Some gains for African-centred psychological work will issue from publishing internationally. There is little doubt about this. African-centred psychology must internationalise if it is to influence the world. If we do not universalise we shall not avoid ghettoisation.

I should be clearer. Of course it is always a little hard to persuade editors of ‘international’ journals – which is how journals published in the US and Western Europe are referred to in my country – and reviewers in other countries of the solidity and quality of your work, especially if such work goes against the orthodoxy of the discipline. The effort of persuasion is harder for some than for others. It is easier for those who are happy to go along with the globally hegemonic forms of knowledge, methods and tools of analysis, and harder for those who refuse to succumb to the orthodoxy. The latter is the case when it comes to African-centred work that fundamentally challenges how the world is ordered and perceived. In such cases, you have to sweat to convince editors and reviewers that Africa is a place of making thought. You are more than likely to have to work very hard to convince others that Africa is not only a site of data collection, but one where explanations and concepts – what is often pretentiously called Theory – are generated that are as valid as those from anywhere else in the world. It can be tiresome to put effort into trying to convince people that you, as a professional psychologist, have original thoughts, let alone that a ninety-year-old man who grows his own vegetables, raises his grandchildren, draws a government pension, but has never actually published an article, has a considered psychological perspective which should receive equal due to that of a psychology professor. Some will die spiritually or culturally – have died – trying to show some famous name who knows nothing about Africa and his students that African perspectives, conceptualisations and explanations matter.

But, again, there are some gains to be made, no doubt, from working to publish African-centred psychological research and theory with international publishers and in international journals.