Chair’s Welcome

The African Assembly on Linguistic Anthropology 2023, the (SCOPUS / ISI) GLOCAL AFALA, at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, symbolizes a significant leap forward for Linguistic Anthropology, from the previous highly successfully attended GLOCAL conferences, to further problematize current perspectives and praxis in the fields of African Linguistic Cultural Anthropology, African Linguistics, and African Society.
Conceptualized in the year 1998, the GLOCAL AFALA and its 2023 assembly responds to concerns by those within Linguistics and Anthropology, Sociolinguistics, Sociology, Cultural studies, and centrally, Linguistic Anthropology, pertinent to Africa, in order to reduce the gap between a focus on African regions and work by African scholars, a gap largely emanating from issues of funding and expertise. The GLOCAL AFALA 2023 will build on these efforts, and on the global networks for African Linguistic Anthropology, to connect African with global Universities and their academics.
The (SCOPUS / ISI) GLOCAL AFALA 2023 will increasingly opportune academics to exchange knowledge, expertise, and valuable Linguistic and Anthropological data, through the interpersonal and inter-institutional networks that the GLOCAL conferences build. To ground these efforts, the GLOCAL AFALA 2023 Conference, with the University of Nairobi at the centre, and with major University partner and co host SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies, at the University of London, will network a growing number of institutions globally, to support this much needed African yet fully global project.
With all stringently reviewed papers SCOPUS / ISI indexed, and published in high impact Journal Publications, the theme for the GLOCAL AFALA 2023 is Linguistic Landscapes, Cultural Climates, a theme pertinent to the current state of many African regions and countries visa-vis their global analogues.
The University of Nairobi, hosting the GLOCAL AFALA in 2023 in Nairobi, Kenya, constitutes one of an interchanging series of annual hosts, and in this way, the GLOCAL global network expands to involve institutions worldwide.
We thus welcome you to the (SCOPUS / ISI) GLOCAL AFALA 2023, the 2023 Annual African Assembly on Linguistic Anthropology, and to the AFALA in general.

Professor W. Onyango-Ouma

Chair
African Assembly on Linguistic Anthropology, The GLOCAL AFALA 2023

Director, Institute of Anthropology, Gender and African Studies
University of Nairobi