1 Introduction

In 1961, the Institute of African Studies (IAS) was set up by Ghana’s first president, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, as a semi-autonomous, multi- and interdisciplinary research institute at the University of Ghana. The British Professor T.L. Hodgkin was appointed the institute’s first director in 1962, Professor J.H.K. Nketia was deputy director and A.S.Y. Andoh was its administrative secretary. At that time, the institute had 16 teaching staff in four sections: African Music and Arts, African Historical Studies, African Languages and The Study of African Modern States. This number increased to 23 in the 1964/1965 academic year.¹ The main academic programme was a Master of Arts degree; the first batch of students – nine men and two women – were admitted in 1962. In 1965, Professor Nketia was appointed the first African and Ghanaian director and served until 1974.

The appointment of Nketia was followed in the 1967/1968 academic year by the expansion of the institute’s teaching mandate to teach courses at undergraduate level, which were made compulsory in line with the institute’s vision to ensure that all students were introduced to Africa, as it were. The goal was to familiarize students with the past and present social and economic histories of Africa and the diaspora, the languages and art forms, and past and contemporary challenges and accomplishments. The course was presented to first-year students, who could graduate from the university only if they had passed the examination in their chosen discipline in African studies. The main courses on offer at the onset included history, economic organization, sociology, and music. Further flagship contributions and projects of directors are discussed later in this chapter. Currently, the institute offers two core courses in the first year at master’s level and 13 elective courses per semester that students can choose from based on their interests. At PhD level, two core courses are made available in the first year and 10 elective courses that students choose from based on their areas of specialization.

Over the years, the IAS has carried out its mandate, taken from the “African Genius” speech that Nkrumah made at the institute’s formal opening in 1963 – to conduct research into the history, culture and arts of Africa and its diaspora. The IAS has achieved this mission through its research agendas and practices; dissemination through teaching, scholarly and public engagements; national, regional and global policy engagements; and preservation of knowledge through documentation in various forms in the institute’s archives, library and museum. This chapter provides a description of, and insights into, the journey and activities of the IAS. We do not seek here to enter into debates with others who may have been on similar journeys, or to reflect on the synergies or conversations going on globally and in the African world at the time. That would be beyond the scope of this chapter and has been dealt with well by many others (for example Gikandi 2000; Gyamfi 2021; July 1987; Quist-Adade and Chiang 2012; Wauthier 1967). We simply seek to show how the African Genius speech delivered by Kwame Nkrumah guided the research, teaching and dissemination of information of the work of IAS significantly, and propose it as an important decolonial teaching manifesto.

In the rest of this chapter, we discuss in further detail the institute’s seminal role at the University of Ghana, on the continent and globally, since its founding. Belonging to different “generations”, we – Edwin Adjei, a past student and fellow since 2020, Samuel Ntewusu, a past student and the institute’s director since 2022, and Akosua Adomako Ampofo, a fellow since 1989 and a past director – have tried to weave together what we consider to be the main ingredients of the IAS story, especially as it relates to the “African genius” and its relevance to current debates, especially on decolonization. We come from and are located in different academic disciplines and backgrounds: language and literature (Adjei), history (Ntewusu) and gender/social sciences (Adomako Ampofo).² This eclectic mix, a reflection of the inter- and multidisciplinary work of the IAS, informs our composite approach to the subject matter of this chapter.

The IAS tune was composed in a particular era, when the Pan-Africanist spirit was very much alive in the postcolonial academy, in places like the University of Ghana and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana; universities in Nigeria, such as Ibadan, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ahmadu Bello University, the University of Lagos and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; Makerere University in Uganda; Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone; Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar in Senegal; and Cairo University in Egypt, to name a few.

2 From Pan-African Beginnings: Research in and on Africa

Soon after the establishment of the IAS, the diversity of disciplines of its fellows, from the departments of Political Science, Philosophy and Economics, the School of Languages, the then Institute of Languages and the Ghana Bureau of Languages, designed and led several research projects that sought to centre the African, and especially Ghanaian, experience. One of the earliest works the institute concentrated on was the recording of Asante stool histories and the collection of traditional court records. The data collected also included historical accounts on migratory and settlement patterns, political leadership, wars, religions, economic factors, rites-of-passage practices, such as funerals and marriages, and politicoreligious practices, such as oaths.³

Similar research projects were later pursued in other Akan-speaking areas, such as among the peoples of Fanti and Brong states, where histories were collected through interviews with the traditional leaders – that is, the chiefs and elders of the town or division. Classified lists of these oral histories and court records appeared in the institute’s Research Review, which at that time was published three times a year (Goody and Arhin 1965: 1).⁴ For example, the Ashanti⁵ Research Project was launched in 1963 to promote research in the various disciplines to understand the social, cultural and political life within the Ashanti sphere of influence as a result of the political power the kingdom had wielded in the past and continued to wield. Research projects also took place in the northern part of the country. Through the Oral Traditions of Gonja Project and the Kete Krachi Traditions, the IAS was able to provide comprehensive information on the Guans in the Middle Belt zone of Ghana, and the Gonja and Nawuri in Northern Ghana (Kumah 1969).

According to the IAS 1963/64 annual report, research fellows did pay attention to other parts of Africa and the diaspora, such as studying the economic roots of apartheid in South Africa and the concepts of international law in precolonial Africa. In part as a result of the influence of the Arabic and Hausa languages and cultures on Ghana’s social and cultural life, the IAS tried to collect a substantial body of Arabic and Hausa documents, which were duly acknowledged by Nkrumah in his speech. The Arabic and Hausa collections in the institute, as he pointed out, revealed a tradition of scholarship in Ghana and other parts of Africa regarding the history of Africa, about which little was known at the time. The documents contain information on themes that include Al-Tarik (history), Al-Tawid (theology), Al-Tasawuf (mysticism), Al-Figh (jurisprudence), Al-Adab Al-Arabi (Arabic literature), Ilm-al-Falak (astrology), Al-Saydala (pharmacopoeia) and Ar-Rasa’il As-siyasiyya (political treaties). The Arabic manuscripts were assembled in the 1950s and 1960s and amount to approximately 500 manuscripts. Ninety per cent of the documents are in Arabic, with the rest in African languages, especially Hausa, Fulfulde and Mamprule (Opoku-Boateng et al. 2020: 379).

Soon after its establishment, the IAS coordinated the creation of the Ghana Institute of Linguistics Literacy and Bible Translation (GILLBT) in 1962. This followed from an agreement between the University of Ghana and the Summer Institute of Linguistics International (SIL) to set up an institute to complement the state’s efforts to develop the languages in the country (GILLBT 2022: 6). Apart from the IAS, the following units at the University of Ghana were also involved: the Linguistics Department; the Language Centre; and the Institute of Adult Education, renamed the Institute of Continuing and Distance Education (ICDE) in 2010 in recognition of its expanded scope. By 2022, through its collaboration with the University of Ghana, especially the IAS, GILLBT had contributed to the development of 40 hitherto undeveloped languages in the country and provided the University of Ghana with phonologies, grammars, dictionaries and other anthropological material in these languages. Indeed, GILLBT, through its intellectual and academic work, is the largest contributor to the documentation and analyses of the minority languages of Ghana (Adomako Ampofo 2022).

We should note that Nkrumah acknowledged the work of some of the other pioneers of African-centred work at IAS and beyond.

I also regard as important the work which you are doing in the collection of stool histories and other forms of oral tradition – of poetry and African literature in all its forms of which one admirable expression is Professor Nketia’s recently published book entitled “Folk Songs of Ghana”, and Kofi Antubam’s latest book on African culture. Other Ghanaians have done equally admirable work in this field. I may mention here Ephraim Amu whose work has created and established a Ghanaian style of music and revived an appreciation for it. Our old friend J. B. Danquah, has also produced studies of Akan culture and institutions.

NKRUMAH 1963: 4–5

In the 1970s, the assistance of the institute was sought by the Eastern African Centre for Research on Oral Traditions and African Languages in Zanzibar, Tanzania, to provide experts and ideas to enable the collection of oral traditions, including languages. Experts recognized that the systematic study of oral traditions and the promotion of African national languages as vehicles of culture and instruments of education could not be properly effected without an assessment of the work that had already been done. The document that established the centre in the 1970s notes: “To date very little evaluation is known to have been done on the Eastern African region whose researchers and related institutions have little opportunity if any at all to work together because of the almost complete absence of any meaningful exchange of experience”.⁶ The centre adopted the IAS model and designed a project that sought to create a bibliography and documentation project aimed at collecting as much information as possible and making this available to researchers. The implementation of the project was also meant to lead to a broader exchange of information among researchers and contribute to a coordinated system of cooperation, which was evident in the early years.

Based on its extensive research in the 1970s, the IAS became part of the Institute of Intercultural Research, with its headquarters in Heidelberg, Switzerland. A multidisciplinary group of scholars was composed, led by Professor Nketia, to implement a project titled “The Traditions of Black Africa: Their Tasks and Possibilities”. The IAS was responsible for handling collaborations between the Institute of Intercultural Research and Ghanaian universities, academics and institutions. As part of the protocols regulating research and colloquia, funding was sought from non-public funds to avoid any influence from specific political, ideological, confessional or racist ideas in furthering the work of the Institute of Intercultural Research. Therefore, the sole source of funding was the Intercultural Cooperation, an international association of foundations with its centre in Switzerland and with donors, mostly free thinkers and philanthropists, from West Germany, Swiss Citizens, Japan, Hong Kong, India, the Arab World, France, the US and Canada. For several years research covered diverse topics, such as the meaning of sickness from different cultural perspectives or the understanding of time and history from an intercultural framework.⁷

We concede that the Western funders could have had a sectarian influence on the work but can find no concrete evidence of this. It does signpost, however, the ever-increasing reliance on foreign grants as state funding for higher education and research declined. It is important to add that the collaboration with the Institute of Intercultural Research was meant to provide support in the development of higher education and research capacity in Ghana and Africa, at a time when the continent was facing a severe shortage of faculty members and resources and a general brain drain due to economic crises. The contribution of the collaboration to the decolonial debate lies in the fact that an important network was developed, which created synergies in capacity by strengthening and shaping intercultural dialogue.

3 Teaching: Developing Undergraduate and Postgraduate Programmes

In a report on the 1962 UNESCO Conference on “University Development in Africa”, the conclusions and recommendations of the University of Ghana representatives resonate with Nkrumah’s African Genius speech: “The need for the use of African material in the teaching of all subjects and at all levels of students, and the introduction of carefully organized courses in African studies to be taken by all students should be recognized”.⁸ Students who enrol at the University of Ghana must pass the first-year university examinations, now the University of Ghana Required Course in African Studies, otherwise they cannot graduate. The purpose is to enable students graduating from the University of Ghana to acquire knowledge in aspects of Africa’s history, culture, philosophy, science, language and literature, so that they are introduced to a way of seeing the world from a perspective relevant to their realities, early in their career as university students (see Appendix 2 for a list of the courses taught in the 1960s and currently).

The postgraduate training provides masters and PhD students the opportunity to be introduced to various aspects of Africa’s history and culture; to explore and interrogate Africa’s contemporary social, political, economic and cultural systems, including its languages and literature; and to apply complex analytical and methodological skills to issues related to Africa. From the onset, the courses have sought to challenge students to understand the African condition and consider practical ways to respond to its experiences in their personal and professional lives. In Nkrumah’s speech, he stressed this kind of Afrocentric form of education, which for him was important in developing men and women with imagination, ideas and the courage to reflect on the dynamic changes that Africa and African societies were undergoing, and to contribute meaningful solutions for the wellbeing of the peoples of global Africa.

As far as the study and teaching of Africa was concerned, the African genius called for a pan-African approach. This approach was implemented at the initial stage through the establishment of courses in African languages, African history, African sociology, politics and economics, African arts and literature and West African music.⁹ Over the years, many other courses have been offered and new courses have been introduced based on the availability of faculty with expertise in diverse areas.¹⁰ It is important to point out that one of the documents added to the readings for the African studies courses by the acting director, Dr A.K. Quarcoo, during his tenure, was the African Genius speech. Over the years, this text fell below the radar but was reintroduced by the director, Akosua Adomako Ampofo in 2013, when the IAS celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The first graduate students were a truly international mix, coming from countries as diverse as Poland, the US, Nigeria and Japan (Nkrumah, 1963).¹¹

The establishment of the institute in Zambia had no political personalities involved. In contrast, its establishment in Zimbabwe received backing from presidents Hilla Liman of Ghana and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ghana was also involved in facilitating the establishment of the Institute in Zimbabwe.

However, attempts at establishing an IAS in Zimbabwe were not followed through. In part, this was because following the attainment of independence in Zimbabwe, the country’s educational and ideological goals shifted a little away from that of Ghana. At the time of engagement with the institute, the relationship was based principally on political and diplomatic solidarity and not necessarily educational cooperation in the technical sense. Also, the government at that time did not give support to African studies because the regime had become disenchanted with academics, who were considered a part of Zimbabwean society that, largely, had been less than enthusiastic about national liberation (Satyamurthy 1982).

The University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, requested three ethnomusicologists for immediate employment in their music department. Even though the institute was not able to assist with this request because of a shortage of qualified personnel in that field, it nonetheless was able to help establish a research centre.

By the 1980s the IAS at the University of Ghana had responded to several requests from universities based in Africa to provide blueprints for the establishment of institutes and centres, offered responses to the nature of African studies or provided faculty to fill positions. In 2014, Director Adomako Ampofo was invited by the director of the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT), Professor Lungisile Ntsebeza, to assist in designing a required course in African studies similar to the one being run by the IAS. Working with colleagues at UCT, Professor Adomako Ampofo workshopped the IAS model and discussed possible formats, methodologies and texts that might be applicable to the South African context.

4 Documentation: Archives, Library, Museum, Dance Ensemble and a Journal

In line with this objective, a documentation centre was established to house unprocessed field material, and in 1962 the institute’s library was founded. The initial holdings concentrated on African music and arts, African historical studies, African languages and African modern states. There were also country-specific collections from South Africa, Algeria, Benin, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia and Kenya. Today it is one of the most important resources for Africana studies in Ghana. The institute’s library has processed 22,525 books and 232 dissertations. In addition, it has a special collection that includes newspaper catalogues from 1954 to the present.¹⁵ The library staff regularly offer orientations to introduce students to the methods of library research and reviewing literature.¹⁶ The intent of IAS is to build an extensive and diversified library of African classics.

The institute has two archives. On the University of Ghana campus is the J.H. Kwabena Nketia Archive, so named in 2014; the Manhyia archive is held in Kumasi, the capital city of the Ashanti Region. The first has gone through various transitions. It began as a sound archive, with the holdings of various field studies and collections from various parts of Ghana, mainly by J.H. Kwabena Nketia while he was in the Sociology Department of the University of Ghana. Most of the holdings were assembled from 1952, but steadily increased from the 1960s to the 1970s, when Nketia and a team of ethnomusicologists recorded exclusive stories, songs and dances and other oral and performance traditions from across the 10 regions of Ghana. The sound archive was augmented by the contributions of other ethnomusicologists, research fellows, staff and visiting researchers of the IAS, including Professor Mawere Opoku, Patience Kwakwa, Professor Melrose, Professor Kwame Arhin and Ampon Darkwa.

The archive currently holds material from the International Centre for African Music and Dance (ICAMD), photographic collections and paper archival materials. Some of its holdings are numerous examples of folktale sessions from various parts of Ghana; Mmoguo; Odurugya music (unique music performed at the court of the Asantehene); Fontomfrom music; rare recordings from Konkomba, Mamprusi, Frafra, Dagarti and Kasena tribes; funeral dirges; occupational songs; hunters’ songs; witches’ songs; storytelling; possession music; cult music; music performed during initiation rites; old highlife music; old brass band music; documentation of the coronation of chiefs like Otumfuo Osei Tutu and Nana Ofobi Kroppa III; final funeral rites of prominent people and royals in Ghana like the Asantehene Otumfoo Opoku Ware and the Chief Priestess of Akonnedi Shrine, Larteh Akwapim; music and dance forms in Ghana (from the 10 regions of Ghana) from 2005 to 2008; the JVC Smithsonian Folkways series; the Herskovits film study on West African (1931); and traditional music from other parts of the African continent and the world.

The holdings were housed in a small room, did not have a professional archivist to manage them, and the collections were not easily accessible to scholars and the public. At the time, the university was of the view that aside from the lecturers in the Department of Archival Studies there could be only one professional archivist on its Legon campus to manage the archives. This position was assumed by Thomas Anning, who had hitherto been in charge of the Manhyia Archives in Kumasi. In 2012, under the directorship of Professor Adomako Ampofo, the university was persuaded to allow the IAS to employ a full-time archivist, in the person of Judith Opoku Boateng. With her arrival, it was possible to properly envision and conceptualize a professional archive. In 2014, the existing archives were refurbished, modernized and expanded to include a production unit, a viewing room, a graduate study office and staff offices. It was named the J.H. Kwabena Nketia Archive in honour of the first African director and his role in providing the core of the initial collection.

The Manhyia Archives are located at the Asantehene’s palace at Manhyia, Kumase.¹⁷ This is the seat of government of the Asante kingdom and the place of residence of the Asante king. The archive was established in 1963 as part of the IAS “Ashanti Research Project”, to provide in-depth studies of the social, political, economic and cultural institutions of the West African region from precolonial times to the present. The project’s aim was also to offer a fruitful basis for cooperation between the University of Ghana and the University of Science and Technology at Kumasi, give support for traditional leadership through access to information, promote accountability and transparency, and support research, teaching and learning of Asante history and culture. The archive has several documents, including traditional records, colonial government publications and stool histories. The Asante stool histories, which number more than 200, contain valuable information on Asante rulers. Within the stool histories are also references to major events, such as the founding of the Asante kingdom, wars fought and how some towns and communities in the kingdom or state were established.¹⁸

The institute is home to a museum which houses a collection that includes artifacts that represent some of the diverse art forms in Ghana. The art historian, Roy Seiber, and his assistant, Kwabena Ameyaw, began the museum collection in 1964 as a way of preserving ethnographic works about Ghana and providing information on them. Their collection was used for teaching and served as the foundation upon which the IAS graduate progamme in visual arts was built, by Dr (now Professor) Kwame Amoah Labi. The donation of 1,000 gold weights in 2005 by Oyeeman Owereko Ampem II, the late chief of Amanokrom and then chancellor of the University of Ghana, greatly enhanced the number of exhibits in the museum. Gold weights are beautifully crafted artifacts made of brass used to weigh gold. This led to a major installation, the publication of a museum catalogue on the gold weights, and the production of a documentary on the ancient art of brass-making, by Kwame Amoah Labi, in 2007.¹⁹

The collections enable the museum to serve as a practical teaching resource and a space for reflection, inspiration for innovation and a place where African wisdom, art, history and philosophy can be preserved for posterity. The museum acts as a gateway, linking research with objects. Over the years, several exhibitions have been curated in the institute and other strategic locations in Ghana, such as Sekondi-Takoradi, in 1999, and Kumasi, in 2000, 2002 and 2004. Visual expressions are necessary because they offer a reinterpretation of Africa in terms of its technological and cultural development. More importantly, such exhibitions are conceived as a continuation of the “state of the field” with the aim of interrogating current research interests and objectives, including the methodological dimensions of fieldwork, especially the trends, prospects, problems and strategies.²⁰

As part of its dissemination agenda, IAS set up a journal, Okyeame, in 1961. The Ghana Dance Ensemble was established as the national dance company through a collaboration between the state Institute of Arts and Culture and IAS in 1962. The dance ensemble was meant to promote the music and dance heritage of Ghana undergirded by solid fieldwork and experimental research (Adinku 2004: 49). Its founding director was Professor Mawere Opoku. The Ghana Dance Ensemble has a tradition of identifying young, talented artists with a mastery of particular dance forms from different parts of the country and training them to express a dazzling variety of dances. The ensemble was also created as a training ground for performers who could go on to found their own dance groups. Even though the intent was for the ensemble to concentrate on Ghanaian dances, under the leadership of subsequent directors, such as Professor Nii Yartey, dance forms from other cultures outside of Ghana were included. Currently, the Dance Ensemble offers classic Ghanaian performances from across the country, which include Adzogbo, Akom, Adowa, Kete, Kpanlogo and Boboobo, to name a few.

In 1969, under the directorship of Professor Kwame Arhin, the IAS journal Research Review was established; Arhin was also its first editor. The first issue gave the rationale for its inception as a way of documenting and disseminating research conducted by the research fellows and students at IAS. Between January 1966 and December 2022, 76 issues were published. Subsequently, Professor Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu, Professor Albert Awedoba and Dr Stephen Acheampong served as editors.

In 2011, as part of rebranding efforts at IAS generally, the director, Professor Adomako Ampofo, challenged the publications office to come up with a new name and direction for the journal. It came to be known as the Contemporary Journal of African Studies (CJAS), and since 2014 has been open access and free. The CJAS publishes academic and scholarly articles, and book and film reviews and interviews that set forth the findings of new research in any branch of African studies or discuss and re-evaluate earlier or current research or publications.²¹ The current editors include IAS fellows and scholars from elsewhere around the world.²² In 2017, a journal manager, Dr Edwina Ashie-Nikoi, a historian and information science scholar at the University of Ghana, was hired to help coordinate the work of the editors and further professionalize the journal to bring it more in line with current praxis.

5 Selected Contributions to the Institute’s Academic and Intellectual Projects, Infrastructure and Collaborations

Given the limitations of space, this section can offer only a very brief discussion of the multitude of contributions to the IAS’s academic and intellectual projects and infrastructure and collaborations. The selection is informed more by our assessment of contemporary concerns and interests than any systematic prioritization. As already stated, the 1960s and 1970s saw pioneering research into African music, dance, history and African languages, including Arabic. The 1970s also saw linkages between the IAS and universities in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania to help establish centres for African studies in those countries. The 1990s saw higher education in many African states suffer because of structural adjustment programmes. In Ghana, support for higher education declined as a result of the World Bank’s stipulation that funding be moved to basic education. However, by the late 1990s, a slow improvement began thanks in part to the establishment of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETfund), which was especially helpful in improving infrastructure.

Under the leadership of acting director, Dr Irene Odotei, the Kwame Nkrumah Complex was completed in 2002, with support from the Danish government and the Ford Foundation. The building had been conceptualized by Odotei’s predecessor, Professor George Hagan, who was director from 1996 to 1998.²³ The building houses offices for the director, research fellows, the Kwame Nkrumah chair, graduate students, the drivers, an accounts staff, ICT staff and academic affairs. It also hosts the museum, the media lab, a conference room, a bookshop and a research fellows’ common room. Around 2009, a set of chalets, initially built to serve visiting scholars, was expanded and converted into a full-service lodge under the directorship of Professor Takyiwaa Manuh. The lodge was formally opened in December 2010 under the directorship of Professor Adomako Ampofo. It was named Yiri lodge; in Dagari, this means “home”.

In this same period, research into various aspects of chieftaincy in Ghana led to the publication of some foundational texts: one on chieftaincy in Ghana (Odotei and Awedoba 2006), another on gender (Manuh, Cole and Miescher 2007) and a textbook for the introductory African studies course (Manuh and Sutherland-Addy 2013). The new millennium saw the IAS finally begin to enjoy an intellectual renaissance after the setbacks of the structural adjustment years. In 2009, under the directorship of Professor Takyiwaa Manuh, the institute managed to launch a long-time dream to institute an endowed chair in African studies, the Kwame Nkrumah chair. The bulk of the initial support for the chair was provided by AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. The first chair, Professor Kofi Anyidoho, a literary scholar and poet, was installed in 2011. He was followed by Emeritus Professor Jacob Gordon, a historian, in 2013; Professor Horace Campbell, peace and justice scholar and professor of African American Studies in 2017; and feminist scholar Professor Amina Mama in 2022. Under the auspices of the chair, AngloGold Ashanti also supported an annual lecture. The maiden Annual AngloGold Ashanti Lecture on Business in Africa was delivered by Mark Cutifani.²⁴

The years from 2010 to 2022 saw the hiring of several young scholars from diverse disciplines from Africa and the diaspora, leading to a significant growth in the number of faculty publications, grants, honours and awards. During this time, the IAS undergraduate courses were restructured, from an existing set of courses that students were simply required to pass, and which did not count towards their final grade, into one of the current University of Ghana Required Courses, UGRC 220, Introduction to African Studies. These are now two-credit courses, which count towards a student’s final GPA.

With support from the Carnegie Foundation’s Diaspora Fellow Programme, in 2013 Professor Pius Adesanmi became one of the first fellows to join the University of Ghana. He was hired to help the institute develop a new set of graduate courses on African thinkers and thought, which were launched by Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo during the celebration of the IAS’s fiftieth anniversary at the international conference held in 2013. The conference was opened by the president of Ghana, H.E John Dramani Mahama, and brought together more than 150 participants from all over the world, including keynote speakers Fatou Sow, the renowned Senegalese feminist scholar, the writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and director of UNECA, Carlos Lopes. The conference culminated in a publication, titled Revisiting African Studies in a Globalized World (Awedoba et al. 2016). At the opening of the conference, Director Adomako Ampofo invoked Nkrumah’s call to the African genius in her exhortation to participants to be intentional about completing the unfinished project of a renaissance for African peoples.

Over the years, the IAS has hosted several international conferences, though the number declined sharply during structural adjustment. In this era of intellectual renaissance, the IAS has begun to host important gatherings again. In 2009 it held the prestigious international conference, “Revisiting Modernization”. This conference delved into the resonance of modernization in relation to the contemporary lexicon of globalization and the shifting parameters of development. The period from 2010 onwards saw the organization of several international conferences. Besides the IAS fiftieth anniversary conference in 2013, there was the Asian Studies of Africa conference (2015) that began the process of setting up the Centre of Asian Studies at the University of Ghana, and the sixth African Evaluators Association conference, held in partnership with the African Evaluators Association (AFREA) in 2012. A conference to recognize the contribution of Emeritus Professor Nketia was organized in his honour in 2011, which culminated in the publication of a Festschrift (Ampene et al. 2015).²⁵ The All-Africa Peoples’ Conference, under the theme “Revisiting the 1958 All-Africa Peoples Conference – The Unfinished Business Of Liberation And Transformation”, was held in 2018. The institute hosted the African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) Second Biennial Conference under the theme “African Studies and Global Politics” in 2017.

The Covid-19 global pandemic hit Ghana hard, as it did many countries in the so-called economic South, and once again the spate of international gatherings declined, although several online gatherings were held. The AngloGold Ashanti Africa Business Lectures resumed in 2020 under the theme “Building a Resilient, Sustainable Organization During A Global Pandemic – Lessons from Covid-19 for Africa”. Probably the most significant among these was the Kwame Nkrumah International Virtual Festival (September 20–24, 2021) under the auspices of the Kwame Nkrumah chair, Professor Amina Mama. The theme was “Pan-Africanism, Feminism and the Next Generation: Liberating the Cultural Economy”.

The period from 2015 to 2022 saw the initiation of several local and international collaborations for research, and PhD training. In 2021, the erstwhile journal, Feminist Africa, relocated to the IAS with Professor Dzodzi Tiskata, then director, as one of the editors, along with Charmaine Pereira (Nigeria), Hope Chigudu (Zimbabwe), Sylvia Tamale (Uganda) and Sandra Manuel (Mozambique). The Master of Arts/Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy programmes were reviewed. Additionally, a proposal for the introduction of specialization courses is currently under review at the Graduate Studies Board, before being processed for accreditation by the national regulator.²⁶

6 Linkages and an Agenda for Global Africa

From its beginnings, the IAS agenda has been to extend its reach beyond Ghana through continental and global collaborations around the “African condition”. It has always viewed the study of Africa and the contributions to this knowledge as part of a larger global project to “inspire our generation and succeeding generations with a vision of a better future” (Nkrumah 1963). Since the inception of the IAS, various institutions, organizations and associations with a similar objective have drawn inspiration from this speech. Of these, the story of Pan-Africanist research on the African continent cannot be told without reference to the foundations laid by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). The council was conceived around 1964 by mainly Marxist scholars, such as Samir Amin, Herbert Onitri, Omer Osman and Abdalla Bujra, and the directors of various economic and social research institutes across the African continent. It was formally established in 1973.

CODESRIA remains the continent’s most deep-rooted Pan-Africanist institution, having played a key role in telling the story of Africa and its peoples (Hoffman 2017). Over the years, through conferences, publications and documentation centres, CODESRIA has promoted relationships between African scholars, facilitated research and the dissemination of research by African scholars and created an enabling environment for dialogue and the nurturing of African scholars (Nesbitt 2008; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018). Although this paper is principally about the IAS, we find it important to comment on the work of CODESRIA and its relationship to the institute.

At various times, the IAS has been a member of CODESRIA, and over the years many of its fellows have been members, attended its conferences, facilitated its workshops and served on its scientific and other statutory and ad hoc committees. Additionally, the council supported the CODESRIA African Humanities Institute at the University of Ghana, which was run by Professor Kofi Anyidoho, the inaugural Kwame Nkrumah chair at the institute. Professor Dzodzi Tsikata, a past director of the institute (2016–2022) served as president of CODESRIA between 2015 and 2018. Executive secretaries of CODESRIA have also supported the work of the IAS in diverse ways. In 2017, when the ASAA partnered with the institute to hold its second biennial conference at the University of Ghana, Dr Godwin Murunga, CODESRIA Executive Secretary, was a plenary speaker.

The decolonial and radical work of founding members of CODESRIA, such as Samir Amin, have featured prominently in the teaching, research and publications of the institute’s fellows. CODESRIA, like the IAS, embraced the sentiments conveyed in Nkrumah’s African Genius speech in its work, studying the “African condition” from perspectives born out of African experiences and African worldviews, often overtly or inadvertently contesting and critiquing Eurocentric epistemologies and replacing them with what was “authentically” African. Although it would be difficult to identify a specific, single theoretical school of thought, it would be accurate to say that these institutes have maintained a decolonial approach.

For years, professional associations for scholars who considered the focus of their research, teaching and outreach to be about the African condition have existed outside the continent: the African Studies Association (ASA, in the US), the Canadian African Studies Association, the UK African Studies Association, Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS, Europe) and the African Studies Association Germany (VAD), to name but a few. Although a series of congresses had sought to provide something of a formal space for “African studies professionals”, the ASAA was not established until 2013.²⁷ It was born out of discussions among directors and scholars of various centres and institutes of African studies in Africa. These discussions led to an initial agenda-setting colloquium at the Centre for African Studies at UCT and a follow-up meeting at the University of Ghana in 2012. Building on the successes and recommendations of these meetings, the ASAA was launched on October 25, 2013, during the international conference on African studies organized by the IAS, University of Ghana. The secretariat of the ASAA has been at the IAS, University of Ghana, since its inauguration. As Adomako Ampofo (2019: 295) notes, “The ASAA sees itself as being that space where we enrich and protect our work; nurture the next generation; provide professional support via workshops and counsel; and celebrate the achievements of our ancestors as well as our children”.

7 By Way of a Conclusion

The IAS has always had a vision of working on Africa, for Africa, through African eyes and of being a global leader for scholarship on Africa and its diaspora. As prophesied by Dr Kwame Nkrumah, one institute cannot be the sole bearer of the task of telling the story of Africa. It is our hope that this summary of the IAS story will encourage other scholars to set up and nurture similar centres, and work in collaboration across national, sectarian and other borders. The fulfilment of Kwame Nkrumah’s African Genius vision will continue as long as we are part of that mission.

Appendix 1

Research and Teaching Staff – 1962/63

African Music and Arts

African Historical Studies

African Languages

Study of Modern African States

Appendix 2

Appendix 3