The field of International Relations (IR) has come under increasing and sustained criticism for producing and disseminating a particular reading of European history, one rooted in violence, as if it were universal knowledge. Generations of students, academics, practitioners, and policymakers have been taught and socialized into accepting this violent historical experience as the norm and, implicitly, as a reflection of human nature. As a result, the dominant accounts of IR tend to foreground competitive, conflictual, domineering, power-seeking, and exploitative behaviours as defining features of international life. This understanding of IR marginalizes and often ignores Indigenous ways of knowing that emphasize relationality, solidarity, mutual care, and cooperative forms of social organization. In this article, we argue that centring Afrocentric Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS), particularly their conceptualizations of persons in IR scholarship, has the potential to move the field beyond its bleak and violent roots towards a more humane and relational epistemology. The AIKS-centred approach to IR is better suited to capturing the nuances of contemporary global life while speaking to the lived experiences of Africans and potentially other Indigenous peoples around the world.
The article examines the ideas of Pan-Africanism and Black internationalism as African political thought and core concepts in African International Relations. They acquire significant meaning through their framing as political activism or as theoretical frameworks aimed at advancing social and political change. Pan-Africanism has been understood as an idea and a movement for African peoples’ self-determination and solidarity worldwide and has been linked to the concept of internationalism, specifically Black internationalism. Both concepts call for solidarity between Africa and its diasporas worldwide, and they both evoke the ideals of self-determination and Black liberation. The article argues that the two concepts are deployed not as problem-solving theories but rather as intellectual activism. They are central pillars of African intellectual exercises that seek to change or transform the international system to reflect the experiences of Africans and Black people, who have historically been marginalized in both scholarship and practices of international politics.
International Relations (IR) has come under increasing and sustained criticism for marginalizing Africa’s intellectual traditions, rich history, Indigenous knowledge systems, and lived experiences. Several scholars of IR have argued that meaningful engagement with African contexts and thought would lead to better theory and pedagogy, more robust concepts, sharper analysis, and the study of issues that have greater relevance to contemporary global life. Despite the seriousness and widespread nature of the criticism, it is rare to find manuscripts in major IR journals that move beyond critique to demonstrate concretely how centring Africa in IR scholarship could transform the discipline or substantially enhance its analytical tools. This symposium takes up that difficult task by showing how a focus on African systems of thought can enrich IR’s conceptual vocabulary, reorient core assumptions, and expand the range of questions the discipline is equipped to address.
Scholars of Africa’s International Relations (IR) have criticized how the continent is studied in IR and its positioning on the margins of the field. Though a significant portion of the IR literature on Africa focuses on gender, and women, African feminist thought has not been centred in this literature. In this paper, I examine how African feminisms can contribute to IR. I show that by drawing on African feminist thought, IR can address weaknesses in how Africa is studied in the field. Specifically, I discuss how African feminists’ understanding of the complexity of context, and attention to history and intersectionality, provide direction on how to study African states and societies and their interaction with the international.
How should we assess and judge the harm inflicted by egregious wrongdoing and how should we respond to such wrongdoings after they have occurred? These are the questions this contribution tackles from an African communitarian Ubuntu worldview that centres the humanity of everyone impacted in both its understanding of wrongdoing and remedy. It argues that restoration of shared humanity is regarded as the primary and ultimate function of justice in the African systems of political thought.
