Yunnan University has a long history in African Studies. As early as 1950s, Yunnan University launched the research and teaching program in the field of North Africa and West Asia. In 1991, Professor Liu Hongwu started to establish the discipline of African Studies in Yunnan University after studying in Nigeria. From then on, African Studies became one of the characteristics of the two disciplines in Yunnan University——World History and International Relations. In 1998, a non-entity of the Center for Asian and African Studies was set up. For further development, Yunnan University established the “Center of African Studies” in 2007, which currently involves 5 full-time researchers and 10 part-time researchers .

After decades of accumulation and development, the Center of African Studies in Yunnan University has gradually formed its own characteristics in the field of domestic African Studies. Firstly, it is one of the most important organizations for cultivating high-quality talents of African Studies in China. So far, the center has been trained almost 40 postgraduates who obtained Doctoral or Master’s Degree for the national  universities, research institutions, and government departments, and many of whom have become the influential researchers in this field of study; Secondly, it devotes itself to researching Africa from cultural perspective, especially focusing on the cultural identities of the emerging African countries in their construction process; Thirdly, it persists in researching history of individual countries and the specialized history. combining with the practice of contemporary Sino-African relations, it attempts to figure out the special significance of the contacts between China and Africa at the background of world dialogues among civilizations; Fourthly, taking advantage of the research on cultural diversity and biological diversity in Yunnan University, it carries out the research on African indigenous knowledge, ethnic problems, development issues, environmental problems, poverty reduction and so on; At last, as a academic support agency in Yunnan University that is one of the International Education Bases established by the Ministry of Education, it makes great efforts to coordinating with the school about the work of cooperation in the education for Africa.

In recent years, the Center of African Studies in Yunnan University has undertaken many research projects at provincial or national level. Moreover, a number of monographs on African Studies have been published and more than 100 papers have been issued, some of them is at the frontier level on African Studies in our country, which have prominent influence in domestic academic circles.