The decolonisation of knowledge production in African Studies is a pressing intellectual and political project. This study examines the tension between the pursuit of epistemologically sovereign research agendas and the institutional frameworks within which Africanist scholars in Kenya operate. This comparative study aims to analyse the principal constraints and enabling factors shaping research priorities in the field of African Studies within the country. It seeks to identify the mechanisms through which institutional structures either facilitate or inhibit locally-grounded epistemological sovereignty. The research employs a comparative institutional analysis, drawing on documentary analysis of strategic research plans and funding calls, alongside semi-structured interviews with a purposively sampled cohort of senior and early-career researchers affiliated with major public and private universities and research institutes. Analysis reveals a significant misalignment between researcher-articulated priorities for community-engaged, transdisciplinary work and the dominant institutional reward structures, which disproportionately favour conventional, internationally-legible outputs. A prominent theme was that over 70% of interviewees perceived national research funding bodies as inadvertently reinforcing methodological conservatism. The pursuit of epistemological sovereignty is systematically mediated by institutional logics that often privilege global academic capital over locally resonant knowledge production, creating a paradox for scholars navigating these dual imperatives. Institutional reforms should include revising promotion criteria to value community-engaged scholarship and creating dedicated funding streams for collaborative, transdisciplinary research projects led by local teams. Research management training for administrators is also advised. epistemological sovereignty, research agendas, institutional constraints, African Studies, knowledge decolonisation, Kenya This paper provides a novel comparative framework for analysing the institutional mechanisms that condition research sovereignty, demonstrating how funding and promotion criteria act as critical, yet under-studied, constraints on decolonial scholarly practice.
Githinji et al. (Wed,) studied this question.