Over the past week, I compiled a count of colleges and universities around the world that offer courses on African cinema. Why? Curiosity. I wanted to get a sense of where and how the subject is taught.
By courses on African cinema, I mean courses where African cinema is the central subject: individual filmmakers, movements, national cinemas, history and criticism, or the business of making, financing, and selling African films. The search covered 25 languages — not just the most obvious — and looked for evidence of courses on national cinemas. World cinema surveys with a week on Africa don’t count.
Some of you teach at universities, and your courses may be where students outside Africa see an African film for the first time. If so, you may have something to offer this research project.
It's now a public map on the African Film Press (AFP) website: africanfilmpress.com/african-cinema-courses. Click a country to see its universities and colleges, their courses, and a source link.
NOTE: The map is not exhaustive. It's a work-in-progress. So far, I’ve documented 168 courses at 131 institutions in 29 countries. Each appears on its institution’s own website, either on a page dated 2015 or later or on a current page with no year listed. Of those courses, 64 list an academic term between 2024 and 2027.
What the Count Shows So Far
The U.S. accounts for 94 courses at 71 colleges and universities, more than the other 28 countries in the count combined. The count favors places with public online course catalogues. Some catalogues require student logins, and some university websites would not load during the research. Some African universities teach African cinema within general film history courses, which this count excludes. The 71 U.S. institutions represent less than 2% of the country’s roughly 3,800 degree-granting colleges and universities. Europe has 34 courses in 13 countries, led by France with seven, then Germany with six and the UK with five. Brazil has seven courses at six public universities, all in Portuguese. Since 2003, federal law has required schools to teach Afro-Brazilian history and culture, including African history. The Gulf, where Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Fund and Qatar’s Doha Film Institute finance African films, has no courses in this count. The three courses identified elsewhere in Asia are in Hong Kong and India. Departments. Most courses in the count are offered outside film departments. In the U.S., 23 of the 94 are in film, cinema, or media departments. Most of the rest are in French and other language departments, Africana and Black studies, history, and the social sciences. Across Africa, I counted 18 courses at 12 institutions in seven countries. The count there is likely to grow as more course lists come to light.
A Work in Progress
The count is a minimum. It includes only what universities and colleges publish online and will change as entries are added or corrected.
If you teach or know of a course on African cinema that is missing from the map, especially across the continent, the Gulf or elsewhere in Asia, use the map’s “Suggest a Course” button or reply to this email with the course page, syllabus, or catalogue entry.
If you'd like the full report, with every course and a country-by-country table, use the "Request the Full Report" button on the map page. It's free. Like the map, it's a snapshot of research still in progress, not a final count.