Paper short abstract:

International Relations and security studies engage in racialized knowledge production in ways that obfuscate security experiences in Africa. This paper draws on insights from hybrid security orders to explore how these disciplines can be decolonized to become more relevant in African locales.

Paper long abstract:

That racism and coloniality remain critical impediments to dispassionate knowledge generation in the social sciences seems incontrovertible. Included among the disciplinary areas in which these tendencies have been particularly prevalent are International Relations (IR) and its Security Studies (SS) subfield. Underpinned by ‘methodological whiteness’ logics, these disciplines sustain a colonial way of thinking that misrepresents white security as global security, thereby ignoring African insecurities as they are experienced by social groups and communities across the continent. Further than that, they stigmatize African states as ‘failing’, ‘failed’, or ‘ungoverned’ for failing to meet the benchmarks of the Weberian state. This provides the pretext for dismissing African Agency in order to justify and sustain European paternalism in both scholarly and policy domains. These unequal relations also underpin and sustain the political economy of knowledge production and the current power imbalances between European scholars and their counterparts in Africa, resulting in academic and policy dependency. As such, mainstream IR and SS do not wholly suffice as objective sites for knowledge production and policy-making on African security. Indeed, they have also become part of the problem, rendering African populations less secure. Drawing on insights from African experiences, as they manifest within the context of hybrid security orders, this paper explores ways through which African academics can help broaden and elaborate the empirical base for theorizing about security since they offer a perspective outside the conventional western assumptions and points of reference.