Can Africa succeed as a continent without taking International Relations seriously?

This Roundtable on African IR is a follow up to the inaugural lecture of Professor Siba N’Zatioula Grovogui on “Keeping Faith with Ourselves and the World: A. M. MBow and the Question of the Universal.” The lecture forms part of CORA’s series of talks designed to explore the place and role of Africa in the modern world, with an emphasis on the post-World War II. The current Roundtable brings together scholars based in African universities and diasporas to
reflect on the fundamental questions about knowledge creation and cultivation, centering on the role of the “African University” in imagining and reimagining the place of the African continent in the world.
Questions to be explored during the Roundtable include but are not limited to:
– What/where is Africa in International Relations (the discipline) and international relations (the practice)?
– Has the way the continent been imagined in IR textbooks, taught in classrooms, studied by IR scholars, and discussed in diplomatic circles do justice to Africans?
– How is the African University theorizing and practicing Africa in the Global Order?
– What non-hegemonic framings of international relations exist or maybe emerging from the African University?
– How is the African University making global challenges legible and relevant to the African publics?
– What frameworks and methods can, and should, the African University develop to teach, document, and archive Africa’s international relations?