Ten challenges in reconfiguring African Studies

SUMMARY

African Studies is characterised by intellectual contestations and epistemic struggles. These have become accentuated in the context of the current resurgent and insurgent decolonisation of the twenty-first century. This article delineates and reflects on 10 challenges confronting reconfiguring African Studies, namely genealogical, epistemic, linguistic, chronological, theoretical, spatial (area studies, country studies), androcentric, disciplinary, canonical issues and resilience of colonial library. These challenges are posed as part of comfort zones (asserted and reasserted truth/common notions) in doing African Studies that have to be changed in accordance with demands for a decolonised African Studies.

KEYWORDS:

• African Studies
• area studies
• decolonisation
• epistemic struggles
• reconfiguring African Studies

Acknowledgements

I initially introduced the idea of 10 challenges in decolonising African Studies in my presentation of the Annual Leeds University Centre for African Studies Lecture (LUCAS) in 2022, and later developed them in my presentation of the New Lecture at the University of Bayreuth in 2023. On both occasions I received useful feedback from colleagues and I am very thankful. I also wish to thank Emeritus Professor Ray Bush for inviting me to consider writing this article for ROAPE.

Disclosure statement

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is a historian and leading decolonial theorist working in the areas of politics of knowledge, African history, African politics, African development and decolonial/postcolonial thought. He has over 100 peer-reviewed publications, including nine sole-authored books and 14 edited volumes. His latest major publications include Epistemic freedom in Africa: deprovincialization and decolonization (Routledge, July 2018), Decolonization, development and knowledge in Africa: turning over a new leaf (Routledge, May 2020), Marxism and decolonization in the 21st century: living theories and true ideas (Routledge, 2021), co-edited with Morgan Ndlovu, and Beyond the coloniality of internationalism: reworlding the world from the global South (CODESRIA Books, in press).