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Europe has a very extensive network of the research centers that are specialized in African Affairs. It›s not surprising that the field of African Studies has witnessed its most remarkable developments in Europe which maintained very close ties with its former African colonies and post-colonial states. Upon this long and well-established ties between Europe and Africa, this study aims to explore and survey the map of the specialized centers that reinvolved in studying various aspects of African affairs, while excluding the France-based centers which entails a separate study in view of its special policies and orientations. The present study aims to survey the most important centers of African research and studies in Europe through adopting a group of common criteria and standards such as: providing brief descriptions for the center, highlighting its vision and mission, its academic and research areas of study, and reviewing its products notably the periodicals. The study also tends to provide an initial critique to the European centers’ varied roles across the continent. The study concludes that these centers represent the very basis of the African Affairs discipline across the worldwide, albeit the remarkable competition posed by counterpart centers from countries such as the USA, France, China, Japan and others. It also noted that the mentioned centers have relied heavily, since their establishment until the present time, on the accumulated knowledge from the early stages of European- African encounters, through the colonial periods, to the era of independent Africa. On the other hand, the African Affairs’ centers in Europe have boosted the so-called "knowledge gap"among African and European specialists in the field for various reasons. These include the finance issues, academic freedoms, and the absent of well-established intra-African academic and research ties in favor of other European- African ones
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