At the tenth Africa Conference that was held in March 2010 at the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Falola’s significant milestone of having published more than a hundred books on numerous core topics on Africa, African nations and the world, was celebrated by more than six hundred participants, and thousands of teeming admirers and well-wishers on the internet. Among his numerous awards and achievements are the prestigious 2011 Distinguished Africanist Award by the African Studies Association, Africana Studies Distinguished Global Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award, various citations, the 2010 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award at the University of Texas at Austin and induction into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers as a result of the recognition he received from his colleagues and students for his tremendous skills in classroom teaching, contributions to his graduate students, his worldwide mentoring, and outstanding skills in supervising numerous theses, reports, and dissertations. He is also the recipient of nine honorary doctorates from universities in the United States and Nigeria.
In view of all this, an annual conference to honor this son of Africa was the least scholars and academics of Africa, led by the Ibadan Cultural Studies Group, could do to sustain and ensure the continuity of what Professor Toyin Falola lives for, labors for and has copiously written about in his more than 140 published books (at the last count): the promotion of excellence in African and African Diaspora Studies and scholarship.
Thus, The Toyin Falola Annual International Conference on Africa and the African Diaspora (TOFAC) was established in 2011 at the University of Ibadan, as the brainchild of the Ibadan Cultural Studies Group, stationed at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan. The conference is so named as an enduring legacy in honor of Professor Toyin Falola, the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, a creative writer, a foremost academic icon and certainly, the most celebrated published African/Black scholar of all times, in recognition of his tremendous achievements as a scholar and teacher of African and African American History.
TOFAC is operated by a Board: Professor Ademola Dasylva (Nigeria; Chairman & TOFAC Convener), Mr Toyin Adepoju (United Kingdom), Professor Getty Ter Haar (Netherlands), Dr Nana Akua Amponsah (Ghana; Secretary), Dr Lady Jane Acquah (USA; Conference Administrator), Professor Ayo Olukotun (Nigeria), Mr Oreoluwa Dasylva (Conference Coordinating Assistant), Mr Wale Ghazal (Conference Coordinating Assistant), Dr Adeshina Afolayan, Professor Segun Ogungbemi, and Professor Bola Dauda. The board members work closely with the host institution to decide the conference theme, appoint the keynote speaker(s), raise funds, etc.
The maiden TOFAC, held at the University of Ibadan, was on the theme, “Creativity and Cultural Expressions in Africa and the African Diaspora”. The conference provided an international platform where scholars, researchers, graduate students, artists, and technocrats from all over the world met in the first week in July 2011 to address cultural issues that related to Africa and the Diaspora in the strict academic tradition, while exploring possible collaboration on matters of global peace. Among the dignitaries present were Prof. Isaac Adewole, Vice-Chancellor, University of Ibadan (who gave the Opening Remarks), Prof. Phillip Adedotun Ogundeji (Co-Coordinator, ICSG, then Dean of Arts, U.I.; Welcome Address), and Prof. Femi Mimiko, (Vice-Chancellor, Adekunle Ajasin University) and Prof. Tunde Adeleke (Center for American Intercultural Studies, Iowa State University), were the Keynote Speakers.
The success of the first TOFAC meeting served as a springboard for the smooth organization of the second meeting on the theme, “Cultures, Identities, Nationalities, and Modernities in Africa and the African Diaspora”. The 2012 TOFAC, sponsored by the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC), was held from 2 to 4 July 2012 at the Excellence Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos, in Nigeria. The Nigerian Minister of Information and Culture gave the opening address. The 2013 TOFAC was hosted by Lead City University, Ibadan and it attracted over 200 presenters from across the globe. The 2014 TOFAC was hosted in Durban by the University of the Free State, attracting also a huge international audience. The 2015 TOFAC was hosted by the University of South Africa in Pretoria and was even more successful. In 2016, the conference returned to Nigeria and was hosted by Redeemers’ University, Ede and in 2017 by the Adeyemi University of Education, Ondo. In 2018, following a tough selection process including bids from universities in various countries from African and even South America, TOFAC is being hosted by the United States International University-Africa in Nairobi, Kenya from July 3-5, 2018.
Each TOFAC has brought together politicians, artists, graduate students, scholars, experts and amateurs in diverse fields of study, the general public to share ideas, brainstorm on the myriad challenges facing the peoples of the continent as well as the plethora of opportunities for growth that the continent represents in the changing and evolving political and economic climate of the world.
Papers always interrogate and explore the scientific and theoretical aspects of different manifestations of socio-cultural and political developments, identity formation, nationalism and competing modernities in specific geographic and trans-national contexts where Africans and peoples of African descent battle out their existential and ameliorative struggles. The Keynote Speakers comprise the most distinguished in the field. The legacy that TOFAC seeks to leave the continent is parallel to the person after whom the conference is named after.