Ajami Archives and Knowledge Production about Africa

Black Africa is generally misconstrued as illiterate due to the Eurocentric tradition that defines literacy as the ability to read and write only in European languages and the Latin script. This lecture focuses on African Ajami manuscripts (African language texts written with enriched forms of the Arabic script) and shows what scholars, educators and students of Africa stand to gain by studying such texts that force revisions of our understanding of various aspects of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial Africa.