Postcolonial studies, decolonial theories, indigenous epistemologies, decentralizations of knowledge, and Afro-centered philosophy are some theoretical perspectives that have been activated in recent decades with the objective to produce new interpretations of the African continent, its culture and history. This movement also has an impact on the revision of the interpretations produced about African and Afrodiasporic populations over the centuries. This round table seeks to map this contemporary debate with to promoting a reflection on the possibilities and limitations of thinking about an intertwining between traditional and scientific knowledge. Starting from the analysis of the genesis of African studies in France, and its institutionalization in the 1980s, the political, ideological, and theoretical initiatives that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century to the twenty-first century will be discussed, both inside and outside the African continent that oppose certain canonical explanations about Africa and Africans in the diaspora, while suggesting new epistemological approaches. Research that has Brazil and Senegal as an empirical field will be put into dialogue, so that we will look at the discussion on social development in Africa and the decolonization of academic knowledge; the impacts of multilingualism and multiculturalism on the African diaspora in the Americas, the reception of the Ubuntu philosophy in the Brazilian educational context, and the discussion on the schooling process of traditional quilombola populations. In summary, the objective of this panel is to reflect on the historical process of the constitution of African Studies in the twentieth century and the emergence of analytical perspectives that aim, on the one hand, to break with reductionist explanations about these peoples and, on the other hand, to propose the intertwining between traditional and scientific knowledge that guides both the production of academic knowledge and the establishment of public policies aimed at overcoming inequalities.