Deadline: 15 July 2026
The Sawaba Journal is a multidisciplinary journal that houses feminist thought and decolonial praxis. It is a platform for the creation, resourcing, and dissemination of anti-colonial feminist praxis, histories and cartographies of resistance, archival practice, feminist embodied practice, and African feminist knowledge, memories and world-building by scholars, activists, cultural practitioners, knowledge weavers, and communities of care on the continent and in the diaspora.
This inaugural issue, ‘Decolonial Feminist Thought and Praxis,’ is the journal’s opening act of articulation. It invites contributions that dismantle, reconstruct, and dream: that take decolonisation seriously, not as a completed transition but as an ongoing, lived, and contested process that must be inhabited in both
thought and practice.
As such, the Journal provides a much-needed critical space for scholars, activists, cultural practitioners, and communities of care to create, share, and amplify knowledge on anti-colonial feminist praxis, histories of resistance, archival work, and embodied feminist practice.
About The Theme
The framing of the inaugural issue is neither tentative nor incidental. Fanon’s insistence on articulation as a constitutive element of decolonisation is a refusal of silence and an insistence on speaking from locations that have historically been marginalised, distorted, or erased. Decolonisation begins, in part, with articulation, naming what has been suppressed, and in so doing, unsettling the epistemic and political conditions that made such suppression possible.
Yet, articulation is not enough. Decolonisation must extend beyond critique to encompass a sustained commitment to both dismantling existing structures and constructing alternative possibilities. Decolonial theory also seeks to critically revise and revisit Western theories, rather than focusing solely on articulating entirely new forms of thought. Too much of what passes for anti-colonial thought and practice remains tethered to Western political thought as its primary object of critique, thereby risking the reproduction of the very epistemic centrality it seeks to undo.
The inaugural issue of the Sawaba Journal is therefore committed to a more generative orientation within anti-colonial traditions, one that articulates decolonisation as a creative and world-making endeavour, grounded in diverse epistemologies, lived realities, and imaginative possibilities that exceed inherited
frameworks.
The Call
The inaugural issue of the Sawaba Journal invites contributions that engage decolonisation not as a closed discourse, but as a living, contested, and generative praxis. We seek work that moves beyond critique as an endpoint, and instead inhabits decolonisation as a process of unmaking, remaking, and imagining. We welcome essays, book and film reviews, interviews, creative non-fiction, poetry, photo essays and visual work, and chronological contributions.
The issue is structured around three intersecting movements; however, contributions are welcome to engage one, two, or all three. Contributors are encouraged to experiment with interdisciplinary and hybrid approaches that combine different modes of expression.
The Dismantling/Undoing/Untethering: Here, we welcome contributions that confront and dismantle the enduring architectures of coloniality, its material infrastructures, epistemic violences, and linguistic hegemonies. This includes work that interrogates how colonial logics persist in law, governance, culture,
and everyday life, as well as interventions that resist, subvert, and refuse these structures in both form and content.
For this section, we encourage contributions that explore some of the following questions:
- What knowledge has been erased, marginalised, or rendered unintelligible through colonial epistemologies? How can we centre them?
- What forms of violence are rendered invisible when colonial epistemologies define what counts as knowledge, evidence, or truth?
- Can we write, research, or create outside the grammar of coloniality, or are we inevitably entangled within it? What might refusal look like in form, method, or citation?
- What does it mean to “untether” from colonial languages and categories without romanticising precolonial pasts or reproducing new exclusions?
- Who bears the cost of dismantling, and who benefits from the persistence of colonial structures?
The Reconstruction/Creation/Building of worlds: Submissions that centre a reconstitution of knowledge systems, identities, and modes of being grounded in our histories, contexts, and lived realities. Here, decolonisation is approached as a creative and intellectual project, one that reclaims suppressed epistemologies, centres marginalised voices, and participates in the making of alternative worlds.
For this section, we encourage contributions that explore some of the
following questions:
- What does it mean to rebuild after dismantling? What materials epistemic,
cultural, spiritual, and political are available to us, and which must be
reimagined altogether? - What new identities, subjectivities, and modes of being and doing become possible when colonial categories are no longer the point of departure?
- How do language, storytelling, and artistic expression participate in the making of alternative worlds?
- Who is included in these imagined worlds and who remains at the margins? What ethical commitments must guide this inclusion?
- How do we sustain the worlds we begin to build, particularly within institutions still shaped by colonial logics?
The Dream/A Sustained Reality: Contributions that dare to dream. Beyond critique and reconstruction, we are interested in imaginations of futurity, visions of the worlds we are striving to build, alongside reflections on how such worlds might be sustained, nourished, and defended. This prong calls for an engagement with decolonisation as endurance, a commitment not only to envisioning otherwise futures, but to the ongoing labour required to hold them into being.
For this section, we encourage questions that explore some of the following questions:
- What does it mean to dream in contexts where survival often takes precedence over imagination?
- Can dreaming itself be a radical methodology? What forms or media, whether literary, visual, speculative, spiritual enable us to imagine otherwise?
- How do we remain accountable to the communities these futures are meant to serve, without foreclosing imagination?
- How do we navigate exhaustion, disillusionment, and contradiction within long-term projects of transformation?
- How do we ensure that the futures we build remain open, adaptive, and resistant to becoming new sites of domination?
Submission Guidelines
- Original research articles and essays: We invite original research articles and essays that align with the theme of the inaugural issue of the journal. Authors are encouraged to submit articles of up to 3,000 words, inclusive of references.
- Personal narratives and dialogues: We welcome autobiographical narratives and first-person interviews with scholars, academics, activists, artists, and thought leaders whose work engages with the journal’s theme. Autobiographical narratives will be published with the narrator listed as the sole author. First-person interviews will be co-authored by the interviewer and the interviewee(s). Submissions in this category should range between 1,500 and 2,000 words.
- Book or film reviews: We also invite book or film reviews, particularly those which highlight works by authors, directors, and artists belonging to historically marginalised groups. Reviews typically range from 1,000 to 1,500 words.
- Photo essays and visual media: We invite submissions of photo essays and other forms of visual media that critically engage with the journal’s theme. Photo essays should comprise between 6 and 10 images, with captions. Submissions in this category should harness visual methodologies to illuminate and interrogate the journal’s themes while using imagery as a medium for education, critical reflection and
imagination. Photographers should ensure informed consent from those photographed, respecting their agency, dignity, and right to choose how their images are used. - Poetry and creative nonfiction: We welcome submissions of poetry and creative nonfiction that offer thoughtful and critical engagements with contemporary questions of colonialism, decolonial thought and praxis. Poetry submissions should be under 500 words, and creative nonfiction should range from 1,000 to 1,500 words
All contributions should be submitted electronically in MS Word document file format to lornah@liberationallianceafrica.com with hello@liberationallianceafrica.com in copy no later than 15 July 2026. All submissions must be original, unpublished, and written in English. At present, the journal does not have the capacity to accommodate translations.
Timeline
- Submission deadline: 15 July 2026
- Notification of acceptance: 31 July 2026
- Feedback to authors from external peer reviewers and editors: 15 August 2026
- Final chapter submission: 31 August 2026