A new research agenda for Africa’s international relations

The article takes stock of the eclectic Africa’s International Relations (AIR) scholarship with a view to setting a new research agenda for this vibrant subfield of International Relations (IR). It argues that the AIR community has taken a defensive approach to knowledge production and dissemination. It calls on AIR scholars to shift the emphasis from reactionary scholarship to an offensive knowledge production and dissemination by building research around five key themes. The article shows that a research agenda in the five areas can give epistemic freedom to AIR scholars, contribute to freeing IR from Euro-American metanarratives, and ultimately put AIR scholars in a position to develop analytical frameworks capable of capturing nuances and complexities of international life in Africa.