It is now routine for major conferences that focus on disseminating new research and findings on African cultures and societies to take place in Western countries such as the United States, England, or Germany. African Studies is the only academic field where its two most important conferences, the African Studies Association (ASA) annual meeting and the annual conference of the African Literature Association (ALA), are systematically held at North American venues, barring few exceptions. This reality has generated numerous difficulties for Africa-based academics and scholars who are now forced to pay exorbitant, non-refundable visa fees in foreign currencies not always available to them and struggle to secure international travel funding. The resulting displacement and exclusion of continent-based Africanists have undermined the true purpose and identity of African studies; a pathological process commonly identified as gentrification.

But exactly how can an academic field be gentrified? The term “gentrification” was coined by the Marxist sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964 to examine the forced displacement of working-class occupiers by middle-class residents—the gentry—in parts of inner London and the resulting changes in the social structure and housing markets. More recent definitions have broadened the denotation of the term to include neoliberal urban policies that have supported the displacement, exclusion, and exploitation of the marginalized.

The description of the economic, demographic, commercial, cultural, and physical character of gentrification as “neoliberal” is fitting to our discussion of the fate of African Studies. Without limiting it to a provocative analogy, gentrification as a complex phenomenon demonstrates how the displacement and, at times, exclusion of continent-based Africanists reflect a disastrous process of gentrification similar to what has been taking place in such urban cities as Brooklyn, London, and Cape Town. Central to this issue is an uneasy and uncomfortable debate over what Glass calls “the social character” of a community: that is the ontological, ethical, and political rights of those who actually reside in the continent. Bringing together of “all individuals and institutions with a scholarly interest in Africa” should not be promoted at the expense of the exclusion of Africa-based scholars.

The gentrification of African studies has altered the social character of its community and generated a new set of problems such as visa issues, academic hipsterism, and restricted access to critical research, which risks to permanently exclude continent-based scholars, undermine their crucial contributions, and eventually converts African studies into another impotent, banal field.