Can African scholars speak? Situating African voices in International Communication scholarship

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute and engage with debates pertaining to epistemology, knowledge production, and positionality of ‘International Communication Studies’ (ICS) in sub-Saharan Africa. The study operates on the assumption that International Communication studies in most Sub-Saharan Africa are characterized by tales of marginalization, poverty, wars, and tribal conflicts. While this approach speaks to the notion of development communication, it is insufficient to bolster the contributions of African scholarship to the global literature. In turn, ICS in Africa is treated as second class and dependent on Western scholarship for survival. Against this backdrop, the study interrogates the position of African scholarship, arguing that most research contributions are treated as repositories for raw data with no epistemological knowledge to contribute to the global network platform.