They are the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD, French Research Institute for Development), the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) and the Aix-Marseille University and the Pantheon-Sorbonne University.

The institute is located both at the Campus Condorcet Paris-Aubervilliers in Aubervilliers and at Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l'homme (MMSH) of Aix-Marseille University in Aix-en-Provence.

[9] IMAF co-organised biannual meetings of Africanists in France, such the 3e Journées du Réseau des études africaines (REAf) at Bordeaux in 2014,[10] the 6th European Conferences on African Studies (ECAS 2015) in Paris[11] and the 7e Rencontres des Études Africaines en France (7e REAf and 6e JCEA) at Toulouse in 2022 (JCEA : Rencontres des Jeunes Chercheur·e·s en Études Africaines).

[12] The Bibliothèque de recherches africaines (BRA) has been transferred to the library Grand équipement documentaire (GED ) of the Campus Condorcet in Paris.

[13][14] The library of the Centre d'études africaines (CEAf),[15] founded in 1957 and containing about 25.000 monographies and more than 500 academic journals, has been subsumed by the Paris Bibliothèque universitaire des langues et civilisations (BULAC) in 2011.