Paper short abstract:

Three complexes define African studies: the (longsuffering) development complex, the (growing) humanitarian complex and the (overpowering) military-security complex. They limit access to funding, agenda setting, epistemology, operationalization, validation, publication and utilization of knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

Although scholars rarely admit to the fact, African Studies have, through the decades, morphed from colonial sciences into intervention sciences, clearly expressed through the intervention complexes that fund and delimit their approach.

While the counter-insurgency based regional studies approaches now seem to run out of steam, if the changes in the European research landscape may serve as an indicator, the submission to the intervention approach seems to be ever more complete. Partly through funding mechanisms, partly through resonance, even areas of non-applied sciences seem to share the underlying and overwhelming industrial paradigm that underpins the intervention targeting as well as the formatting of the research operationalization. The uninspired industrialization efforts of the academic and research institutions as expressed in the "Bologna process" create the impulse and provide the dominant model of research production.

It will be interesting to observe how new non-European players of the intervention game in Africa organize their scientific approach in order to reduce their intervention fiascoes which can partly be attributed to lack of knowledge.