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Does African IR Theory Exist? - Madalitso Zililo Phiri | 2025 Episode 25
In this incisive interview, Dr Madalitso Zililo Phiri dismantles the epistemic hegemony of Eurocentric International Relations theory and maps an emergent African IR scholarship that centres Ubuntu, reimagines sovereignty through communal ontologies, and interrogates the racialised exclusions baked into global multilateralism.
Spanning Pan-Africanism’s contemporary mutations, South Africa’s realist power plays, and the perils of essentialising an “African school,” Phiri advances a decolonial constructivism that insists Africa is not a peripheral case but a generative site for pluralising the discipline itself.
Madalitso Zililo Phiri is Post-Doctoral Fellow in the South Africa–United Kingdom Bilateral Research Chair in Political Theory, University of the Witwatersrand. A former Visiting Fellow at Cambridge’s Centre of African Studies and Wolfson College Research Associate (2023–2024), he was Carnegie Corporation Fellow (2014–2017) via the Social Science Research Council’s Next Generation of Social Science in Africa programme.
Current research examines the political economy of racialised welfare (South Africa and Brazil), the sociology of race, and Black political thought. He has taught African Studies, Sociology, Politics, and Research Methods at Cambridge, Wits, Pretoria, and Rhodes universities.
Content
00:00 – Introduction
02:05 – Does African IR Theory Exist? Epistemologies Beyond the West
06:27 – Ubuntu, Communalism, and Reimagining Sovereignty
10:45 – Applying African Concepts to Non-African Issues
15:01 – Authority Beyond the State: African Approaches to Power
19:48 – Africa's Exclusion from Multilateral Decision-Making
25:13 – Pan-Africanism in 2025: Dead or Evolving?
29:26 – South Africa's Power Politics Through a Realist Lens
34:24 – Liberal IR Theory's Historical Exclusion of Africa
37:46 – Constructivism: Opening or Limiting Space for African Voices?
41:22 – Postcolonialism and Decolonizing IR Theory
47:22 – Which IR Theory Dominates African Scholarship Today?
50:14 – The Risks of Essentializing "African IR Theory"
52:57 – Continental Focus vs. State-Centric Analysis in African IR
56:54 – Distinct African School or Contribution to Global Pluralism?
Official Website:
https://irthinker.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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By Martin ZubkoIn this incisive interview, Dr Madalitso Zililo Phiri dismantles the epistemic hegemony of Eurocentric International Relations theory and maps an emergent African IR scholarship that centres Ubuntu, reimagines sovereignty through communal ontologies, and interrogates the racialised exclusions baked into global multilateralism.
Spanning Pan-Africanism’s contemporary mutations, South Africa’s realist power plays, and the perils of essentialising an “African school,” Phiri advances a decolonial constructivism that insists Africa is not a peripheral case but a generative site for pluralising the discipline itself.
Madalitso Zililo Phiri is Post-Doctoral Fellow in the South Africa–United Kingdom Bilateral Research Chair in Political Theory, University of the Witwatersrand. A former Visiting Fellow at Cambridge’s Centre of African Studies and Wolfson College Research Associate (2023–2024), he was Carnegie Corporation Fellow (2014–2017) via the Social Science Research Council’s Next Generation of Social Science in Africa programme.
Current research examines the political economy of racialised welfare (South Africa and Brazil), the sociology of race, and Black political thought. He has taught African Studies, Sociology, Politics, and Research Methods at Cambridge, Wits, Pretoria, and Rhodes universities.
Content
00:00 – Introduction
02:05 – Does African IR Theory Exist? Epistemologies Beyond the West
06:27 – Ubuntu, Communalism, and Reimagining Sovereignty
10:45 – Applying African Concepts to Non-African Issues
15:01 – Authority Beyond the State: African Approaches to Power
19:48 – Africa's Exclusion from Multilateral Decision-Making
25:13 – Pan-Africanism in 2025: Dead or Evolving?
29:26 – South Africa's Power Politics Through a Realist Lens
34:24 – Liberal IR Theory's Historical Exclusion of Africa
37:46 – Constructivism: Opening or Limiting Space for African Voices?
41:22 – Postcolonialism and Decolonizing IR Theory
47:22 – Which IR Theory Dominates African Scholarship Today?
50:14 – The Risks of Essentializing "African IR Theory"
52:57 – Continental Focus vs. State-Centric Analysis in African IR
56:54 – Distinct African School or Contribution to Global Pluralism?
Official Website:
https://irthinker.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.