Paper short abstract:

This paper contends that the asymmetrical power dynamics in knowledge production ‘on’ and ‘in’ Africa ought to be urgently addressed with some responsibilities on the shoulders of academic and non-academic actors in African Studies.

Paper long abstract:

African Studies, today, is confronted with a serious problem of asymmetrical power relations of distinctive epistemic kind. In addressing this problem, there has been an increasing call towards decoloniality aiming at dismantling colonial historical structures and epistemes that continue to reinforce disparities in the quality and positionality of knowledge production in African Studies. Desirable as the push towards decoloniality is in re-ordering epistemic power relations in contemporary African Studies, the question is: who sets such agenda and whose responsibility is it in ensuring its realisation? This paper contends that the power dynamics in knowledge production ‘on’ and ‘in’ Africa ought to be urgently addressed with some responsibilities on the shoulders of academic and non-academic actors in African Studies. This paper further argues that African scholars have a foundational responsibility both in designing new transdisciplinary paradigms of indigenous methodologies and epistemologies and setting agenda from within for the field, while non-academic actors like the activists and daily knowledge curators of indigenous knowledges have the responsibility of keeping the tide on bridging the power disparities. Some critical challenges such as existentiality and authentic south epistemologies in the realisation of the agenda setting and responsibilities mapping between academia and non-academic actors in African Studies are hypothesised and responded to.