ABOUT AFRICAN ARGUMENTS

Welcome to  African Arguments Online hosted by the Royal African Society and World Peace Foundation, part of the Guardian Africa Network. We promise to make this the site of the most vigorous debates on Africa available on the internet.

Africa has long been the locus and the focus for the most impassioned and intellectually-informed debate. But for many years, specialist Africa coverage in the world’s media has been in decline, alongside the withering of many African journals and magazines that used to provide a forum for debate and opinion. African news and views have moved to the web, but there has been no comparable Africa-wide movement which provides in-depth analysis and debate of the issues and controversies that animate the continent today. With African Arguments Online we intend to fill this gap.

In launching African Arguments Online, we will bring debate on the most important African topics to a wider audience with the rapidity of a news magazine and the reach of the internet. We have asked a number of leading public intellectuals— writers, scholars, activists— to contribute regular columns.

The site will function as a hub ‘supporting’ blogs on many different topics.

This is a moderated website. We have chosen the initial columnists from our own networks but more will certainly join. Contributions to the debates are welcome and will pass the eyes of an editor before they are posted.

African Arguments was incubated at the Social Science Research Council in 2007 and transferred to the Royal African Society in 2011.