Accra-Ghana, March 30, GNA – A research paper authored by two celebrated researchers at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) has won the International Affairs Centenary Prize.
The article titled: “African experiences and alternativity in International Relations theorising about security”, written by Prof. Kwesi Aning, the Director, Faculty of Academic Affairs and Research, KAIPTC, and Dr. Kwaku Danso, a Research Fellow and Deputy Dean at the Faculty of Academic Affairs and Research at KAIPTC, emerged joint winners with Valérie Rosoux’s article on “How not to mediate conflict”.
A statement from the KAIPTC to the the Ghana News Agency (GNA) said the paper was published in the International Affairs Journal’s January 2022 Issue as part of its 100-year anniversary.
International Affairs is one of the world’s leading journals of international relations, publishing academically rigorous and policy relevant research on International Relations in the last century.
As the journal moves into its second century, the International Affairs team aims to highlight those articles published in its 100th year that best embody the journal’s second century goals.
The paper was one of six research papers shortlisted for the Centenary Prize.
Prof Aning reacting to the win, said: “It’s a recognition and celebration of originality and excellence”.
Dr Danso, on the other hand, described the achievement as humbling and inspiring, saying: “It represents a recognition of KAIPTC’s sustained commitment to contribute to scholarly and policy discourses on African and global peace and security.”
In the paper, Prof Aning and Dr Danso reflected on the ways in which International Relations and security studies have been responsible for the production of a racialised mode of security knowledge generation that obfuscates the security policies and experiences of people in African locales.
The authors argue that the Eurocentric bias prevalent in mainstream International Relations and Security Studies elides the extent to, which race and coloniality are implicated in the constitution of the current global power structure that relegates African States and their insecurities to the margins of the world.
The paper draws on insights from post-colonial discourses and the episteme of alternativity to explore how the study of events and processes in Africa in a theoretically conscious manner could advance International Relations scholarship as a whole.
The paper contends that incorporating African experiences as they manifest through hybrid security orders can broaden the empirical base for International Relations theorising about security since they offer another perspective outside the conventional western assumptions and experiences.
