Congratulations to Professor Pierre-Philippe Fraiture, Head of French Studies, on the publication of his guest-edited special issue of the International Journal of Francophone Studies, around the theme of 'Francophone African Philosophy and the Aftermath of the Empire.'

This volume brings together a roster of international scholars from Africa, North America, the United Kingdom, France and India, to critically examine philosophical practices in Francophone Africa since the late 1930s. Whether or not ‘African philosophy’ can be defined as an autonomous discipline, whether or not philosophy can be restricted by geography (Crépon 1996), there is no doubt that ‘philosophising’ has always taken place in Africa. It has in the past forty years generated interest, particularly in the North-American academia, favouring the analytic approach over those usually adhered to in the ‘continental’ tradition. The Francophone input is often mentioned superficially in the English-language corpus. This volume aims to correct this imbalance by looking at the overlapping concerns of various schools of thought. The scope here is wide-ranging, testing out the regional and linguistic boundaries of ‘African Francophone philosophy’. It demonstrates that this field has been supported by figures cutting across conventional racial divides, with an ability to move beyond the Francophone / Anglophone demarcation line and reconnect with canonical Western philosophies.