As I reflect on my near decade as editor of African Arguments, I am filled with a lot of gratitude and a little pride. Somehow, even with an annual readership that peaked at over 3 million unique visitors, it continues to surprise me when I meet a reader of African Arguments. It shouldn’t do. For years, we’ve worked with the brightest lights of African journalism to publish hard-hitting original stories. We’ve run investigations that have led to arrests of politically sensitive individuals and prompted officials to change course. We’ve provided a platform for leading African academics and activists to shape debates globally. And we’ve held powerful politicians and presidents to account in interviews, once provoking an African elder stateman into calling me a “bloody idiot” for our apparent boldness.
When I started as editor of African Arguments in August 2015, the site was a treasure trove of excellence and expertise. Co-founded by the International Africa Institute (IAI), the World Peace Foundation, and the Royal African Society, which hosted it, the outlet had close connections to networks of academics and experts – many of them in Europe and the US – and it published regular in-depth analysis of political ongoings on the continent.
On taking the reins, I had two priorities. The first was the democratise this treasure trove. If knowledge is power, I wanted African Arguments’ power to be in as many hands as possible. And so, I made the site more user-friendly and easier on the eye. I consolidated the principle that our output would always be freely available and Creative Commons licensed. And, believing that complex ideas can be conveyed in simple language, I put much more emphasis on working with writers to ensure their writing was clear and accessible. Journalists tended to engage in this process with enthusiasm and focus. Academics seemed to enjoy the process too, though often with a side-helping of bafflement, resistance, or simply surprise that their torturously wrought thoughts could be captured in succinct torture-free language.
My second priority was to shift African Arguments’ centre of gravity to the continent. While its coverage had always been about Africa, I believed it should also be of, for, and by Africa. And as an online publication, there was little stopping us apart from perhaps Eurocentric assumptions about what expertise looks like and of whom it’s in service. This project was not about identity but good journalism and analysis. It struck me as obvious that when searching for the best writer to answer a complex question with knowledge and nuance, more often than not that person would be someone who’d asked that question a million times through their whole life, someone who’d lived and breathed it. That person might not have extensive experience writing snappy copy for international audiences, but they didn’t need to if they had an editor who believed in them and in whom they could trust.
These two priorities brought African Arguments to new audiences. Our overall readership grew rapidly, almost completely due to our readership in Africa doubling and then tripling. Meanwhile, more and more outlets regularly republished our pieces, including many in translation.
Each year in the past decade, we’ve published about 200 original articles that have centred Africa in global conversations, most of which I believe would not have found a home without us. Alongside that core output, we did lots of other fun stuff. We ran special series, including one on language and identity co-edited by Nanjala Nyabola and another on radical activism co-edited by Stella Nyanzi. We ran a fellowship programme for young African freelance journalists, with then deputy editor Ayodeji Rotinwa. And we collaborated with Aljazeera on an investigative documentary about Chinese medicine pyramid schemes. We forged partnerships with research institutions, activist networks, and civil society organisations across Africa. We ran trainings for African scholars at the likes of Johns Hopkins, Edinburgh University, and the Association for African Studies in the US. And, over the years, our journalists picked up various awards across the continent.
A couple of years ago, Parselelo Kantai joined the team as our Politics & Society editor, complementing my often more short-term practical tendencies with some much-needed bigger picture thinking. I shifted my editorial focus – and job title as Managing & Climate Editor – to developing our climate section.
Of course, not everything in the past decade has necessarily been positive or gone to plan. If I could do it all again, there’s plenty I’d do differently. I’d have tried to build deeper partnerships, take more risks, be more imaginative. Parselelo brought some of this energy, but sadly these newer visions won’t be realised, at least on the terms we’d hoped.
Although African Arguments is editorially independent from the Royal African Society, I have been incredibly privileged to work with so many inspiring colleagues there. I remember strategising with the team barely 18 months ago and marvelling as I looked around at a dozen progressive, passionate, bright, young, committed individuals who, among them, ran Africa Writes, Film Africa, an Education Programme, the All Party Parliamentary Group for Africa, and more. Between us, the continent’s diverse diaspora was well represented, from Somali to Sierra Leone, Ghana to Kenya, Mauritius to Mozambique. But inevitably, the seasons change. As of today, every single one of those people has left the Royal African Society and the 124-year-old organisation is going “back to basics”.
African Arguments is changing too, though it will thankfully continue albeit in a much-reduced form. The archive will remain accessible to all. Meanwhile, the Debating Ideas subsection – run by the IAI – will keep publishing its radical scholarship.
I am deeply grateful to the Royal African Society for hosting us for the last decade, and I am even more grateful to the millions of people who have joined us on this journey and who have made African Arguments what it is. It seems appropriate that I feel a huge amount of gratitude to the thousands of incredible people who’ve worked with us and a little pride that I got to work with them.
James Wan is the Managing & Climate Editor of African Arguments. He is the former Acting Editor of African Business Magazine and Senior Editor at Think Africa Press. He has written for Aljazeera, New Humanitarian, BBC, The Guardian (UK) and other outlets. He is a fellow of the Wits University China-Africa Reporting Project and former member of the African Studies Association-UK council.
