Bachelor of Arts in African Languages and Cultures

Ghent University's African Studies programme is unique in Belgium. Only at our university can you take the entire programme. Another distinctive feature of our programme is its interdisciplinarity: you will come to understand Africa from a current affairs, historical, cultural, literary and linguistic perspective. You will learn Swahili and Lingála, two languages with millions of native speakers across Eastern and Central Africa. Through language acquisition and linguistic analysis, you will gain a deep understanding of their grammatical structures. This will help you acquire other African languages.
In addition to the linguistic richness, you will also study Africa’s cultural diversity and the diaspora, including topics such as diversity and identity, religion and art, and politics and globalisation. The programme also focuses on the history of Africa and its interaction with other continents. This will help you understand today’s European society and its often stereotypical image of Africa.
Additionally, you will learn how language shapes daily life in Africa, how it brings together communities, and how the linguistic landscape was affected by colonisation. In course units such as African Literature, you will uncover how authors reflect on topics such as migration, racism, and gender. You will also learn to make connections between language, culture and society.

Bachelor

The study programme is based on three cornerstones: African Languages, African Cultures, and Language, Culture and Society in Africa. These, in turn, contain six clear curricular strands: language acquisition, linguistics, anthropology, history & current affairs, literatures, and methods. You will also learn how to study Africa and its languages and cultures by engaging with academic literature and by conducting research and fieldwork in Africa during a proper Africa term. You choose an elective set, in which you learn to look beyond your own discipline.
In the first year, you take various general course units together with students from other study programmes. Alongside these, you begin by studying African languages and cultures. You will learn two African languages, Swahili and Lingála, and be introduced to African linguistics. We will also introduce you to how language, culture and society in Africa interact, and you will take introductory course units in anthropology and African history.
In the second year, you will deepen your knowledge of Swahili and Lingála, and take course units on language and history, language documentation and language description in Africa, as well as cultural anthropology in Africa. In addition, we will introduce the methodological aspects of African Studies in a course unit on fieldwork. You will expand your knowledge of African literatures and work with historical sources. The two-yearly course unit Africa: Current Affairs, Discourse and Imaging furthers your knowledge of the relationship between language, culture and society.
The third year contains an ‘Africa Term’, which you can spend at one of our African partner universities or at a European university with a strong African Studies Department. You continue with your elective set, as well as with Lingála and the two-yearly course unit Anthropology of Visual and Material Cultures in Africa. You will be introduced to theories on multiculturalism and religion. In addition, you will have the opportunity to choose from a wide range of elective course units, such as Arabic. You finalise the third year by writing a Bachelor’s paper.

Master

Completion of the Bachelor’s programme gives access to the one-year English-taught African Studies Master’s programme. The programme comprises three thematic course units: Language, History, and Identity; Literature, Media and the Arts; and Conflict and Society. It also includes discipline-specific course units (African Anthropology, History and Current Affairs, Literature, Linguistics, Archaeology) and a number of elective course units. You conclude your Master’s programme with a Master’s dissertation on a topic of your choice.

• Your bachelor's degree also provides access to other master's programmes beyond those mentioned above, including a Master’s Programme in Teaching (in Dutch: een educatieve master). You can find an overview under the 'Further Studies' tab.

The African Studies programme does not lead towards a specific profession. Surveys among alumni show that most students find a job soon after graduation. Most of them actually apply their knowledge of Africa in their jobs. Our graduates end up in the integration and diversity sector, tourism, the socio-cultural sector, the business world, the government or foreign aid sector, and in academic research.