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Conference (MIASA-PAPA): Challenging Conflict Research in Africa: Epistemological, Theoretical and Methodological Issues

This conference was the first collaboration between MIASA and the Pilot African Postgraduate Academy (PAPA), funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation and led by Prof. Mamadou Diawara of the Goethe University in Frankfurt, who is also PI of MIASA, and Prof. Elisio Macamo of the University of Basel in Switzerland, who is a member of the MIASA Academic Advisory Board. Together with PAPA Fellows Dr Habibou Fofana, Dr Abdoulaye Imorou, Dr Issouf Binaté, Dr Sheila Medina Karambiri, Dr Mahamadou Bassirou Tangara, they convened the conference, which was held from 10 to 12 December 2021 at the Institute of African Studies (IAS) at the University of Ghana in Legon/Accra.

A total of 152 applications were submitted, from which the 20 presentations were compiled. The participants came from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, France, Germany, Ghana, Italy, Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa and Switzerland. The IAS was responsible for the high quality of the technical realisation of the hybrid and bilingual (English-French) conference. Due to the regulations of the University of Ghana, a strict Covid hygiene management was observed.

MIASA CC-BY-SA: PAPA-MIASA conference, group picture at the MIASA bungalow, Dec. 2021, photo by Kojo Ayeh

The conference explored the theme of global knowledge production, which is central to MIASA’s intellectual agenda. The key question was to what extent established ‘Western’ methods, concepts and perspectives are appropriate for future research on violent conflicts on the African continent. The intense discussions during the conference revealed that the terms used to describe social conflicts on the African continent, the descriptions that are made of them, and the perspectives that are applied to them tend to cloud our understanding and careful interrogation of social violence, rather than promote it. As a rule, the perspectives adopted in many studies of conflicts in Africa are inscribed in unquestioned theoretical and methodological frameworks and attempt to explain why African countries have difficulties in becoming ‘states’ like others, i.e. like the ‘model’ that Western history has produced. Theoretical reflection has thus been regularly fuelled by a number of analytical categories considered essential for understanding politics.

MIASA CC-BY-SA: PAPA-MIASA conference, Dec. 2021, photo by Kojo Ayeh

These include ‘citizenship’, ‘democracy’, ‘governance’ and ‘civil society’. However, the operational value of these terms and the contexts to which they are applied are not questioned, and it is not recognised that the meaning of these terms can vary depending on the context.

In this respect, the conference on knowledge production rigorously and uncompromisingly questioned the theories that have so far claimed to explain conflicts in Africa. This claim required the confrontation of fundamental questions, because the ‘obvious’, created by a long tradition of social sciences in the analysis of the political phenomenon in Africa, seems to free researchers from an interrogation that starts from the object and not from a preconceived opinion about it. The elimination of these obvious facts implies a sustained questioning of the theoretical models that give them coherence and impose them as inescapable categories of scientific analysis.

MIASA CC-BY-SA: PAPA-MIASA conference, Dec. 2021, photo by Kojo Ayeh


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Marko Scholze (January 17, 2022). Conference (MIASA-PAPA): Challenging Conflict Research in Africa: Epistemological, Theoretical and Methodological Issues. Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa - Blog. Retrieved January 20, 2026 from https://miasa.hypotheses.org/2546


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