Ethical?! Collaboration?! Keywords for our contradictory times

The idea for this set of contributions initially came from a panel that was convened at the biennial conference of the African Studies Association of the UK (ASAUK) held in September 2018 at the University of Birmingham in the UK. The panel, called ‘Ethical Collaborations’, brought together a group of activist scholars from diverse locations. They were asked to respond to the ways in which North–South academic collaborations are often framed and were invited to suggest ways in which these collaborations can be practised in more ethical ways. This increasing de-centring of Europe and the USA as the location of knowledge production and dissemination marks a new era in the study of Africa from Africa. The African Studies Association (ASA) and their associated journal African Studies Review has initiated an ongoing keywords project for which they have invited ‘proposals for individual critical scholarly essays that explore themes, topics, and ideas of interest to the ASA membership and Africanists globally, reflecting emerging trends in Africanist research, local, global, and indigenous terminologies, including words in African languages and during 2019 will host keywords panels at various conferences.