowledge production' on the continent.