Afrika und Übersee, founded in 1910 by Carl Meinhof under the name Zeitschrift für Kolonialsprachen, is the oldest academic journal for African linguistics worldwide. It has been since one of the most important academic journals for the dissemination of research on African languages and their social and historical contexts. The journal publishes articles and special issues from a broad range of topics that cover various subfields of linguistics. Publishing primary linguistic data and analyses, and the promotion of young scientists and authors from Africa is of key interest in the tradition of Afrika und Übersee. Since 2021, Afrika und Übersee is published online as an Open Access journal by the Abteilung für Afrikanistik und Äthiopistik in the Asien-Afrika-Institut at Universität Hamburg.

We accept articles written in English, French, or German. Submissions undergo a double-blind peer review process.

 

Current Issue

Vol. 99 (2026)

With the current volume 99, we introduce a new publishing mode to Afrika und Übersee. From 2026 onwards, articles will be published individually after the completion of the reviewing process.

The first article to be published in this mode is Kolawole Adeniyi’s contribution to the analysis of synchronic variation in the syllable structure of Igede. Adeniyi shows in his article how a new syllable structure emerges due to language contact in Igede.

Further articles that will be included in this volume are Wakweya Olani Gobena and Andreas Hölzl’s contribution to relative and possessive constructions in Oromo, and Anne-Maria Fehn’s insights into oblique marking in the Khoe-Kwadi language family. While Wakweya and Hölzl’s article puts Oromo syncretism of relative and possessive markers into a wider typological perspective, Fehn discusses a semantically vacuous postposition which appears with different kinds of adverbial adjuncts in Khoe-Kwadi from an areal perspective.

Published: 2026-01-09

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