The Africa Institute
Overview
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Posted Opportunities 0
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Founded Since 2018
Company Description
The Africa Institute is an interdisciplinary academic research institute dedicated to the study, research and documentation of Africa, its people and its cultures; its complex past, present and future; and its manifold connections with the wider world.
Established in 2018, The Africa Institute located in Sharjah, UAE, is an interdisciplinary academic research institute dedicated to the study, research, and documentation of Africa and the African diaspora. As the only institution of its kind located in the Gulf—the historical nexus of African-Arab cultural exchange—The Africa Institute is uniquely positioned to expand understanding of African and African diaspora studies as a global enterprise. The Africa Institute’s curriculum of postgraduate studies is designed to train the next generation of critical thinkers in African and African diaspora studies, and through its program of international symposia and conferences, visual art exhibitions and artist commissions, film and performance series, and community classes and outreach events, The Institute is expanding public understanding of Arab and African exchange within not only the scholarly community but also the local Sharjah community, the region, and around the globe.
MISSION & VISION
The overall vision of The Africa Institute is of a globally oriented institution of research, documentation, study and teaching of Africa and its diaspora, in the humanities and social sciences.
The Institute is conceived as a research based think-tank, and a postgraduate studies institution (offering both Masters and Ph.D. programs), which aims to train a new generation of critical thinkers in African and African diaspora studies. The Africa Institute aims to be a model center of excellence in research, teaching, and documentation that is hoped to match in quality and breadth of coverage, existing peer of African and African Diaspora Studies in Africa, Europe, and North America.
The conception of The Africa Institute emanates from a basic premise that African Studies is a global enterprise, rather than one narrowly constrained by geography or territorial boundaries. The fact on the ground is that the Arab Gulf region is one of mixed populations, in which cultural exchanges manifested in an impressive variety of processes and patterns pertaining to borrowing and assimilation, forced and voluntary migrations, and adaptive strategies, none of which can be fully understood without incorporating Africa into the analysis.
The Africa Institute is uniquely positioned to further analysis of these linkages by illuminating larger African and Gulf ties, like those powerfully demonstrated in the historiography of the Indian Ocean Rim. At once, the Institute envisions larger global processes and knowledge circuits in relation to Africa and its diaspora. In particular, the last two decades have also witnessed rising scholarly interests in the study of new frontiers of African Diaspora studies. These include lesser-explored aspects of the African Diaspora in the Spanish speaking Caribbean (such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico), Latin America including Brazil, in addition to the Black British experience and recent African migrations and diasporas in Europe and the Middle East. These developments will certainly play a part in reconfiguring and revisiting the field and expanding its scope, and by extension, the scholarly focuses and curricula of the new Africa Institute. The Africa Institute hopes to both engage with as well as shape these new paradigms of thought in ways that will ensure its place at the forefront of African studies for years to come.
HISTORY
Conceptualized as a center for Africa and African Diaspora studies, The Africa Institute’s history dates back to December 1976, when Sharjah, UAE hosted the first Symposium on African and Arab Relations.
Organized under the patronage of His Highness Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi, Member of the Supreme Council of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of the Emirate of Sharjah, 45 African and Arab intellectuals were invited to participate in the symposium. Among one of the major recommendations was to establish an institute for African and Arab relations that would focus on the study and documentation of historical linkages, to be headquartered in Sharjah, UAE.
The symposium also addressed the need for a Documentation and Data Collection Center to be focused on Arab-African relations in Sharjah, an annual meeting to discuss Arab-African relations and a proposed Arab-African Fund. Through the establishment of The Africa Institute on June 6, 2018, the Government of the Emirate of Sharjah committed to strengthening Afro-Arab relations.
The original Africa Hall building was inaugurated on the same day as the Municipality’s building in 1976, but the original buildings of both were first built in the early 1970s as part of a wave of government modernist buildings. The building was inaugurated under the title ‘Africa Hall’ as its first cultural and political event was the Arab-African Symposium. The new Africa Hall, which was rebuilt on the same site of the former building – demolished in 2015 – will be part of the future complex of buildings for The Africa Institute. Designed by the world-renowned Ghanaian British architect, Sir David Adjaye, The Africa Hall will serve as a knowledge center and platform for conferences, symposia, and lectures, film screenings and staged plays related to the activities of the Africa Institute, and to serve as part of The Institute’s outreach to the larger community of Sharjah, UAE and beyond.
CONTACT US
+971 6 511 2 444 info@theafricainstitute.org The Africa InstituteAfrica Hall, Al Manakh PO Box 4490 Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
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