Events & Conferences

It is a great pleasure to invite contributions to the Academy for African Studies Annual Conference 2026.

Across Africa, organisations and communities are confronting changes that are reshaping development itself. Economic pressure, technological change and shifting global relationships are changing how authority is exercised, how policy is made and how development practice unfolds. Although this uncertainty persists, these changes are not happening within stable institutional arrangements. Alongside this, they are taking place in a world where the rules, norms and centres of power that once structured development are increasingly uncertain.

The international order that shaped development thinking for decades is also changing. Power is no longer concentrated in a small number of global actors or institutions. Instead, Africa is engaging in a more fluid and contested global system marked by multiple centres of influence and overlapping political and economic alliances. This new multipolar order creates new opportunities for choice and bargaining, but it also introduces greater uncertainty in global engagement.

At the same time, many institutions, both domestic and international, are under strain. In several African contexts, state institutions face limits in capacity, legitimacy and coordination. International development institutions and multilateral frameworks are also losing their ability to set clear norms or enforce shared rules. As a result, policy making increasingly occurs in environments where formal rules coexist with informal practices, ad hoc arrangements and negotiated authority. Understanding how institutions function under these conditions is central to contemporary African scholarship.

These shifts place power and practice at the centre of analysis. The AFAS Annual Conference 2026 provides a scholarly space to engage these transformations directly. A central question for the conference is how African actors are responding to a fragmented international system, how institutions adapt or fail under pressure and how development practice is evolving as global norms become unsettled. We seek contributions that move beyond diagnosis to offer analytical insight into how power, policy and practice are being reconfigured across African contexts.

Submissions are welcomed from across disciplines. Papers may examine institutional resilience and breakdown, leadership and organisational practice, entrepreneurship, financial systems, artificial intelligence governance and Africa’s positioning within emerging global and regional orders. Research that connects micro level practices with macro level political and economic structures is especially encouraged.

The conference values scholarship that is theoretically engaged, empirically grounded and attentive to African histories and lived realities. Methodological diversity is encouraged, including qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods, historical and participatory approaches, provided they demonstrate analytical rigour and clarity of contribution. Comparative and interdisciplinary research is encouraged where it advances understanding rather than flattening context.