About CAS

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The Center for African Studies (CAS) falls under the School of Postgraduate Studies and Research at Uganda Martyrs University – a private Catholic-founded university located at the Equator in Uganda. CAS is a semi-autonomous unit headed by the Chair of CAS and staffed by fellows both from within other academic units of the university and without.

The Center was created in 2015 to address the need to promote and deepen the study and generation/documentation of knowledge about Africa’s multifaceted realities. Whereas we acknowledge the significance of pursuing universal knowledge through the best standards of academic excellence, we emphasise that it would be odd and irresponsible for an African university to pursue such knowledge without a rigorous integration of its African environment and context into the universal.

Africans should be studying Africa not simply for the legitimate purpose of rebutting inaccuracies and misrepresentations that abound in African studies made elsewhere in the world but, even more importantly for the fact that the development of a robust scientific understanding of Africa in its mutations and transformations is a duty which Africans owe themselves first and foremost, and that must be undertaken with all the rigour and seriousness it deserves. Self-understanding is a pre-requisite for the understanding of others
- (Adebayo Olukoshi, Director of the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning - IDEP).

As observed by Professor Molefi Kete Asante, “our African universities are the repositories and dispensers not of our ancestral knowledge and philosophy but of Europe’s. The fact that European knowledge is in the system is not the problem, but that such knowledge is at the center of most African curricula is an immediate danger that privileges white [Western] scholars in those institutions and marginalises Africans and African knowledge”. Through various historical and contemporary local and international machinations, the politics of knowledge has underprivileged Africa’s contributions in almost all fields of knowledge. As such, the task of studying African knowledge and practices and repositioning them from the periphery is both a grand and urgent one.

One would ask what difference it makes whether to study Africa from Africa as viewed by Africans or from the various centers for African studies in Europe and America. There is certainly knowledge to be acquired either way, but it may not be the same. Although researchers often underline their objectivity, research and politics of knowledge are often informed by interests and positionality. Our study of Africa is rooted in the interest of achieving self-understanding and decolonisation through a pursuit of knowledge mainly driven from within Africa and guided by endogenous imperatives and lenses. This does not rule out working with other people from outside Africa, but we are keen on holding the concerns of the African world as our priority. On the admission of the above ideal, we are open to working with a healthy synergy of local and external scholars to animate scientific life in initiating and furthering enriching research on Africa and generating insights that could as well inform social policy and practice.

To promote quality research, documentation, and exchange of ideas on Africa and her relations with the outside world
  • To facilitate research on and collection of elements of Africa’s cultural heritage and their relevance in contemporary times;
  • Facilitate respectful dialogue/ conversations among African and foreign researchers on African issues with a view to enhancing knowledge pluralism;
  • To address misrepresentations and underrepresentation of Africa through rigorous research, public debates, and publication;
  • To promote the appreciation and utilisation of relevant African cultural precepts and knowledge

Activities

Our research focus cuts across the disciplines but mainly inclined towards the arts and social sciences. We privilege interdisciplinary research as a way of overcoming the limitations of disciplinary boundaries. CAS runs a monograph publication series called Mtafiti Mwafrika (African Researcher) and publishes thematic anthologies based on seminars, dialogues, and African research conferences.
The Center houses the Uganda Martyrs University Museum which was set up in 1996 as a collection of indigenous cultural artefacts and sculptures from Uganda and elsewhere in Africa. Its mission is to preserve and promote African culture, as well as to facilitate research on its significance in the present African and world development contexts. It is one of the few anthropological museums in Uganda.
The primary purpose of the CAS research fellowship/affiliation will be two-fold: to marshal collaborative endeavours through joint research and disseminations, as well as to assist specific research affiliates with getting support for registration with UNCST plus access to the UMU library and other scholarly resources.
The Center organises periodic workshops and dialogues on debates facilitated by guest speakers who are researchers in the area of African studies. CAS also holds Policy Dialogues involving fellows engaged in policy-oriented research targeting the state, cultural and religious institutions.