Harvard University, Dept of African and African American Studies Massachusetts, US ‘Re: invitation to Serve as Keynote Speaker at the Tenth Anniversary Conference of the Ife Institute of Advanced Studies.’
“Africa continues to produce exceptional individuals. Yet, it has not built institutions that can consistently sustain excellence. This conference asked why and whether that can change at scale.
“For the past decade, the Ife Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS) has worked to address this gap by investing in rigorous and independent scholarship.
“Since its founding, IIAS has trained over 850 scholars, many of whom now shape academia, policy, and public life in Nigeria and across and beyond Africa. That progress is meaningful, but insufficient to meet the scale of the challenge.
“At this ten-year mark, we are convening a small invitation-only gathering at the John Knowles Pane Concert Hall, Department of Music, Harvard University on June 4, 2026, to discuss the theme, Budding Lasting Instruments: Path, Scholarship, and the African Project.
“I cordially invite you to deliver the keynote address titled: The Nigerian Project Revisited: Crisis, Continuity, and Possibility.
“This keynote sets the conceptual and historical foundation for the conference by reviewing the theme of “the Nigerian project” as an unfinished and contested enterprise. “Moving beyond familiar narratives of failure and dysfunction. The address interrogates how Nigeria’s institutional challenges have been shaped by deeper tensions between inherited structure and lived realities formal governance and informal practice, aspiration and accountability. What does it mean to speak of Nigeria as a “project.” and who bears responsibility for its construction? By tracing patterns of continuity alongside moments of rupture.
“The keynote reframes crisis life not as an endpoint, but as a condition that reveals both the fragility and the latent possibilities of institutional life.
“The address, thus, opens the conference space for rethinking what it would take to build institutions that are not only functional, but meaningful and enduring.” Jacob Olupona, PhD, Chair, African and African and American Studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
