Acesskey 0: Accessibility information | Acceskey 1: Jump to homepage | Acesskey 2: Jump to Publishing | Acesskey 3: Jump to journal | Accesskey 4: Jump to search Acesskey S: Jump to content |

:: accessibility :: you are here : home / Africa Journal

LINKS on this page

• Submissions
• Editors
• Publishing

Africa Journal

Africa is the premier journal devoted to the study of African societies and culture. Editorial policy encourages an interdisciplinary approach, involving humanities, social sciences, and environmental sciences. Africa aims to give increased attention to African production of knowledge, highlighting the work of local African thinkers and writers, emerging social and cultural trends 'on the ground', and links between local and national levels of society. At the same time, it maintains its commitment to the theoretically informed analysis of the realities of Africa's own cultural categories. Each issue contains six or seven major articles, arranged thematically, extensive review essays and substantial book reviews. Special issues are published annually.

Africa Impact Factor
Africa’s Impact Factor is 0.824 (2010 data), ranking the journal as the 3rd highest Africa journal in the Area Studies category and 7/60 journals overall. In the Anthropology category, the journal is ranked 36/75.

Download a flyer on the journal here.

Karin Barber's 'Editorial' published in Africa 78.3 on the policies, directions and activities of the journal is available here.

© International African Institute. First published 2008 in Africa. Journal of the International African Institute (Vol. 78:3) by Edinburgh University Press. Click here for full citation information.

Africa – ‘African local intellectuals’ strand – call for papers

The aim of this strand of the journal is to introduce and analyse texts – whether oral, manuscript or print – produced by authors outside the literary or academic mainstream. Such texts might include notebooks, diaries, letters, local works of history, philosophy or literature, performed or written poetry, newspaper serials and a host of other forms.

To coincide with the journal’s move to journal Cambridge University Press in 2011, we are taking this opportunity to re-launch the ‘African local intellectuals’ strand and invite further contributions.

This rich seam of intellectual work is increasingly becoming a focus of attention by historians, anthropologists and literary scholars. Texts such as these constitute an archive of local thought and experience, experiment and commentary. They shed a fascinating light on life ‘on the ground’ in Africa, past and present. But the texts themselves are rarely accessible outside the local context of their production. As the series develops, the journal will be building up an on-line repository of texts to which scholars and researchers can return over the years.

The preferred format is an introductory essay of approximately 5000 words and a sample text (with translation if relevant) also of approximately 5000 words, for the print version of the journal; plus a longer text – there is no formal word limit – appropriately edited and annotated by the contributing scholar, for the online archive.

For further details, contact iai-africa@contacts.bham.ac.uk

Published articles

Africa 81.2 (May 2011) features a contribution to this thematic strand, by Oyeniyi Okunoye. Okunoye brings to Africa’s readership the work of Lanrewaju Adepọju, one of Nigeria’s foremost popular poets and a pioneer in the development of a new form of public poetry, disseminated simultaneously in print, live performance and through the electronic media. While ubiquitous and immensely popular in southwestern Nigeria, Adepọju’s poetry has not previously been translated into English.

In the print version of the journal, we present Okunoye’s authoritative essay on the poet and a sample poem, ‘Ilu le’ (Hard times) with its English translation. In the online version of the journal, you will find two additional long poems with translations, as well as an interview with Adepọju in which he explains his formation as a poet and his views on the role of poetry in society.

The inaugural contribution to the series by Stephanie Newell (Africa 78 (3): 384-400), documents a unique personal memoir by a Gold Coast clerk. The print version of the journal presents an excerpt of the memoir and the online version takes you to the 20,000-word narrative, edited and annotated by Newell.

Both texts are available from journals.cambridge.org/afr.

Africanists and the Occult

Two papers published in Africa 79/3 respond to an article by Terence Ranger, which critiqued Africanists for inventing an ‘aggregated African occult’, and advocated a historically grounded perspective.

Gerrie ter Haar and Stephen Ellis argue that it has again become common for Western academic writers to use colonially tainted terms such as ‘the occult’, ‘magic’ and ‘witchcraft’.

Birgit Meyer argues that this position will not solve the deeper problems involved in Africanist approaches to ‘the occult’, asking what would be an acceptable way of writing about the ideas and practices summarized as the ‘occult’? All three papers are freely accessible via the EUP website, here.

Design by NomadIT