Africa: Scholarship and Policy

Extract

The current attempt by European and American scholarship to come to grips with Africa is bound to be frustrating work for some years to come. The continent is vast and varied; Western knowledge of it is, for the most part, recent and superficial; and yet the demand for understanding, arising out of Africa's increasing importance in world affairs, will not wait for the slow process of maturation which scholarship normally requires. Policies must be made and points of view arrived at, and it is no use complaining that the stock of information and ideas out of which these policies and points of view must be fashioned are the premature products of half-digested thought. At the same time, it is clear that it is in such circumstances as these, where standards are non-existent or only half-formed, that the academic charlatan and the purveyor of facile formulae thrive. The more long-term goals of orthodox scholarship may be in danger of being sacrificed to the search for quick answers.