# Does African IR Theory Exist? - Madalitso Zililo Phiri | 2025 Episode 25

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-ir-thinker-6691770/does-african-ir-theory-exist-madalitso-zililo-phiri-2025-episode-25
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-ir-thinker-6691770/does-african-ir-theory-exist-madalitso-zililo-phiri-2025-episode-25.md
Podcast: [The IR thinker](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-ir-thinker-6691770)
Published: 2025-11-05T08:03:54+00:00
Episode link: https://www.irthinker.com/does-african-ir-theory-exist-madalitso-zililo-phiri
Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/655776911a7d7e0012cbc914/e/690b04ea2f5fdede341460a2/media.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-ir-thinker-6691770/episodes/does-african-ir-theory-exist-madalitso-zililo-phiri-2025-episode-25
Duration seconds: 3592

## Resource

This episode of  The IR thinker  features an incisive conversation with Dr Madalitso Zililo Phiri on what it means to think International Relations from Africa rather than merely about Africa. We interrogate whether an African IR theory exists, how concepts such as Ubuntu, communalism and non-statist authority can reframe sovereignty and power, and what this implies for applying African ideas beyond the continent. The discussion probes Africa’s marginalisation in multilateral decision-making, the contemporary mutations of Pan-Africanism, and South Africa’s foreign policy through a realist lens. We also explore how liberal and mainstream constructivist IR traditions have historically excluded African experiences, what a decolonial constructivism might look like in practice, and whether scholars should pursue a distinct “African school” or treat Africa as a generative site for pluralising the discipline as a whole. Madalitso Zililo Phiri Dr Madalitso Zililo Phiri  is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the South Africa–United Kingdom Bilateral Research Chair in Political Theory at the University of the Witwatersrand. A former Visiting Fellow at the Centre of African Studies and Research Associate at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, and a Carnegie Corporation Fellow via the SSRC’s Next Generation of Social Science in Africa programme, his research spans the political economy of racialised welfare in 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, bringing a decolonial and critical theoretical lens to the study of power, knowledge and global order. Publications: The Colour of Inequality in South Africa and…

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## Transcript

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