INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE QUEST FOR AFRICAN VOICE
Keywords:
International Relations, Africa, Marginalisation, African people, International Relations TheoryAbstract
International Relations (IR), as a discipline, has European origins and a universal inclination, but it is the United States that largely determined its recent academic development. Several scholars have lamented the neglect of the developing world, especially Africa, in the study of IR. This paper examines the place of Africa in the IR discipline from the perspective of African scholars who argue that it is not a truly international discipline as it does not capture the full range of ideas, approaches and experiences of non-Western societies. It highlights the areas of perceived marginalization of Africa, the Western dominance in IR theorizing, various constraints to Africa’s visibility in IR and shows that Africa continues to figure largely on the margins of the discipline. It builds on existing researches that situate African scholarship as a viable contributor to knowledge production and theorization in IR, and calls for an African-centered perspective of IR. ÂReferences
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