African studies is the study of Africa, especially the continent's cultures and societies (as opposed to its geology, geography, zoology, etc.). The field includes the study of Africa's history (pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial), demography (ethnic groups), culture, politics, economy, languages, and religion (Islam, Christianity, traditional religions). A specialist in African studies is often referred to as an "Africanist".

Africanists argue that there is a need to "deexoticize" Africa and banalise it, rather than understand Africa as exceptionalized and exoticized. African scholars, in recent times, have focused on decolonizing African studies, and reconfiguring it to reflect the African experience through an African lens.

The early anthropological foundations for much of the knowledge about Africa in modern academic fields, including African studies, are the European exploration of Africa and the Atlantic slave trade by explorers and missionaries as well as the colonial Scramble for Africa by European imperialists. With the start of decolonization of Africa, the Cold War, international development agendas, and Area Studies, which had increasing policy relevance in this emerging environment, this resulted in the mass development of African Studies organizations (e.g., centers, institutes) throughout continental Africa after 1945. Following African independence, many colonial staff in Europe and Africa became the staff of the emergent African Studies organizations.

Following African independence and the end of World War II, colonial methods of producing knowledge underwent challenges and changes. Due to World War II occurring and Africa not being directly partaking in it, the African world was viewed by many Africans as a distinct option apart from the Eastern world and Western world, and African leaders (e.g., Nnamdi Azikiwe, Kwame Nkrumah, Leopold Senghor) refused to accept the presumptions of European imperialism and advocated for Africans to have a knowledge of themselves due to this being essential to the political and economic wellness of their citizenry. Consequently, the dialectics of African independence made way for European scholars, such as Basil Davidson and Thomas Hodgkin, to begin to contest colonial ideas and standards (e.g., requirements of documentary evidence like what was used for the history of Europe) that resulted in the history of Africa being dismissed. The inherent dynamics of Africa and the value and use of African orature as a form of evidence was underscored by African scholar, Kenneth Dike. In 1964, the General History of Africa was developed by various African scholars (e.g., Jacob Ajayi, Adu Boahen, Ali Mazrui, Djibril Tamsir Niane, Bethwell Allan Ogot, Ki-Zerbo).

After the period of colonialism had ceased, African intellectuals constructed and organized the African higher education system in Africa, and in response to this development, during the 1950s and 1960s, Europeans in the United Kingdom created African studies institutions. The shortcomings of Western disciplinary approaches to the study of Africa resulted in the development of an interdisciplinary configuration of African studies. With some degree of interaction (e.g., collaboration, debate) with their African counterparts, by 1963, the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom (ASAUK) was founded, and by 1964, its first yearly conference was organized and attended.

With the spread of nationalism, once the African higher education system began to undergo Africanization and its effects began to set in, question and criticism of the fundamental ideas of African studies began to occur as well as improvement of scientific theories and research methods, which developed an African studies that studied African affairs and phenomena, and was undertaken and driven by Africans; the African intellectuals that drove this nationalist historiography drew from local epistemic communities while partaking in the international academic community.

With an increasing realization of the lasting impacts of enslavement and colonialism that were still present during the middle of the 1970s, Walter Rodney theorized about and authored, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. African scholars added to this theorization in highlighting the patterns of domination and inequality between Europeans and Africans. Deconstructionist methods contributed to the increasing realization that European imperialistic ideas and conceptualizations of evidence, data, and truth interfered with the ability of researchers to engage with the ideas and conceptualizations that were held by and lived out by Africans in their daily lives.

While research focus on Africa decreased in the United Kingdom during the 1980s, this was counterbalanced by an increasing research focus on Africa in the United States. After the Civil Rights movement, there was increased collaboration between African and African American scholars. African scholars played a valuable role, via their research and direct cultural connections to/in Africa, in the development of Africana studies. In addition to the Royal African Society collaborating with ASAUK to keep it viable, various African scholars (e.g., Reginald Cline-Cole, Raufu Mustapha, Ola Uduku, Tunde Zack-Williams) in the United Kingdom steered development of African studies in the newer direction of accountability of African leaders and in including the African diaspora in the scope of its research focus.