Contribution short abstract:

This presentation aims at questioning the academic collaboration and elaborate on the points of how to understand it within the process of knowledge production. Dealing with knowledge production no matter the form is done only in collaboration and co-production.

Contribution long abstract:

Dealing with knowledge production requires an extremely meticulous holistic approach which is to also think outside of the academic box. The Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaborations is the African Union initiative to strategically take agency in equitable collaboration. The charter draws on the consideration that rebalancing the collaborative structures is an imperative for Africa and the global community (Aboderin, Fuh, Gebremariam and Segalo, 2023). If collaboration in knowledge production is measured only within the academic spaces and lenses, the question of the role of none academic actors remains uncovered and the dichotomy of north-south is limiting the reflection (Molosi-France and Makoni 2020).

I was initiated in the best traditions of social anthropology at the university of Bayreuth. By travelling to a country, in the framework of the Lehrforschung, I was not familiar with, namely Ethiopia, where I conducted research in Addis Abeba which is also Amharic for “New Flower”. The vast majority of African students and scholars usually conduct their research in their home countries (Diawara 1985). While I acknowledge that you can be a stranger in your own country, there is no substitute in social anthropology for the challenge of adding to your research the important task of coming to terms with your own ignorance (Nyamnjoh, 2012). The experience of being a Sahelian in the higher altitudes of Ethiopia gave me a practical lesson in intellectual modesty, especially in the care we need to take not to assume that the world fits into our concepts.