African Studies in Australia and New Zealand: Prospects for Knowledge and Informed Engagement with Africa

This paper will compare the availability of relevant courses and topics in the Australian and New Zealand university sector that examine Africa – and that can be generally considered as African Studies. The levels of the tertiary education sector’s engagement with Africa will then be compared with each nation’s foreign policies toward Africa. It will be argued that the delivery of African studies in Australasia and the Pacific is constantly thwarted by the lack of diplomatic, aid and trade attention to the African continent, leaving little space in the tertiary curriculum for the delivery of courses and topics specific to African issues. In 2013 Lyons (Lyons, 2013, p. 193) argued that “the role of the education sector in Australia’s relationship with Africa … [was] dominated by the Australia Awards in Africa (AAA) Scholarship