The Aftermath – What Future for African Studies (in Europe?). A View From Behind the Scenes of ECAS9

Abstract

In the spring of 2023, the ninth European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) took place in Cologne. Though not unexpected (or unusual) this event sparked critical comments and questions. As the organisers, we understand and appreciate this criticism. We, therefore, felt the need to respond to at least some of them, partly because we also asked ourselves many of these questions before, during, and after the conference. At the same time, we want to call for a certain degree of pragmatism when it comes to organising an event this size by providing a look behind the scenes.

Last spring, from 31 May to 3 June 2023, Cologne was home to the ninth European Conference on African Studies (ECAS9). Under the auspices of AEGIS (see https://www.aegis-eu.org/), 2,274 junior and seasoned scholars (of whom 1,976 are confirmed to have attended) convened to present and discuss their almost 1,500 papers in 245 panels and roundtables, consume 6,000 lunches and drink over 15,000 cups of coffee (which were greatly appreciated). Alongside the scholarly event, and in collaboration with the city of Cologne, a social and cultural public programme (“African Futures – all around” see https://african-futures.koeln/en/) provided a stage for more than 100 discussions, workshops, performances, theatre, music, and film between 30 May and 11 June. A mammoth event indeed. ¹

Preparations already started in 2019 (or even, arguably, before that date), at the eighth ECAS conference in Edinburgh, after the Global South Studies Center (GSSC) of the University of Cologne and the then Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa (IARA) of the University of Leuven won the bid to organise the next event. Originally planned for 2–5 June 2021, ECAS9 was rescheduled to summer 2023, due to the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

As the dust has settled in Cologne (we wrote this piece in Autumn 2023) we, the organisers, felt the urge to look back at the conference and, in line with the theme of the event, also look forward. Indeed, a question that has haunted us, right from the very beginning in Edinburgh, and one that was raised at the opening debate, is that of what future there is for African Studies in Europe. It is no coincidence that this leads back to an ongoing debate in this journal (Africa Spectrum). Emerging as a reaction to a contribution by Basedau (2020), contributions to the debate have critically engaged with the African Studies field in the higher-education landscape in Germany and with the need to decolonise research on Africa. Ndlovu-Gatsheni et al. (2022) engaged with epistemological questions and suggested a Critical African Studies approach, instead of a comparative one (as suggested by Basedau), and argued why the former is better suited for the task of reconfiguring the field. Iroulo and Tappe Ortiz (2022) critically reflected on the colonial legacy of knowledge production in academic practices, research, teaching, and hiring.

To pick up on this thread and contribute to the debate, we go back to the opening roundtable of our conference, where we turned the theme of the conference back on the conference itself: “Is there a future for African Studies in Europe?” But before we try to answer that question (see below), we would first like to clarify the scope of our contribution. Rather than engaging with deep epistemological questions of knowledge production and decoloniality, we would like to touch on one important cornerstone of academic life, namely the practice of academic conferencing. The 2023 ECAS and the criticism (but, also, the encouragement) it generated have left us with many impressions and insights that we are happy to use as a starting point for our reflections.

As to the criticism, it can be summarised as follows: too expensive, too exclusive, and, put bluntly, too colonial, in so far as the conference continued with fundamentally colonial modes of action (Traber, 2023). ²

Before we engage with these critical points, let us first consider why we attend such large-scale scientific meetings. It must be said that conferences usually do not create knowledge (at least, not in the strictest sense): knowledge is produced in the run-up (behind desks, in the field, or in the dusty world of archives) or afterwards, when ideas and findings are published and discussed in seminar rooms or online. We “do” conferences for networking and the exchange of knowledge, that is, not least for the social aspect, the evening dinners and beers at the end of each day. The raison d’être of conferences lies in meeting face-to-face with colleagues and old friends, and making new ones. It is indeed heartwarming to see the many hugs and cordial handshakes at the beginning and end of the event. More important, perhaps, are the many informal contacts in and out of seminar rooms that consolidate existing collaborations or start new ones across the two continents. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a number of special issues are in the making. It remains difficult, though, to estimate the impact of conferences such as this one. The exposure of the Cologne audience to African artists and performers and the elaborate press coverage notwithstanding, conferences such as this one to a large extent continue to preach to the choir.

So yes, while we think that meetings such as ECAS9 do make a difference, they cannot suffice to close the gap between African and European institutes of higher learning. To do so, more structural efforts are required, and even though such efforts are beyond the scope and possibilities of a conference, meetings such as ECAS9 do help to sensitise policymakers and university boards to the issue.

But conferences do more, of course. Meeting colleagues and hearing them present their research motivates and inspires; at conferences, people build their networks, nurture their public relations, coordinate research, talk policy, prepare publications, and test out new ideas. As one young African PhD student nicely summarised in the Nigerian online newspaper NaijaTimes (2023): “The conference was an excellent place for early career researchers to connect and glimpse how their research has the potential to contribute to the growing visible presence of thinkers working on the continent” (Ade-Odutola, 2023). From within such strengthened networks, future research projects are planned, scientific articles and books find their shape, and innovative methodologies are designed. Large conferences bring scientists together who have not met before; they foster the engagement of disciplines and contribute to the internationalisation of the scientific community. A diverse event, such as ECAS9, facilitates interdisciplinary exchange and, thus, leads to interdisciplinary research relations and projects. Finally, we would like to insist that such a conference – or at least the public programme – creates visibility in wider society and helps to place (or keep) “Africa” on the proverbial map (as was clearly the case in Cologne).

For instance, at the official opening of ECAS9 and the public programme, the Global South Studies Center (GSSC) and the City of Cologne (and other actors) jointly organised the keynote address by Kenyan author Yvonne Owuor on “Worldbuilding from an African Perspective.” This keynote did not go unnoticed, and caused quite a stir in the local media. In Cologne, the discussions regarding the topics raised in Owuor's keynote are still ongoing and a follow-up event with cooperation partners is being planned. ECAS9 and the “African Futures” public programme transformed the City of Cologne into a stage for African science, socio-political and development discussions, workshops, theatre, dance, performance, film, music, and literature. It transcended the realm of academia, and helped to nuance and diversify the “undifferentiated views on Africa” that, according to Basedau (2020: 195), still prevail in Western societies. This also is why we opened the introduction to the volume (Van Wolputte et al., 2022) with a quote from the late Binyavanga Wainaina (2005) who gifted the audience with a few useful tips on “How to write about Africa.”

So, why don’t we organise such big conferences every couple of months or so? Apart from time constraints, the simple answer is that conferences come at a cost, especially for those who do not happen to be in the privileged position of the stereotypical white, middle-aged professor at an – all things considered – well-endowed European institution. Apart from participation fees and travel expenses, there is the price of local transport, visa and other administrative costs, and of food and accommodation. There are very practical hurdles (Cologne was chosen as a venue because a small town like Leuven simply does not have 2,000 beds on offer). There are huge geographical distances to cover (which, especially for an African Studies conference in Europe, disadvantages scholars and students based in Africa or, since Brexit, in the United Kingdom), and then there are the political barriers: of the 436 African residents who registered, only 290 also made it to Cologne, largely due to visa restrictions, and partly, also, to financial constraints. This was despite the fact that the organisation went above and beyond to raise subsidies (amounting to €70,000) and was able to finance 140 delegates from the African continent (also see below).

In addition, there are those other, mostly hidden costs: conferences such as this one run on the unpaid overtime of academics and administrative staff, in between, and on top, of their other duties and responsibilities. Then there are costs that come with the scale of the event: research institutions do not have the means, nor are they equipped, in the run-up to the conference, to deal with the staggering number of e-mails from more than 4,300 students and scholars involved or interested in participating; to set up, maintain and manage the database of participants, proposals and abstracts, to manage the complex financial flows of many relatively small payments, and also to run and maintain the necessary servers and website. An event this size requires a kind of dedicated infrastructure and know-how that academic institutions do not (or rarely) possess. Even if they did possess such know-how and infrastructure, various departments within the contemporary neoliberal university charge for services thus provided. That is where an event organiser comes in.

But what would the alternatives be? As always with these events, in the margins of ECAS9, there were calls to make it free of charge (and this despite the waivers and subsidies granted to 290 Africa-based scholars). ³ Again, there is a simple reason why this is not feasible: unless one finds a private company to sponsor it, such a fee-less conference remains a distant utopia. What, moreover, would critics say if an African Studies conference were to be sponsored by, say, Bayer, AB-Inbev, or British Petroleum? In any case, such sponsorship would not even make much of a difference in terms of affordability, as conference fees are usually small compared to the costs of travel, accommodation, and food. Another element to factor in would be the spectre of inflation that has haunted the globe for some years now. To this, one can add the severe financial restrictions of the post-Covid time, the energy crisis, and – probably most severely – the Russian war on Ukraine. In the run-up to the originally planned conference in 2021, we received relatively generous pledges from public donors, which, under the circumstances mentioned above, were not renewed for 2023.

How to plan for an event like ECAS9 under such circumstances? It is true that COVID-19 has forever changed not only African Studies (Müller-Mahn and Kioko, 2021), but also the world of conferencing. How many people would still be willing or able to travel? When Covid destroyed our original plans, we initially considered organising a fully online conference. The idea was debunked because the costs of organising it would be almost the same: on top of the expenses for staff, one has to add the cost of digital infrastructure and its maintenance during the event. This would moreover result in relatively little in terms of return (as the main goal of a conference is meeting people; see above) and in an uncertain financial outcome. For the same reasons and because of the health risk, and the resulting increase in inequality, we also ruled out a hybrid event. The latter would, moreover, come with an even beefier price tag.

The possibility of a hybrid event also popped up in the preparation for 2023. Here, again, differences of scale emerged. It is one thing to organise an online seminar or workshop with forty, or even one hundred participants. The software applications we are so familiar with these days might do the trick. It is another thing to do so for almost 250 panels and 2,000 delegates, as this would require, again, dedicated infrastructure and expertise. The ease with which we e-mail and attend online meetings these days may allow us to forget that these also come at a price (and – although compared to flying or other modes of transport, admittedly smaller – an environmental cost: the carbon footprint of a single e-mail is estimated to vary between 0.3 and 50 g of CO₂, depending on the size, whereas a medium-definition video call – one hour, two people – emits about 4 g, but this rises exponentially with increasing video quality and number of participants).

Another crucial question to address is whether we need such large-scale conferences in the future. Would moving towards smaller, thematically organised seminar- or workshop-like meetings offer a solution to circumvent the “disadvantages of scale” referred to above? Obviously, such smaller meetings take place as we speak, but would a sustained effort towards a more systematic, networked series be better? Certainly, it would alleviate the FOMO experienced in each and every large-scale conference. But while small-scale events may be more focused and efficient, they certainly lack the public impact and visibility of their large-scale counterparts. In addition, it is doubtful if organising many smaller meetings would, in the end, prove less costly (in terms of both financial and human resources) than a mammoth conference. There is probably a cost-benefit sweet spot somewhere, but we leave that to others to calculate.

These are all pragmatic considerations. More profound was the question raised by Divine Fuh during the opening debate: Why keep an African Studies conference in Europe? Why not in, say, Dakar or Zanzibar? With this, he (like many others) pointed to the profound disequilibrium between European and African institutes of higher learning. And with good reason: in contrast to the thirty-seven Africa-oriented institutes gathered under the AEGIS banner, there are only five European Studies centres on the African continent (but changing; see Nshimbi et al., 2023). The power imbalance also percolates into more subtle practices, such as referencing, or into not-so-subtle realities, such as limited resources and shabby access to (online) libraries and publications, while Africa-based scholars, in general, encounter more obstacles to finding funding for their projects (Lentz and Noll, 2020). Just as important is the hierarchy of passports that make it easier for European nationals to obtain a research permit somewhere on the African continent than for African citizens to do the same in Europe, or in another African country for that matter. “The main issue that pervades knowledge production today,” Iroulo and Tappe Ortiz criticize, “is that Africa is mainly spoken for and about by non-Africans” (Iroulo and Tappe Ortiz, 2022: 75).

This having been said, we wholeheartedly welcome such an Africa-based African Studies conference, on the condition that it will be more than just a symbolic gesture or “token statement.” Many of the hurdles (not least the financial ones) would remain the same; the geographical distance would remain roughly similar as well as would the political distance: so far only four countries (out of thirty-two signatories) have ratified the AU's African passport that guarantees free movement across the continent. Nevertheless, such an event could be an important step towards a further decolonisation of African Studies; while it may not reverse the brain drain from Africa, it may close the gap between scholars based in Africa and those who have found a home elsewhere; it may encourage academic publishers to open doors in their respective paywalls (and universities to lean on publishers to do so), or may offer a venue to strategically reflect on true collaboration, including on material investments in African academia; it may inspire governments to support open-access publishing; it may motivate local students to pursue academic careers, and it may motivate African governments to support relevant fundamental research (Mehler and Nyamnjoh, 2022). Individuals may reflect (and act) on creative, collaborative strategies, such as publishing as a collective or including their African counterparts as active (and funded) partners in their proposals. Token statements, however, only foster existing inequalities.