Knowledge of Africa, Knowledge by Africans: Two Perspectives on African Studies*

Abstract

How African are the so-called African Studies? The study of Africa, as developed so far by a long intellectual tradition, is part of an overall project of knowledge accumulation initiated and controlled by the West. This article advocates an active, lucid, responsible appropriation by African societies themselves of the knowledge capitalised over centuries about them. It advocates more generally the development in Africa of an autonomous, self-reliant tradition of research and knowledge that addresses problems and issues directly or indirectly posed by Africans. It calls upon “épistémologies du Sud.” It calls upon African scholars in African Studies and in all other disciplines to understand that they have been doing so far a kind of research that was massively extraverted, i. e. externally oriented, intended first and foremost to meet the theoretical and practical needs of Northern societies. It invites a new orientation and new ambitions for research by Africans in Africa.