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What does it mean to think about the world from the vantage point of Africa? For the Cluster of Excellence Africa Multiple 2.0, it means continuing to reshape how knowledge about the world is produced, structured and shared.

On 22 May 2025, the German Research Foundation (DFG) decided to fund the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence for a further seven years. The Cluster’s first funding phase (2019–2025) had been highly successful: among other achievements, 72 research projects were realised through the research organisation. On 1 January 2026, Africa Multiple 2.0 officially began its second funding period at the University of Bayreuth.

Building on more than forty years of Africa-focused research in Bayreuth, the Cluster continues to operate through five interconnected Africa Multiple Research Centres (AMRCs): one at the University of Bayreuth and four at partner universities in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Eldoret (Kenya), and Lagos (Nigeria) and Makhanda (South Africa). While the constellation of institutions remains unchanged, Africa Multiple 2.0 integrates collaboration even more closely. The University of Bayreuth functions as one of five AMRCs within a jointly steered framework, with shared governance structures, coordinated research planning and increased financial responsibility at the African sites.

Researching Worldmaking

In its second funding phase (2026–2032), Africa Multiple 2.0 places “world(s) and worldmaking” at the centre of its research programme. Rather than treating the world as a fixed object, the Cluster approaches it as something that is actively produced, contested, transformed and experienced in concrete, everyday processes. This means investigating how social, political, economic, ecological and digital realities are created and reshaped in and through human relationships and structures – and how these processes are themselves historically and globally entangled.

The research agenda reflects three core conceptual commitments: multiplicity, relationality and reflexivity. Multiplicity draws attention to the co-existence of heterogeneous and overlapping worlds instead of singular, universal narratives. Relationality focuses on how these worlds are formed in and through current, historical and future relationships ­– including their power dynamics, hierarchies and conflicts. Reflexivity invites researchers to consider their own positionality and the ethical implications of how knowledge is produced.

From this foundation, the Cluster asks broader questions about the making and unmaking of worlds: How are economic and political inequalities reproduced or challenged? How do digital technologies shape social life and imaginaries? In what ways does environmental change reconfigure human and non-human coexistence? How do conflicts, vulnerabilities and forms of protection emerge? What histories are remembered, forgotten or silenced? And how does translation – across languages, registers and contexts ­– enable or limit participation in shared worlds?

These questions are pursued through six interconnected Research Sections that form the organisational framework of the Cluster’s research:

• Accumulation investigates wealth, inequality and the political economy of resources.
• Digitalities examines the material and political dimensions of digital infrastructures, data and algorithmic logics.
• Ecologies focuses on environmental change, resource practices and multi-species coexistence.
• In/securities studies conflict, vulnerability, governance and strategies of protection.
• Re:membering analyses memory practices, historical narratives and their role in shaping social and political futures.
• Translating explores multilingual knowledge production and the ethical dimensions of communication.

Unlike in the first funding phase, these Research Sections were conceptualised collaboratively across all five AMRCs, bringing together scholars from different disciplines and locations to co-design research agendas that cut across geographic, conceptual and methodological boundaries. This collective approach ensures that worldmaking is not only a theoretical theme but an embodied, transcontinental research practice, attentive to the multiplicity of worlds that Africa and its diasporas help to co-constitute.

Research Infrastructure and Knowledge Exchange

In its second phase the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence continues to combine thematic research with shared infrastructure. Its Digital Research Environment supports innovative research data management and digital scholarship across locations. It enables collaborative data practices, promotes open science principles and integrates digital methods into African Studies.

The Knowledge Lab remains the intellectual core of the Cluster. Through lecture series, theory forums, workshops and biennial conferences, it fosters exchange across disciplines and continents. Public events and keynote lectures ensure that debates extend beyond academia. The Africa Multiple Academy coordinates fellowship programmes and researcher mobility across all five AMRCs. Early career scholars benefit from joint supervision structures, mobility grants and transcontinental research training.

Public engagement also continues to play a central role. The Cluster develops formats for science communication that connect research findings with wider audiences, including collaborations with cultural institutions, artists and policy actors.

Continuing and Expanding

The renewal of funding confirms the impact of the first phase. Between 2019 and 2025, Africa Multiple established a transcontinental research network, financed 72 projects and developed new models of collaborative knowledge production. Since January 2026, Africa Multiple 2.0 has been building on this foundation ­­­– with closer institutional integration, expanded research infrastructure and a sharpened focus on worldmaking as both empirical field and theoretical project. By foregrounding African perspectives and strengthening transcontinental cooperation, the Cluster contributes to a broader rethinking of how global knowledge is generated – and of how shared futures are imagined.