GWS - Directory

GWS Directory

Gender and Women’s Studies in Africa in the Year 2002: A Directory of Institutional Sites

Introduction by Amina Mama, Chair in Gender Studies at the AGI

With the need to strengthen continental networking in mind, the AGI has set out to conduct a survey to track down and identify those engaging in gender and women’s studies in African higher education institutions, and to establish their institutional capacity and areas of specialisation. To do this we developed a questionnaire ‘Locating Gender and Women’s Studies Teaching and Research Programmes at African Universities, and sent out roughly 2000 hard copies to universities across the continent [1]. This tool was also electronically distributed and publicised with the assistance of existing electronic networks[2], and indeed can still be accessed from the African Gender Institute’s own website (click here).

The resulting directory lists 27 universities around Africa that already serve as sites for teaching and/or research in the field of gender and women’s studies. Of the 27 institutions listed, 16 have dedicated gender units, departments or programmes teaching gender studies. The remaining 11 do not have a formal dedicated programme or structure, but they do offer courses, modules or substantive input to existing courses. Only 5 offer undergraduate degrees in gender and/or women’s studies, namely the University of Makerere, the University of Western Cape, the University of Buea and the University of Cape Town. As many as 12 institutions state that they offer postgraduate degrees, while 3 offer postgraduate diplomas.

In terms of resources, it is disturbing to note that as many as 11 out of the 27 describe themselves as having no access whatsoever to the libraries or other resource centres with gender studies materials and publications, something that poses a serious challenge to their capacity for delivering up-to-date teaching and research within existing academic traditions. Four have no access to computers at all, while six have no access to the Internet, and as such are rendered unable to take advantage of the information technology that might have offered a valuable way of overcoming their isolation and limited access to published resources.