The marginalizing of social sciences and humanities in African universities has radically stifled scholarship, according to the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). Current single-dimensional approaches to social change and development in Africa have aggravated social inequalities that continue to widen, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where countries have in recent years been recording positive economic growth, according to CODESRIA.
These conclusions were presented at a Carnegie Corporation-sponsored workshop held in Nairobi in mid-October, 2015, which was attended by scholars from the diaspora and from Sub-Saharan Africa. CODESRIA has embarked on an ambitious project of mobilising African academics in the diaspora to work jointly with colleagues in African universities to re-establish intellectual traditions embedded in a scholarship and research culture. CODESRIA coordinator Professor Ibrahim Oanda Ogachi said that attempts to improve Africa's development prospects by focusing solely on scientific advances have masked the critical role of social sciences and humanities as torchbearers of African values, systems of power, production and distribution.
