The African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific (AFSAAP) is a national network of academics, students, consultants, activists, diplomats, artists, community leaders, and others who share a mutual interest in the promotion of African Studies in Australasia and the Pacific region.
AFSAAP was founded in 1978 with the following specific goals that continue to the present:
- to promote research and teaching of African Studies in Australia and the Pacific.
- to facilitate contact among scholars and students in the field of African Studies through conferences, regional meetings, and publications.
- to coordinate African Studies programs and the acquisition of African materials by Australian and Pacific libraries.
- to serve as the professional body representing Africanists’ interests to governments and the community.
- to contribute towards an understanding of Africa in the community at large.
- to establish contact with African universities and scholars, other overseas scholars and African Studies associations, and to promote interchanges with them.
- and to publish, distribute and sell the bi-annual peer-reviewed journal “The Australasian Review of African Studies” and other occasional publications.