Fifty Years of The African Review (TARE): Past, Present and Future

In 2021, the African Review (TARE) attained its 50 years of existence. Founded by the Department of Political Science of the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), it primarily focused on decolonizing the interpretation of significant events in African politics which has been monopolized by foreign “experts” within the North-South knowledge divide. Over the last fifty years, TARE has gone through three main phases. The first phase was when it was directly published by the Department of Political Science (1971-2018); the second phase (2018-19) was when the journal was published by the Dar es Salaam University Press (DUP); and the third phase begun in 2019 when Brill started to publish the journal. During these phases, TARE has attracted manuscripts from renowned scholars from all over the world and has published regularly. Moreover, the journal has been indexed and abstracted in reputable databases such as Scopus. This paper revisits the fifty years of existence of TARE, focusing on its past, present and future. We note that since 2019, TARE has become more institutionalized and internationally visible. In terms of quality, it is now compared to some well-known journals published in the North. We argue that a win-win collaboration between journals from the South and established publishers can improve the quality and visibility of the work produced.