Africa Poised to Debut Its Own Scholarly Referencing Style — a First for the Continent

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02/12/25 • 44 بازدیدها • 0 اشتراک گذاری • منتشر شده در دیگر

A major academic milestone is on the horizon as Africa prepares to launch the African Scholarly Referencing Style (ASRS) — the first citation format conceived, developed and owned by the continent itself. The unveiling, spearheaded by Peter Okebukola — former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC) — marks what many are calling a landmark step toward intellectual sovereignty for African scholars. Nigeria Education News+2Leadership News+2

Despite Africa’s long and rich tradition of scholarship and its thousands of universities, none of the 29 “major” referencing styles in wide use today — such as APA style, MLA style, Chicago style, Harvard referencing style, or Vancouver style — originates from the continent. ASRS seeks to fill that void, offering a referencing system rooted in African worldview and academic traditions. Nigeria Education News+2The African Gong+2

What sets ASRS apart is its deliberate inclusion of citation formats for non-conventional scholarly sources that are especially relevant in African contexts — such as oral literature, indigenous knowledge systems, folklore, community-authored works, multilingual sources, and local institutional and grey-literature works. These categories often lack adequate representation in standard global referencing systems. Nigeria Education News+2Scribd+2

While ASRS is said to remain largely compatible with global citation norms — with about 95% alignment to standard formats — it introduces deliberate, culturally relevant adaptations for the remaining 5%. It will include multiple variant styles inspired by internationally recognized systems (APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and others), but reinterpreted through an African lens. The African Gong+2Vanguard News+2

The architects of ASRS envision a phased, pan-African rollout over the next decade, featuring comprehensive training materials, official style manuals, citation-software support, and gradual adoption by universities, journals, and indexing services. The ambition: to have ASRS established as the standard referencing style across African academia — and increasingly recognized by global indexers such as Scopus and Web of Science. Nigeria Education News+1

For many scholars and intellectuals across Africa, the introduction of ASRS is more than a technical change — it’s a reclaiming of academic identity, a move away from epistemic dependence, and a push for greater representation of African knowledge and intellectual traditions in global scholarship. Vanguard News+1

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