Feminist scholars in the African region have spent the last decade workingcollaboratively with writers and activists at various locations on thecontinent to build an intellectual community, around the shared goal ofstrengthening the feminist politics of gender studies in African universities.Many challenges confront this kind of work. Systemic challenges arise fromthe domination of global policy arenas by narrow neo-liberal discourses thatuncritically privilege the role of the market in driving development. Unstableand undemocratic national and local political environments pose challengesto academic freedom and constrain intellectual cultures through directcensorship, as well as through sustained climates of intimidation and threatthat lead many scholars to censor themselves, and avoid teaching orresearching potentially contentious issues (Imam and Mama, 1994; Sall,2000)