Academic Cooperation in the Humanities and Social Sciences: A Post-COVID Future

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into the spotlight both past imbalances and chances for convivial scholarship. In this article, we consider main challenges that are at the same time opportunities for better cooperation: African contributions to academic journals must increase, including on conceptual issues. The material investment in Africa’s research institutions has to increase as well. Several gaps at least have to be narrowed – the gap between policy and academia in Africa, the gaps between intellectual traditions, some of which have their origins in colonial times, and the gap between Africa’s global intelligentsia and its aspiring masses of younger African scholars. Finally, female African researchers need particular opportunities for their academic advancement.