Omolade Adunbi

The Association for Africanist Anthropologists, a section of the American Anthropological Association, in collaboration with the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, The University of Ibadan, Nigeria, plans to organize an international conference that brings anthropologists in North America in conversation with anthropologists in Africa together to engage in rethinking the place of anthropology in education in Africa. The Department of Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, is the oldest Anthropology department in Nigeria. It is the leading anthropology department in the country and one of the few surviving anthropology departments in West Africa. In the last few years, many other anthropology departments have either been subsumed under Heritage Studies or as part of the Department of Sociology. Thus, many of the surviving anthropology departments in West Africa have been losing faculty members as well as students because of the erroneous belief that there is no future for the discipline in the region. The Association for Africanist Anthropologists, in collaboration with the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, the University of Ibadan, therefore aims to use this conference as a way to ignite a conversation about the future of anthropology in West Africa in general and Nigeria in particular.