OOCAF advances knowledge by supporting scholarship that addresses the complexity of African societies and their place in the wider world. The Centre provides a platform where questions of governance, economy, culture and environment can be studied without fragmentation. By drawing together archival study, oral traditions, and contemporary analysis, OOCAF strengthens scholarship that is responsive to the past while also attentive to emerging realities. Research conducted here is intended not only for academic circles but also for institutions and communities that must act on the challenges of the present.
Knowledge does not only emerge from archives and classrooms. OOCAF creates opportunities for creative and cultural practitioners to work alongside scholars and generate new ways of expressing and testing ideas. Our residencies and exhibitions provide time and space for experimentation, while our publishing and documentation projects ensure that these works circulate beyond the Centre. By bringing creative practice into conversation with academic research, OOCAF nurtures forms of expression that reach different publics and keep intellectual life connected to cultural imagination
The Centre is committed to opening its work to the public. Seminars, lectures, short-term training institutes and community dialogues allow people from different backgrounds to encounter, contest and contribute to futures thinking. OOCAF views engagement as a method of inquiry in its own right, where knowledge grows in exchange with communities, policymakers and institutions. In doing so, the Centre creates a space where scholarship and creativity remain active in the public sphere and are made to matter in everyday life.