African studies in the context of Religion in Africa

In African studies, Afro-pessimism refers to a view popularised in the late 1980s and early 1990s which expressed doubt about the possibility of sustainable peace, democratization, and economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Afro-pessimism was coined by Michel Aurillac, French Minister of Cooperation, in an article for the Xinhua News Agency in 1988 as a pejorative term to criticise the pessimism among Africa's Western creditors. Pointing to the influence of Western media perceptions in cultivating the stereotypes, David F. Gordon and Howard Wolpe wrote in 1998:

Melville Jean Herskovits (September 10, 1895 – February 25, 1963) was an American anthropologist who helped to first establish African and African Diaspora studies in American academia. He is known for exploring the cultural continuity from African cultures as expressed in African-American communities. He worked with his wife Frances (Shapiro) Herskovits, also an anthropologist, in the field in South America, the Caribbean and Africa. They jointly wrote several books and monographs.

Jürgen Zimmerer (born 1965) is a German historian and Africanist. Since 2010 he has been Professor of African History at the University of Hamburg. He is known for his work on colonial history, genocide studies, and the relationship between German colonialism and National Socialism.

Asian studies is the term used usually in North America and Australia for what in Europe is known as Oriental studies. The field is concerned with the Asian people, their cultures, languages, history and politics. Within the Asian sphere, Asian studies combines aspects of sociology, history, cultural anthropology, cultural studies, and many other disciplines to study political, cultural and economic phenomena in Asian traditional and contemporary societies. Asian studies form a field of post-graduate study in many universities.

It is a branch of area studies, and many Western universities combine Asian and African studies in a single faculty or institute, like SOAS in London. It is often combined with Islamic studies in a similar way. The history of the discipline in the West is covered under Oriental studies.

Gottlob Adolf Krause (January 5, 1850 in Ockrilla near Meissen – February 19, 1938 in Zürich) was a German Africanist and linguist.

Diedrich Hermann Westermann (24 June 1875 – 31 May 1956) was a German missionary, Africanist, and linguist. He substantially extended and revised the work of Carl Meinhof, his teacher, although he rejected some of Meinhof's theories only implicitly. Westermann is seen as one of the founders of modern African linguistics.

He carried out extensive linguistic and anthropological research in the area ranging from Senegal eastwards to the Upper Nile. His linguistic publications cover a wide range of African languages, including the Gbe languages, Nuer, Kpelle, Shilluk, Hausa, and Guang.