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In 2016, the International Institute for Asian Studies approached us to invite us to participate in a project to build an Asian-African response to a global problem: reinventing and refocusing the place of the Humanities in the economy of the production of academic knowledge. The proposal came to us, not only at the right time, but also with a double interest.

At the right time, because we were in the midst of an attempt to promote, within our traditional university spaces, experiences of breaking away from inherited models, towards forms of production and sharing of knowledge in more decolonized modes. This was of twofold interest because, on the one hand, one of our leitmotivs at the time was to develop, from Africa, African readings or understandings on major world issues, and, on the other hand, to promote relations of collaboration and complicity with the Asian worlds and the African diasporas.

This paper returns, for a critical analysis, to the various contexts (institutional, programmatic and material, opportunities and obstacles) that have marked the construction of our response to the invitation of IIAS: the creation, in Senegal, of a Centre for Asian Studies in Francophone Africa.

It evaluates the dynamics and interactions, the positioning and the reservations that this offer has aroused for 4 years, both in the local context and in the international network that gave birth to it. It shows the learning processes that these authors have experienced in order to get around the difficulties, better argue the need for this Centre and, finally, find solutions to move the project forward.

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