Who Speaks for Conflict? Epistemic Justice and the Political Economy of African Conflict Studies

Who Speaks for Conflict? Epistemic Justice and the Political Economy of African Conflict Studies examines the unequal distribution of authority to define African conflict, validate evidence, and convert field access into academic prestige. The article places South Sudan at the centre of the analysis, but it resists treating the case as uniquely exceptional or analytically sealed off from wider African and global debates. Instead, it brings Sociology of knowledge (Bourdieu; Foucault); epistemic justice (Fricker); decolonial methodology (Ndlovu-Gatsheni; Mignolo; Smith). Examines who produces knowledge about African conflicts, the institutional conditions shaping that production, and its political economic consequences for African scholars and subjects. into one conversation and develops the concept of epistemic asymmetry to explain how formal norms, institutional design, and practical struggles over authority become fused. Using Bibliometric analysis of leading conflict studies journals (Journal of Peace Research, Security Studies, African Affairs) measuring African authorship, institutional affiliation, and citation networks; interviews with African and Northern scholars on research funding and career structures; comparative analysis of knowledge production conditions across five African universities., the paper reconstructs three linked propositions. First, it shows that the political economy of authorship and citation. Second, it demonstrates that funding infrastructures and research agendas. Third, it argues that toward decolonised institutional redesign. The paper answers the central puzzle posed by the research agenda—how do the structural conditions of academic knowledge production — funding sources, journal hierarchies, peer review networks, fieldwork access, and