Indigenous epistemologies and archives in researching Africa

As students of African studies hoping to become future Africanist, there were lots of theories and methodologies we acquired in our seminars. African studies today is not of the same nature as the past. This requires us to be self-aware of our power, our positionality and biases when studying a continent from afar. Equipping ourselves with the tools to question what kind of researcher I am, we will finally be able to answer that on our internship research for the next semester. I will be conduction research in the unrecognized state of Somaliland, located at the northwest of the sovereign state of Somalia. I’ll be situated in the capital city, Hargeisa, a bustling city of nearly 1.5 million inhabitants. My research is at the Hargeysa Cultural Centre (HCC), founded by the director, Dr. Jama Musse Jama an ethno-mathematician and author in 2014. The HCC acts as a hub for students, scholars, artists and the community with similar interest to come together. The centre boosts collections unavailable anywhere else in Somaliland with books, journals, cassettes etc. An essential work done is the archival projects going for cultural preservation and history . A big success to the HCC, is the annual Hargeisa International Book Fair (HIBF), launched in 2008 by Dr. Jama Musse Jama prior. The main objective of the bookfair being promoting reading and writing, translation of international works into Somali and exposure of Somali literature. The bookfair has since grown exponentially with an estimated thousands of attendees. The HCC is the result of civil society and communal efforts. What I’m interested is in the communal archives and how that translates to co-agency of history and heritage. As the HCC is a physical entity, the first recipient of benefit should be the community. How transferable is the oral knowledge? Is it being archived only to be stored or is it visible in school curriculums for example? One cannot leave out digitalization in archiving in modern times. Open access to knowledge is the first stride to removing hierarchies of knowledge to a certain degree. What is the digitalization works done for archiving and how accessible are they people far away like the Somali diaspora or Africanist/academics?

Reflecting on my own positionality, I am first and foremost, ethnically Somali with clan ties to Somaliland. I also speak the language fluently as well as has spent some of my teen years in Hargeisa. Based on that alone, my position is not one of a ‘foreigner’ coming to do research but rather ‘someone who looks like us’ interested in doing research. But with not having spent time in the country long enough or raised there, I am someone coming from outside which entails different mindset and experiences from the locals. African studies is long seen as a product of colonialism, created in order to have better understanding of their subjects. The theories and methodologies are built upon research done by Westerners which are encapsulated in the numerous African studies centres in Western universities. I am a by product of that, studying for my masters in African studies at Leiden university. Yet despite this, there is an understanding of “how Western scholarship including German Afrikanistik has made a huge contribution to the knowledge of African languages, societies, history and cultures” (Hountondji, 2009: 126). The other question to ask myself is who is this knowledge for? Who does it serve? It is common to investigate topics which are of interest to a Western audience as the articles are published outside Africa and hence meant for non- African readers, who remain the bulk of readers. The use of European languages also narrows down how accessible it is to local readers (Hountondji, 2009: 128). Long before I embarked on my African studies program, my hunger to learn of my heritage has always been there. Whenever I would browse the internet for knowledge, it would majority of the time be work from a western scholar, from colonial times or western specialists on topics for western audiences. As a diaspora, my interests are of different nature serving a special purpose. As the bulk of international scholarship is in English, my accessibility to works in Somali for example is going to be even more limited. Although I do have admit that higher education/research in Somaliland is done in English. With all the points in mind, my thesis topic is one which I’d considered with intent to be of benefit to Somaliland. This ties down to co-creation, hierarchies of knowledge production and geography.

As African studies is a field built and developed outside the continent, the scope of knowledge production is located elsewhere too. Automatically, there is a hierarchy or a disparity of African scholarship. What ends up happening is that discussions around Africa and of Africa remains in the hands of others where “African scholars have been participating in a vertical discussion with his/her counterparts from the North rather than developing horizontal discussions with other African scholars” (Hountondji, 2009:128). The imbalance further alienates the African influence on Euro-American scholarship which is already being questioned as a form of cultural imperialism. To move forward from this, a return of the study of Africa to African institutions and African scholars is key (De Ycaza, 2015:69). This won’t unfortunately happen overnight, but measures taken to counter this is the cooperation and partnership with African and African institutions. An example of this is at the African Studies Centre of Leiden, where guest lecturers from the continent are hosted by ASCL. I hope with that similar mindset of valuing study of Africa in Africa, I conduct my research as someone who is there to learn from the production of knowledge rather than someone who already has the solutions.

But what is the future of African studies? What is the end goal of African studies after 60 years of independence? In order to answer African problems, one needs African solutions. African studies should first and foremost, serve the people of the continent before anyone else. This means development of “an Africa-based tradition of knowledge in all disciplines, where questions are initiated, and research agendas set out directly or indirectly by African societies themselves”. The more things are done in Africa the better for the present and future of the continent (Hountondji, 2009:129). When African production of knowledge is at the centre of African studies, true co-creation happens. Afrocentricity is an approach which “centralizes the historicity of Africa and Africanity at the core of continental and diasporan Africans’ cultural consciousness” (Osha, 2018: E46). Afrocentricity is focused on agency, co-creation, ownership, location, all of which serve purpose to knowledge production in the continent.

Many African societies are largely oral, centered around poetry, music, dance, legends etc that carry the essence of the cultures. Incorporating the unwritten knowledge to the academic may not be common in Western academia, but without it in African academia, one is limiting ones understanding. One cannot leave out the discussion around decolonization of Africa when discussing academia. The bulk of the debate is on decolonization of higher education especially in of South African universities with the case of “Rhode Must Fall” and decolonization of heritage, with the return of cultural artefacts to their respective African countries having created buzz on proprietorship and rights. Mbembe touches upon the ideas of Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth (1961) and Ngugi wa Thiong’o in Decolonizing of the Mind (1981) when discussion Africanization. I would like to focus on Ngugi in relation to my thesis research. Ngugi is focused on the politics of language. Questions of writing and teaching- writing oneself, teaching oneself (Mbembe, 2022). Decolonization is placing Africa at the centre and rejecting the notion that Africa is an extension of the West. A decolonized university in Africa should put African languages at the centre of its teaching and learning project (Mbembe, 2022). Southern epistemology is willing to incorporate local knowledge in the oral tradition. But the western structures in knowledge production theories of the North carry more value compared local production, creating “a kind of inferiority complex” for Africans academics (Grosz-Ngate, 2020: 696). Decolonization is focused on the intellectuals, hence ignoring the capability of contribution of society. Is that not knowledge useful? In the example of Mali and Senegal, “villagers too are creative, they think and can contribute, but their creativity often does not rise to the surface” (Grosz-Ngate, 2020: 697). This was in relation to the endogenous knowledges in oral form, of Arabic and Ajaami documents yet to be analyzed. Decolonization is in African universities opening to non-academic in an effort to “decolonize the mind” and rely on the “endogenous and local sources available to them” (Grosz-Ngate, 2020: 698).

Coming back to my thesis topic, the research is focused on the archiving with the efforts of the community. Before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1988, the local radio of the region known as Radio Hargeisa, buried their cassettes as people were evacuating from the bombing. This was also done by individuals aswell who has access to cassettes, recordings etc. The director of HCC started his collection of works long before the centre was established. The communal efforts to preserve the heritage is the reason the centre is meaningful to society. Somaliland from his establishment as a sovereign state in 1991, had other pressing issues to address. Culture heritage was at the bottom of the list. Now that the HCC is a hub for the culture of Somaliland, I’m interested in observing how transferable the endogenous knowledge is in the academic discussions of higher education in Somaliland. Firstly, is there an African research centre there? If there is, what is the production of knowledge in the research centre and how beneficial is it to society? Research centres have the capacity to influence the knowledge of the new generation. Is the knowledge present in the school curriculum and decolonized?

I am aware of the unique role I have for the duration of my research as an African diasporan. Many African universities lack the funding to engage in the discussions of decolonization. The contribution of the African academic diaspora and their ability to change the status quo is not one to undermine. The theories produced by African diasporas “have a large echo in Africa and the theories they produce resonate with the positions of Africans” (Grosz-Ngate, 2020: 699). I hope that with the privileged positionality I carry, I am ethical and honest to the society I’m researching on and remain alert on my subjectivity.

Bibliography:

De Ycaza, Carla, 2015. Competing Methods for Teaching and Researching Africa: Interdisciplinarity and the Field of African Studies. Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 38(3); doi:10.5070/F7383027721

Maria Grosz-Ngate, ‘Knowledge and Power: Perspectives on the Production and Decolonization of African/ist Knowledge’, African Studies Review 63, 4 (2020), pp 689-718;

Paulin J. Hountondji, ‘Knowledge of Africa, Knowledge by Africans: Two perspectives on African Studies’, RCCS Annual review 1, 1 (2009)

Mbembe, Achille, Decolonizing Knowledge and the Question of the Archive Achille Mbembe; Achille Mbembe “Decolonizing Knowledge and the Question of the Archive” – TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research (hypotheses.org)

U. Chinedu Amaefula. 2021. Dani Nabudere’s Afrikology: A Quest for African Holism by Sanya Osha. African Studies Review, Volume 64, Number 1, March 2021, pp. E46-E48

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