Vision & Objectives

The guiding tenets of our institution.

Our academic activities, research initiatives, and institutional goals are guided by the following core principles.

Our Mandate & Mission

To build a body of knowledge and to construct an attitude of intellection that will not take for granted the heritage of African peoples, their experiences in the present, and their aspirations for the future.
To undertake teaching, research and publication across different specializations to better understand the African and black experience.
To collaborate with people from various disciplines and partner with diverse local and international agencies to advance African Studies.

To sharpen the Africa-centredness of our vision through a multidisciplinary approach to scholarship.
To understand Africa and its diasporas as complex phenomena, and to problematize reductionisms that fail to capture the diversity of African and black realities from ancient to modern times.
To balance a critical vision with a creative vocation by studying creative productions from the African past and promoting the creative potentialities that energize the African present.
To study the conditions that make possible, as well as the factors that militate against, the efflorescence of creative production in African societies both on the continent and in the diasporas.