• Bright Gyamfi

Kwame Nkrumah’s ideas about pan-Africanism and African liberation inspired many young scholars to explore global linkages around race and power, to uncover historical connections and forge new ones.

• Frederick Cooper

What might Black Lives Matter learn from Africanist scholars who have studied inequality outside the US, especially in Africa?

• Jean Allman

Reflections from a former President of the African Studies Association (ASA), the largest African Studies association globally, on the future of the discipline.

• Christian A. Williams

Despite increased global debate over refugee issues, few discuss these issues in terms of refugee histories, especially histories of Africans seeking refuge in and beyond the continent.

• Jess Auerbach

African Studies scholars write for the gate-keepers, to prove our own legitimacy, for the stimulation of conferences and the relief of rising recognition by algorithms.

• Joshua I. Cohen

Influence exhilarates. It also makes people nervous. Writers, artists, scholars, researchers—we all seem to want to be “influential.” Less often do we want to admit to being “influenced.”

• Jessica Ott

Tanzanian universities are beginning to tackle “sextortion.” Will new policies and attention to sexual harassment on campuses make a difference?

• Christopher J. Lee

David Graeber (1961-2020) started his career as a scholar studying Madagascar and that informed what became his popular ideas about anarchism, debt, and globalization.

• Lily Saint
• Bhakti Shringarpure

What if you survey African literature professors to find out which works and writers are most regularly taught? Only a few canonical ones continue to dominate curricula.

• Jacques Depelchin

We should honor Professor Ernest Wamba dia Wamba by carrying on his life's work.

• Jacques Depelchin

Il sied d’honorer le professeur Ernest Wamba dia Wamba en continuant l’œuvre de sa vie.

• Jacques Depelchin

Tunapaswa kumheshimu Profesa Ernest Wamba dia Wamba kwa kuendelea na kazi ya maisha yake.

• Nana Akua Anyidoho
• Akosua Adomako Ampofo

Ghana’s ruling party has proposed a new law to control the country’s public universities. The country’s academics are fighting it.

• Tammy Wilks
• Doseline Kiguru

The Nigerian scholar and poet, Harry Garuba, who died in February 2020, was a key figure in African Studies and teaching literature in South Africa.

• Benjamin N. Lawrance

The journal’s editor acknowledges that it has a long way to go before most Africa-based scholars recognize it as an especially African journal.

• Matthew H. Brown

Among the many legacies of Teju Olaniyan’s teaching and writing would be a project to not only speak in the ideological name of Africa, but to redistribute the power of speaking in that name.

• Greg Thomas

The works of Frantz Fanon can be read as architectural renderings of rights, futures, and generations toward a “very different Afro-futurism.”

• Ari Sitas

The world is out of joint and Immanuel Wallerstein, one of its great public intellectuals, has left us—albeit with tools to battle the dying kicks of capitalism.

• Bruno Charbonneau

What censorship about articles in a French journal tells us about the state of France-Africa relations, imperial legacies and the impact these have on the production of knowledge about Francophone Africa.

• Judith Van Allen

The passing of American economist Ann Seidman has again spotlighted the impacts of committed scholarship on Africa.