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Teaching Africa within international relations (IR) carries a responsibility to engage students with the power relations that dominate Africa’s global position and ‘western’ knowledge of the continent. The key contribution of this article is to highlight the significance of difference and power relations not only when these are manifested in the identities present within the classroom but also just as importantly when they are not. The article argues that positionality and representations profoundly shape engagement with Africa. Who is in the classroom particularly matters when teaching material embedded in ongoing colonial relations. Disrupting students’ assumptions, such as their alignment with Western actors who will ‘solve’ Africa’s problems, may therefore involve disempowering them. By doing so, it is possible to potentially establish more productive starting points for learning about Africa within IR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]