Paper short abstract:

The African Review has celebrated 50 years of its existence. In June 2019, the University of Dar es Salaam signed an agreement with Brill to publish the journal. The experience of this collaboration indicates that when a journal retains ownership and decision-making powers, it becomes successful.

Paper long abstract:

In 2021, the African Review (TARE) celebrated 50 years of its existence. Founded by the Department of Political Science of the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), it primarily focused to decolonize the interpretation of significant events in African politics which has been monopolized by foreign "experts". Over time, the journal reflects on contemporary issues of globalization, development, and African affairs in a way to address the North-South knowledge divide. For about 45 years, it largely depended on its Chief Editor who performed copyediting, proofreading and typesetting. Moreover, the journal was not published by a printing press. Without an institutionalized system, the management, processing and production of the journal proved challenging. Nonetheless, it attracted manuscripts from renowned scholars globally and published regularly. In 2018, the journal was for the first time published by the Dar es Salaam University Press. In June 2019, the UDSM signed an agreement with Brill to publish TARE. In the agreement, Brill provides the journal with infrastructural systems and undertakes final production and distribution of the journal. The UDSM, on the other hand, retains ownership of the journal copyright and performs all the editorial activities. This agreement has significantly institutionalized and improved the quality, indexing, distribution and visibility of the journal and industrial production. This paper holds that the future of journals from the Global South hinges on collaboration with established publishers. The experience of TARE indicates that when a journal retains ownership and decision-making powers in a collaboration, it exhibits high potentials of successes.