Science and Africa

Alexis Trouillot , Mohammed VI Polytechnic University

April 9, 2026

UM6P Campus – Benguerir

On April 9, the Center for African Studies (CAS) will host the next seminar in its 2025/2026 “The World Seen from Africa” series, with Prof. Alexis Trouillot, Assistant Professor at CAS, presenting on “Science and Africa.”

In 1973, Polish-American Claudia Zaslavsky (1917-2006) published Africa Counts: Number and Pattern in African Cultures, one of the first mainstream monograph to focus on mathematics in Africa. Zaslavsky made no mystery that her writing was influenced by Science and Africa, the unpublished work of a young imprisoned African-American man: Frank E. Chapman Jr.
Based on an unedited manuscript of Chapman’s text, the talk focuses on Frank Chapman’s conception of Science in Africa and its relationship to Pan-African liberation. Pr. Trouillot will show how his work reframe the role of history in general and the history of science in particular in the Pan-Africanists struggle for the acknowledgement of their humanity.