African scholars and African Studies

Abstract

This article focuses on the development of African Studies, principally in post-1945 Europe and North America, and its counterpart in post-independence Africa. African Studies enjoys an increasingly close connection with bilateral and multilateral development co-operation, providing research and researchers (along with their own conceptual frameworks and concerns) to assist in defining and providing direction for aid and related policies. This is leading to unhealthy practices, whereby African research is ignored in the formulation of international policies towards the continent; while external Africanists assume the function of interpreting the world to Africa, and vice versa. This dynamic reinforces existing asymmetries in capacity and influence, especially given the crisis of higher education in most African countries. It also undermines Africa's research community, in particular the scope for cross-national and international exchange and the engagement in broader development debates, with the result that those social scientists who have not succumbed to the consultancy market or sought career opportunities elsewhere are encouraged to focus on narrow empirical studies. This political division of intellectual labour needs to be replaced with one that allows for the free expression and exchange of ideas not only by Africans on Africa, but with the wider international community who share the same broad thematic and/or theoretical preoccupations as the African scholars with whom they are in contact.

Notes

1. The seminar was entitled ‘The Role of Africa in “African Studies”: African Positions, European Responses', and I was very pleased to have been able to arrive straight from CODESRIA's 11th General Assembly, which took place in Maputo. I wish to thank the organisers for associating me with the seminar and the occasion. I first met Lennart Wohlgemuth when I joined the Nordic Africa Institute in 1994 as a Senior Programme Officer/Programme Co-ordinator and I have been fortunate since then to enjoy a close relationship with him – first professionally, and then more socially. Throughout the time I have known and interacted with him, two things have impressed me considerably: Lennert's indefatigable commitment to Africa, even when the sense of hope and optimism of many around him appeared to waver and falter; and his inviting personality, which is accompanied by a never-ending desire to enquire and learn.

2. The founding of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), whose Secretariat in Dakar I currently have the privilege of leading, contributed to the overall momentum that gathered pace in the period after independence to stamp an African presence and influence on the study of the continent, both within Africa and beyond.

3. The immediate post-Cold War environment, and the apparent decline in Africa's strategic value to the United States that some felt it portended, was a complete contrast to the upbeat mood of the post-war context that ushered African countries into independence in the 1960s and boosted the expansion of Area Studies with resources from the development co-operation agencies of the West.

4. Some observers also note that the emergence of China as a much weightier player in the post-Cold War, post-September 11 world was a factor in the revival of Area Studies in the United States, especially as the Chinese quest for resources began to translate in broader-ranging forays into Africa and the construction of various geo-strategic alliances across the continent.

5. A popular African proverb says that until the lion learns to tell the story of the chase, the version that is told by the hunters proclaiming their heroic exploits will be upheld as valid.

6. Just one aspect of the radical change in attitude that is needed is the condescension that is increasingly in evidence in the treatment of matters African by African Studies, and most recently manifested by writers like Stephen Ellis (2005), whose sense of the White Man's burden has now been translated into a strange proposition for ‘tough love’, which makes a thinly disguised argument for re-colonisation.

7. In promoting the study of Africa, Africanists in the North obviously seek to understand the continent on the basis of their own understanding of their own societies – what worked, what did not work, what were the triggers of change, etc. That approach, in and of itself, is not bad. What is worrisome is the excessive stylisation of discussions on critical questions in the historical experiences of the North as issues that have been settled intellectually for all time.

8. To cite one example of this bewildering proliferation of adjectives as Africanists sought to outdo one another in characterising the public arena in contemporary Africa, the state was variously described in a spate of literature issued at around the same period as ‘prebendal’, ‘neo-patrimonial’, ‘sultanist’, ‘unsteady’, ‘predatory’, ‘a lame leviathan’, ‘crony’, ‘neo-traditional’, ‘omnipresent but hardly omnipotent’, ‘crooked’, and ‘a humpty-dumpty’.

9. Two examples can be readily cited: the concept of neo-patrimonialism and the logic of structural adjustment that it led to, and the notion of the failed state, and the discourse on UN trusteeship that it is presently generating. These concepts and the policies arising from them are seriously contested by some of the most active networks of researchers in Africa, as much for their intellectual relevance as for the coherence of the policies flowing from them.

10. One prominent Africanist along with his partner, writing on the ‘criminalisation’ of the state in Africa, affirmed the role that the highest levels of state power, including presidents and their first ladies, had come to assume in the functioning of local and global criminal networks. The country specifically cited was Nigeria, and the personality mentioned was a First Lady. The evidence? Overheard in a bar. Another guru was to affirm in an opening statement in an essay on democratisation in Africa that the question of why democracy was failing to take root in Africa had long been an object of scholarly enquiry that was also settled. In evidence, the names of Africanist gurus whose works had supposedly settled the question were cited – despite the fact that these gurus had different points of view on the issue, so as to suggest that it was far from being a settled intellectual question. In any case, citing names could never have substituted for the author's responsibility to argue his case.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adebayo Olukoshi

Adebayo Olukoshi is Executive Secretary of the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA). He is also Professor of International Relations and was previously Director of Research at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs.