Insight on Africa
African Studies | Area Studies (General) | Economics & Development Studies (General)
Journal Highlights:
- Indexed in renowned databases like Scopus, ESCI, ICI, ProQuest and UGC-CARE
- Rigorous peer review
- Timely publishing
- An expert and prestigious editorial board
Insight on Africa was started by African Studies Association of India (ASA India) New Delhi and its publication is managed by Policy Research Institute of African Studies Association (PRIASA) based in New Delhi. and its publication is managed by Policy Research Institute of African Studies Association (PRIASA) based in New Delhi.
It is a bi-annual journal which encompasses topics like foreign policies, developmental changes, emerging social and political trends in the African countries, but is not limited to the same. The journal welcomes submissions highlighting emerging powers in Africa, BRICS in Africa and Afro-Asian relations.
Submission information
Submit your manuscript today at https://peerreview.sagepub.com/IOA
Please see the Submission Guidelines tab for more information on how to submit your article to the journal.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).Insight on Africa is the official publication by African Studies Association of India (ASA India), New Delhi.
It is a biannual refereed academic journal covering contemporary African affairs and issues of policy relevance. The focus areas of this journal include but not confined to foreign policies and developmental issues of African countries. It caters to students, teachers, academicians and people from the background of international politics and relations, law, social sciences and humanities. The contributions can range from book reviews, articles and review essays on issues related to emerging powers in Africa, BRICS in Africa and Afro-Asian relations.
| Ajay Kumar Dubey | Professor, Center for African Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Bijay K Pratihari | Associate Professor, Academy of International Studies, Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi, India |
| Hussein Solomon | Professor, Political Science, University of Free State, South Africa |
| Santosh Singh | Former Researcher, Centre for African Studies, JNU, New Delhi, India |
| Rashmi Rani Anand | Centre for African Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Nivedita Ray | Director (Research), Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi, India |
| Aditya Anshu | Assistant Professor, International Relations, College of Arts and Sciences, Abu Dhabi University, UAE |
| Chandani Tiwari | Assistant Professor (IR), SSE, Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune, India |
| Ivy Handique | Researcher, Centre for African Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Prakash Jha | Researcher, Centre for African Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Abanti Bhattacharya | Professor, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi, New Delhi |
| Sachin Chaturvedi | Director General, Research and Information System for Developing Countries, New Delhi, India |
| Sujan R Chinoy | Director-General, Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA), New Delhi, India |
| Arvind Gupta | Director, Vivekananda International Foundation, New Delhi, India |
| Sunjoy Joshi | Chairman, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, India |
| Amitabh Kundu | Former Professor, Centre for Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Rama Malkote | Professor (Retd.), Centre for Indian Ocean Studies, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India |
| Kavita Sharma | Professor (Retd.) and Former President, South Asian University, New Delhi, India |
| Vijay Thakur Singh | Director-General, Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), New Delhi |
| Li Anshan | Professor and Director, Institute of Afro-Asian Studies and Centre for African Studies, School of International Studies, Peking University, China |
| Yong Kyu Chang | Professor and Director, Institute of African Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea |
| Donald P Chimanikire | Professor, Faculty of Social Studies, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe |
| Ton Dietz | Professor Emeritus of the Study of African Development and Former Director African Studies Centre, University of Leiden, Netherlands |
| Toyin Falola | Jacob and Frances Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas, USA |
| Steven Friedman | Professor and Director, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Johannesburg, South Africa |
| Adam Habib | Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK |
| Annette Skovsted Hansen | Faculty Member, History and Global Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark |
| M Raymond Izarali | Fellow, Tshepo Institute for the Study of Contemporary Africa and Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada |
| Gilbert M Khadiagala | Professor, International Relations, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa |
| Dennis Rumley | Professor of Indian Ocean Studies, Curtin University, Western Australia, Australia |
| Owen Sichone | Professor and Director, Dag Hammarskjold Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, Cooperbelt University, Kitwe, Zambias, Zambia |
| Aili Mari Tripp | Professor, Department of Political Science, Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA |
| Alexey Vasiliev | Professor and Director, Institute of African Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia |
| Peter Anders Von Doepp | Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Vermont, Burlington, USA |
Insight on Africa
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics
Insights on Africa is hosted on Sage Track System, a web based online submission and peer review system. Please read the Manuscript Submission guidelines below, and then visit https://peerreview.sagepub.com/ioa to login and submit your article online.
Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Insight on Africa will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research data
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplemental material
4.4 Reference style
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions
6. On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article
Before submitting your manuscript to Insight on Africa, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
Types of Manuscripts that can be submitted to the journal:
- Articles
- Book Review
Manuscripts or articles should be submitted in an electronic format in MS-word or any other standard software, in double-space with figures and tables attached in separate files. The cover page should carry only the title of the article and the author’s name, address (both postal and e-mail addresses), and phone and fax numbers. All articles must include an abstract of approximately 200 words and 4–7 keywords that reflect the theme of the article (for example: Nigeria, Mali, Terrorism, West Africa, Regional Security). The length of the manuscript should be between 6,000 and 7,000 words.
- HEADINGS: Limit the levels of heading within an article to three or four (maximum). Avoid lengthy headings and do not number them. The printed style will demonstrate their order clearly without recourse to an explicit numbering, such as 1.1.
- SPELLINGS: Use British spellings rather than American (hence, ‘programme’ not ‘program’, ‘labour’ not ‘labor’, and ‘centre’ not ‘center’). Although variable usage is acceptable in English, for reasons of consistency the use of a universal ‘s’ is preferred in ‘-ise’ and ‘-sation’ words (‘realise’, ‘emphasise’ and ‘democratisation’); also use a hyphen in words like ‘co-ordination’, ‘co-operation’, ‘neo-colonialism’, ‘inter-ethnic’.
- QUOTATIONS: Use single quotation marks, reserving double quotation marks for quoted words within a quotation. Spellings of words in quotation should not be changed. Spellings of words in quotations should not be changed. Quotations of 45 words or more should be separated from the text with a line space above and below.
- ITALICS and DIACRITICAL MARKS: Use of italic and diacriticals should be minimized, but use them for book titles, journal names and foreign words, unless particular terms occur so frequently that they are better in upright (roman) type. Proper nouns in a foreign language should always be in roman. We also prefer to set common terms such as ‘status quo’, ‘a priori’, ‘ibid.’ and ‘et al.’ in roman.
- ABBREVIATIONS: Include a final stop in abbreviations (words shortened by omitting the end), such as p., vol. and ed., but not in contractions (words shortened by omitting the middle), such as Mr, Dr, edn, eds and Rs. No stops are needed between capitals: for example, CPI, INTUC, MLA. Short forms likely to be unfamiliar to some readers should be spelt out in full the first time they occur. Please avoid ‘i.e.’ and ‘e.g.’ in the text but use them in notes if you wish. Abbreviations can be introduced at first use—e.g., Oriental and Indian Office Collections (hereafter OIOC) or Board of Revenue Proceedings (hereafter BRP).
- NUMBERS: Write numbers in figures (rather than words) for exact measurements and series of quantities, including percentages. Spell out numbers from one to nine, 10 and above to remain in figures. In text use ‘per cent’; in tables the symbol ‘%’. Write ‘0.8’ rather than ‘.8’, except for levels of probability. Use lower-case italics for p (probability) and n (number). Use fuller forms for numbers and dates—e.g., 1780–88, pp. 178–84, and pp. 200–2.
- DATES: Give specific dates in the form 10 September 1760. Decades may be referred to as either ‘the eighties’ or ‘the 1880s’. Spell out the ‘nineteenth century’, etc. Use thousands and millions, not lakhs and crores.
- NOTES: Should be consecutively numbered and presented at the end of the article, not at the foot of each page. Notes must contain more than a mere reference.
- FIGURES AND TABLES: Please use short and crisp titles and headings in tables and figures. Ensure that the units of measurement are stated and check any totals or averages.
Tables and figures should be indicated separately (see Table 1), not by placement (see Table below). Give an exact indication where the tables and figures should be placed in the text.
Black and white illustrations should be supplied electronically at a resolution of at least 300 dpi, as .eps, .tif or .jpg files. They should be saved separately from the article file. All figures should have short descriptive captions typed on a separate sheet.
The complete source references for tables, figures and maps should be cited below each respective tale, figure and map under the section ‘Source’.
- BOOK REVIEWS: Book Reviews must contain the name of the author, title of the book reviewed, place of publication, name of publisher, year of publication, and the number of pages and price of the book. The name of the reviewer and full particulars of his/her affiliation should appear at the end of the text, and the length of the review should be between 1500 and 2000 words. Only solicited Book Reviews are published.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice on how to get published, plus links to further resources.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online
Insights on Africa adheres to a rigorous double-anonymize reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties.
Insight on Africa is committed to delivering high quality, fast peer-review for your paper, and as such has partnered with Publons. Publons is a third party service that seeks to track, verify and give credit for peer review. Reviewers for Insight on Africa can opt in to Publons in order to claim their reviews or have them automatically verified and added to their reviewer profile. Reviewers claiming credit for their review will be associated with the relevant journal, but the article name, reviewer’s decision and the content of their review is not published on the site. For more information visit the Publons website.
The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the Journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.
Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.
The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:
- Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
- Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
- Approved the version to be published,
- Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
If the named authors for a manuscript change at any point between submission and acceptance, an Authorship Change Form must be completed and digitally signed by all authors (including any added or removed) . An addition of an author is only permitted following feedback raised during peer review. Completed forms can be uploaded at Revision Submission stage or emailed to the Journal Editorial Office contact (listed on the journal’s manuscript submission guidelines). All requests will be moderated by the Editor and/or Sage staff.
Important: Changes to the author by-line by adding or deleting authors are NOT permitted following acceptance of a paper.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
2.3.1 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.
Insight on Africa requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
Insight on Africa encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway
The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway
3.1.1 Plagiarism
Insight on Africa and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the Journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway
3.3 Open access and author archiving
Insight on Africa offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. A LaTex template is available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
This Journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files
Insight on Africa adheres to the Chicago Manual of Style. View the guide here to ensure your manuscript conforms to this style.
Insight on Africa is hosted on Sage Track Sage, a web-based online submission and peer review system. Please read the Manuscript Submission guidelines, and then visit https://peerreview.sagepub.com/ioa to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the Journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this Journal. If you already have an ORCID ID you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway
6. On acceptance and publication
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Insight on Africa editorial office as follows:
Editor, Insight on Africa
E-mail: office@insightonafrica.in or insightonafrica@gmail.com