In this incisive interview, Dr Madalitso Zililo Phiri dismantles the epistemic hegemony of Eurocentric International Relations theory and maps an emergent African IR scholarship that centres Ubuntu, reimagines sovereignty through communal ontologies, and interrogates the racialised exclusions baked into global multilateralism.
Spanning Pan-Africanism’s contemporary mutations, South Africa’s realist power plays, and the perils of essentialising an “African school,” Phiri advances a decolonial constructivism that insists Africa is not a peripheral case but a generative site for pluralising the discipline itself.
Content
- Does African IR Theory Exist? Epistemologies Beyond the West
- Ubuntu, Communalism, and Reimagining Sovereignty
- Applying African Concepts to Non-African Issues
- Authority Beyond the State: African Approaches to Power
- Africa’s Exclusion from Multilateral Decision-Making
- Pan-Africanism in 2025: Dead or Evolving?
- South Africa’s Power Politics Through a Realist Lens
- Liberal IR Theory’s Historical Exclusion of Africa
- Constructivism: Opening or Limiting Space for African Voices?
- Postcolonialism and Decolonizing IR Theory
- Which IR Theory Dominates African Scholarship Today?
- The Risks of Essentializing “African IR Theory”
- Continental Focus vs. State-Centric Analysis in African IR
- Distinct African School or Contribution to Global Pluralism?
Madalitso Zililo Phiri
Dr. Phiri is Post-Doctoral Fellow in the South Africa–United Kingdom Bilateral Research Chair in Political Theory, University of the Witwatersrand. A former Visiting Fellow at Cambridge’s Centre of African Studies and Wolfson College Research Associate (2023–2024), he was Carnegie Corporation Fellow (2014–2017) via the Social Science Research Council’s Next Generation of Social Science in Africa programme.
Current research examines the political economy of racialised welfare (South Africa and Brazil), the sociology of race, and Black political thought.
He has taught African Studies, Sociology, Politics, and Research Methods at Cambridge, Wits, Pretoria, and Rhodes universities.
Selected Publications:
Phiri, M. (2025) The Colour of Inequality in South Africa and Brazil: making sense of social policy as reparations. BRILL 2025.
Phiri, M.Z. (2024) Monuments and Memory in Africa: reflections on coloniality and decoloniality. Edited by M.Z. Phiri and J.S. Sanni. Oxford: Taylor & Francis Routledge [Imprint] (Routledge Contemporary Africa).
Phiri, M.Z. (2023) ‘Against Imperial Social Policy: Recasting Mkandawire’s Transformative Ideas for Africa’s Liberation’, Critical Sociology, 49(3), pp. 437–455. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205221100832.
Phiri, M.Z. (2020) ‘History of Racial Capitalism in Africa: Violence, Ideology, and Practice’, in S.O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Political Economy. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 63–81. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38922-2_4.
Phiri, M.Z. (2017) ‘Comparative Perspectives on South Africa’s and Brazil’s Institutional Inequalities Under Progressive Social Policies’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 43(5), pp. 961–978. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2017.1343009.
🎧 Stream Now
Apple Podcasts
Amazon Music
Spotify
