There is no Africa in African Studies. This has become apparent with the year we spent studying the continent in London. We are an intersectional group of African women who are on a search for a deeper understanding of Africa but continue to find ourselves in echo chambers of white noise. We share our experiences with the hopes that it will encourage and add to the global campaign to decolonize university curricula and cultures.

African Studies has a contested origin story ranging from black liberation and civil rights campaigns to the advancement of colonial and neocolonial agendas. For example, at its founding the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), according to its own press release, “immediately became integral in training British administrators and colonial officials for overseas postings across the British Empire.”

The dubious beginnings of African Studies means that the absence of Africa in our British program should not have come as a surprise. The first class of our core African Studies module at the University College London (UCL), a Russell Group university, used Europe as a launching pad both theoretically and literally. The class began with “forgotten” pre-Victorian Africans from London and France who were skilled in European sport, music, and writing. These people were presented as important because their talents were regarded as extraordinary within European societies; they were the exceptions. Within that same class, Africa was described as the “other” and as a land of “gold and monsters.” Instead of focusing on the rich history of Africa and its magnitude of innovation, we were asked to think of “Africa as a reflection of Eurasia,” and were later told that there is no difference between western and African theories. This idea is contrary to the work of numerous African scholars. Imagine, wanting to study Africa only to focus on how Africa is represented and seen by white Europeans?

Using European perspectives unquestionably resulted in the same professor informing us that the Portuguese who established a trading port at Arguin, off the coast of Mauritania, did so because they were interested in buying gold, and that it was Africans who encouraged them to accept slaves as goods. However, the Portuguese were already enslaving Africans and were seeking additional labor for their sugar plantations on the island of Madeira. Such historical revision is detrimental to students who may move on to positions in which they repeat what they have learnt and continue to establish and reinforce the cycle of unseeing and mis-seeing Africa.

When European ideas and perspectives of Africa take the spotlight in African Studies, it infuriates us and causes us to deeply question the validity of the degree we are pursuing. We were not given the opportunity to consider how Africans see and perceive themselves until the final day of our class. This is a remnant of the colonial past and an example of how African Studies today remains paternalistic, thus limiting the agency of people and places we seek to learn about.