The human resource potential of contemporary Hungarian African studies

Abstract

While relaunching the Africa Subcommittee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in May 2021, a survey has been completed about the human resource potential of Hungarian Africanists. A questionnaire with 15 “who is who” type questions has been sent to more than 100 Africanists in order to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of Hungarian research and education in the field of Africa. According to the survey findings, the main strengths are as follows: favourable age and gender structure, high level and diverse qualifications, high variety of research topics, strong link between research and teaching, numerous research and education institutions, appropriate language knowledge, many registered publications, (life)long work experience. The most pressing weaknesses are as follows: lack of BA and MA programmes on Africa, defocussed research and teaching; topic and country selection is on an ad hoc, random basis; no sufficient time for in-depth research, no long run field research and/or teaching in Africa; lack of African language knowledge, insufficient number of high quality publications and weak international embeddedness.