Share this page

About African Arguments

African Arguments African Arguments Welcome to African Arguments, a comment and analysis site. We publish high quality analysis of African current affairs and politics from inside the continent and through our global network of writers. It is hosted by the Royal African Society and run in partnership with The World Peace Foundation, the International Africa Institute and ECA-CREAC (Expertise on Central Africa). FAQs Who funds African Arguments? African Arguments is supported as a core project of the RAS. However, it has also received a number of grants over the last 4 years +. These include the following: Open Society Initiative (Site overheads 2011 – 2104) Miles Morland Foundation (African Journalism Fund 2015) Humanity United (Making Sense of the Sudans 2014 – 15) United States Institute of Peace (Nigeria Forum 2014 – 15) Expertise on Central Africa (Central Africa Forum 2015) How can I write for African Arguments? Anyone can write for African Arguments. Our only requirement is that the work fulfills our high standards for publication. All submissions should be sent to the editor, James Wan: africanargumentseditor[@]gmail.com. Do you have guidelines for submissions? Yes, but these can be flexible. The most important thing is to communicate with the editor before submission. In general, the editor will advise that you do the following: Write something that is around 1,000 words and certainly no more than 1,500. Write in a ‘journalistic’, rather than ‘academic’ style. Avoid using jargon. Explain complicated concepts or references. Use hyperlinks (the editor can explain how to insert these) rather than footnotes if you want to reference. African Arguments reserves the right to refuse publication. Do you pay? Yes and no. African Arguments has a commissioning budget, but money is more readily available for those who write on specific countries/regions, or those who have a specific professional background. First, a central aim of African Arguments is to support high quality journalism, and professional writing more generally, from African countries. We do this through the African Journalism Fund (AJF), which is a ring-fenced part of our budget that can only be used to commission writers who both work in and are from an African country. Our commissioning rate is $250 per piece (around 1,000 words). We publish approximately 1 new AJF-funded piece per week. We run 3 country/region-specific projects with their own commissioning budget. These are The Nigeria Forum and Making Sense of the Sudans and The Central Africa Forum. All three projects publish approximately 1 commissioned piece per week ($250 for 1000 words). We have a small commissioning budget for freelance journalists. However, it is not sufficient to pay all freelancers who approach us with an idea. We don’t ask people to write for free (unless they offer), so only a small number of our articles are written by freelancers. In this case it is usually articles that, for whatever reason (usually length or subject matter) would not get published if we did not offer. Can I do an internship with African Arguments? We do not run an internship with African Arguments. You can however, apply for an internship with the Royal African Society and then state that you are interested in working on African Arguments (but you will participate in a range of RAS work; including events, communications and admin).
Share this page




Diaspora Social Network, african diaspora, diasporaengager