Discover More
AHP Resources
Watch Wole Soyinka’s passionate keynote address at the Fourth Regional Assembly of the African Humanities Program in Abuja, Nigeria.
African Humanities Program
Reinvigorating the humanities in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda
The Carnegie/ACLS African Humanities Program (AHP) was created in 2008 with the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York to fund early-career scholars working and living in Africa. ACLS designed the program to encourage and enable the production of new knowledge and new approaches to research, to strengthen the capacity of early-career researchers at African universities, and to advance the humanities by establishing networks for scholarly communication throughout Africa and with Africanists worldwide.
From 2009-2022, the African Humanities Program awarded fellowships to more than 500 early-career scholars in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda, with the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The final competition took place in 2021-22 and the last cohort of Fellows will complete their tenures in 2023. The momentum generated by AHP will continue through its successor organization, the African Humanities Association, the new scholarly association founded by AHP Fellows, assessors, and advisers.
African Humanities Association
The African Humanities Association (AHA) was established by the adoption of its constitution at an AHP Regional Assembly in Abuja in February 2020. The AHA envisages a future in Africa of confident, self-referring communities of Humanities, Social Science and Arts scholars who enjoy the respect of peers in other disciplines and in wider society through their engagement with multifarious challenges facing the continent. ACLS looks forward to continued partnership with the AHA to support scholar development and capacity building on the continent in the coming years.
Scholar Development
AHP provided fellows with diverse opportunities to network outside their primary institutions and supported the creation and circulation of knowledge.
African humanities centers and institutes for advanced study affiliated with AHP provided space and resources for Fellows to embark on their research outside their home countries.
Weeklong, intensive retreats for Fellows who completed their fellowship tenures to discuss manuscripts with AHP mentors and other fellows.
Video series chronicling stories of African scholars engaged in the reinvigoration of the humanities on the continent.
Subvention, developmental editing, and peer review to publish fellows’ monographs in a landmark book series covering topics in African histories, languages, literatures, and cultures.
An annual meeting for knowledge sharing, networking, and assessment of humanities scholarship in Africa among AHP Alumni, fellows, assessors, mentors, advisers, and interested scholars.
Partnership with the African Studies Association (ASA) in the United States to bring selected AHP Fellows to the ASA Annual Meeting as ASA Presidential Fellows.
