About

Established in 1962, is the first of such institutes to be established on the African continent. In six decades of pursuing the heights of excellence in teaching, research, publishing, and community outreach, IAS-UI has become a hub of collaborative endeavours on a global scale. We have continually reinvented our mandate by spawning fresh fields of scholarship in response to shifts and transformations in the African and Black cultural experience. Our staff and students constitute a critical mass of researchers and intellectuals dedicated to coming to terms with the diverse body of issues that are of vital relevance to the past, present, and future of Africa and its diasporas, emphasizing in the process the contributions that Africans continue to make in the global intellectual enterprise.

Pedagogy and research at IAS-UI is further enriched by our complement of centres and facilities, including specialized units on Arabic documentation, women’s research, diaspora studies, African dance and music, audio-visual documentation, and traditional medicine. The Institute Library and the Cornelius Adepegba Museum of African Art (CAMAA) provide researchers and the general public opportunities for accessing resources of immense intellectual value.