of African studies in the newer direction of accountability of African leaders and in including the African diaspora in the scope of its research focus. As African countries experienced economic turmoil in the middle of the 1980s, the African higher education system and African studies also experienced turmoil (e.g., book famine, brain drain, collapse of the culture of research, collapse of local/epistemic communities and professional associations, decline in the ability of scholars to travel locally, infrastructure decay). The nationalist historiography that had spread earlier began to contract, even as neoliberal analyses and criticisms expanded, which sought to frame the condition of Africa in terms of pathology and power as it relates to principles of good governance and market efficiency. Under the guise of African development, African systems of higher education (e.g., university missions, visions, and curriculums, conceptual tools and theoretical foundations of social research) were subsequently revised to conform to the vision and principles of neoliberalism. Development studies became increasingly interconnected with African studies, as it had undergone growth as a discipline and was enriched by other fields (e.g., humanities, social sciences, natural sciences). A considerable number of African studies organizations, which have been financed or financially influenced by foreign government aid provided from North America, Europe, and Asia, have undergone volatility as the pattern of foreign government aid has become volatile; consequently, trends in Africanist scholarship has tended to reflect general optimism or pessimism (e.g., Afro-pessimism in African studies during the 1990s). With the factor of non-governmental organizations in Africa, and their use of scholarship from African studies, this has resulted in funders of non-governmental organizations also influencing the focus and development of the scholarship of renowned Africanists; the scholarship then becomes used in future development policies of funders and renowned Africanists may even serve as policy consultants to the European countries providing the funding (e.g., neopatrimonialist analysis of African policy economy and society, the international institutions informed by these analyzes, and the conditional policies employed to induce neo-liberal market reforms in Africa). Given increasing indication that a post-Cold War world did not lead to increasing peace, Africa became a greater focal point of study for North America and Europe by the early 2000s. Reasons for increased study range from the restoration of civil and democratic institutions and government in Africa, to the third wave of African literature in Africa and the next up-and-coming scholars inspired by the literature,