Amina Mama

This lecture challenges the narratives of postcolonial failure to argue that, Africans have accumulated valuable experiences that can lift us out of transgenerational obscurity and provide transformative lessons for the future. Among these are the legacies of Kwame Nkrumah and his vision of the interlinked nature of economic and cultural processes, and his affirmation of women’s role in African liberation. The lecture reviews Nkrumah’s intellectual legacy to argue that, aspects of this have been taken up in African feminist movements that give an afterlife to a praxis of African liberation. Characterized by transdisciplinary and activist approaches that link theory with practice, African feminism is strongest where it pursues the simultaneous transformation of political, cultural, and economic life. It is an approach exemplified in the digitally-curated, livestreamed Third Kwame Nkrumah Festival, and archived online.

Whether hailed for transitioning to the ballot box, or condemned for failing to hold elections, Africa’s postcolonial states exhibit profound contradictions in the arena of gender politics. Where reforms have been achieved, implementation remains minimal, as undemocratic state structures and uncivil societies alike lack the political will to change. This article addresses the emergence of feminism as an intellectual and political force for freedom that radically challenges the ongoing exploitation and oppression of women in Africa. It focuses on the contribution of radical intellectuals to the theory and practice of women’s movements, arguing that the research, analysis, and activism they carry out defines them as a radical public intellectual cadre that continuously mobilizes with, by, and for women to pursue liberation for themselves as much as others.

Feminist theory and ethics have enormous potentials to transform and ener- gize the discourse on academic freedom and social responsibility. As a theory of knowledge and an intellectual practice, feminism deconstructs the episte- mological foundations of patriarchy and contributes to the emancipation of women as subjects and studies on and about women as critical intellectual engagements. Despite this potential, the discourse on academic freedom and intellectual responsibility in African universities has rarely yielded ground for feminist ethics, and feminist intellectuals within the universities have had to struggle for space. This article discusses these struggles to insert feminism as part of the intellectual discourse on academic freedom within Africa’s scholarly community between 1990 – the year of the Aca- demic Freedom Conference in Kampala – and 2010. The institutional and intellectual challenges that have been encountered by feminist-inspired aca- demics are highlighted. Finally, the author discusses the imperatives to move the discourse on gender in African scholarly communities beyond the nor- mative policy rhetoric to tackling the gendered configuration of academic institutions.

This paper begins by reviewing the ways in which the higher education landscape in Africa has changed significantly during the last decade as a result of the ongoing regional crisis and the changing perspectives on African higher education articu- lated within the international development arena and argues that, if the higher edu- cation crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was the result of financial conditionalities imposed through structural adjustment, then the ensuing decade has seen a global policy shift that has profoundly changed the conditions under which academic work is carried out. Particular attention is paid to the manner in which the changing, economically-driven constraints on academic freedom, institutional autonomy and conditions of service in higher educational institutions are mediated by other social conditions such as gender inequalities, the HIV/AIDS crisis, the effects of long- term brain drain and the manner in which local capacity is diverted into survivalism. I argue that higher education reforms threaten to undermine the material base for academic life by emphasising privatisation and cost recovery in contexts where poverty is a major feature of life. Exaggerated concerns with “efficiency” and “ex- cellence” lead to increased regulation and surveillance of scholarly output, render- ing academic freedom vulnerable to formulaic measures of performance that may be insensitive to the work of African academics. The paper concludes by recom- mending a programme of activities designed to re-affirm the public stake in higher education, strengthen and diversify independent scholarly work and encourage Af- rican governments to adopt policies that will strengthen the tertiary sector and en- sure an enabling environment for intellectual development and freedom.

Feminist Review is a peer reviewed, interdisciplinary journal setting new agendas for feminism. Produced by a Collective, the journal is committed to exploring gender in its relationship to other axes of power including race, class and sexuality.