Today, we repost Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo’s lecture at the University of Cambridge on 2 May 2019 accompanied with an introduction by one of the CIHA editorial assistants and doctoral student at the University of Ghana, Edwin Asa Adjei.
Introduction by Edwin Asa Adjei, University of Ghana
How does knowledge travel in academia, and how do academic conversations depict Africa and Africans, and what do they bring to the table? In a keynote speech at the University of Cambridge, Akosua Adomako Ampofo, a noted professor of African and Gender Studies at the University of Ghana (and a CIHA Co-Editor), addresses these issues, which have also long been a primary concern of the CIHA blog. She begins by taking as a point of departure two songs by a Nigerian Musician, Mr. Eazi – “Accra to Lagos” and “Lagos to London” – which each portrays metaphors of knowledge travelling around the world, encountering road-blocks, creating diversions and discovering new approaches. Professor Adomako Ampofo looks at the kinds of academic conversations African scholars are contributing to and who they are having these conversations with, collaborations with scholars outside the continent of Africa, challenges African scholars face in publishing their papers, sharing their knowledge, and funding their research.
The lecture addresses several pressing issues. One concerns how to assess derogatory and racist terms used by activists and scholars in the past. For example, some scholars accuse the “Gandhi must fall” movement at the University of Ghana (documented by the CIHA blog) of using contemporary standards in its strong critique of Gandhi, who referred to Africans as kafir while advocating for Indian rights in South Africa decades ago. Some scholars who disagree with the arguments of the “Gandhi must fall” movement argue that while the term kafir might be pejorative now, it might not have been derogatory at the time he used it. Similarly, Audrey Richards used the term “savages” in 1932 to refer to the Bantu. Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo argues that the fact that the term “savage” was used by Europeans for only non-white people in the colonies and, and never used in relation to whites demonstrates that it has always been racialized and derogatory.
Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo further spoke on the state of tertiary (higher) education in Africa. She noted with concern how inadequate funding for tertiary universities, which prepare people for careers, impact both the quality of education and research by African scholars. She noted that, while this situation has led to more collaboration for research on and in Africa between local scholars and scholars from the global north, it is often carried out to the detriment of scholars in Africa. While the research unearths more knowledge about Africa, it is “for” western audiences and interpreted “through” western lenses. This raises further questions about intellectual property, as African scholars who participate in some of these collaborations lose access to the data they have collected, and become excluded from academic publications based on this data to the detriment of their reputations and financial situations.
The establishment of the African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA), CODESRIA and other associations whose goal is to promote research on African peoples and cultures places African scholars in a better place to contribute more to conversations about the African continent. Just like Mr. Eazi, who is Nigerian but pursued tertiary education in Ghana and was influenced by Ghanaian music, African scholars will continue to be influenced by each other, although also by western scholars, as conversations on themes such as knowledge production, publishing and gatekeeping continue unabated. As is often said, “knowledge is like the baobab tree. No one person’s arm can encircle it.” How Africans engage with higher education, the conversations African scholars have and who they have these conversations with, and the messages these conversations convey about Africa, will continue. But it matters, as the CIHA Blog’s work strives to make clear, who is included, who leads, and who is crowded out of the bid to “encircle the baobab tree” concerning Africa.