To the second part of your question first, I want to direct your attention to Jean Allman's keynote address at 2018 African Studies Association conference. In it, she lays out how the field of African Studies systematically ignored or forgot the foundational work of African American scholars like W.E.B. DuBois and promoted the idea of the White Male scholar as the ideal "objective observer" of African society and phenomena. The result of that was that federal Area Studies funding (useful in the context of the Cold War for understanding and engaging in diplomacy with the Third World) went to predominately white institutions rather than HBCUs.

The situation in African history in the United States follows broadly the same outlines. Graduate programs that are considered the "best" in African history or African archaeology in the US tend to be at places like Boston University, Wisconsin, Northwestern University, Michigan State, Michigan, UC Berkley and UCLA.

The other major concentration of "world class" graduate programs for African History and African Archaeology has traditionally been in Europe. Programs like University College London, Oxford School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Free University of Brussels, University of Ghent, Leiden, Sorbonne, Freiburg.

The fact that "world class" programs are located at those schools means that African History and Archaeology conferences tend to meet at those universities.

So, up until pretty recently, that has meant that who produces history (professors, authors) of Africa has historically been very White.

People who were born in Africa or who live in Africa have not been listened to or cited enough, and have experienced major hurdles in going to conferences in Europe or North America (visa issues, cost, being the rare African scholar in a very White space).

There have been some excellent programs in African history on the continent. Places like University of Ibadan, Makerere University, Dar es Salaam, University of Cape Town, Witwatersrand, Addis Ababa, University of Cheikh Anta Diop.

Unhappily, because of the severe budget crises basically every African country faced in the late 1970s, and the protracted economic downturn on the continent during the era of Structural Adjustment, lots of countries were forced to reduce spending on education, which meant reduction in funding for history departments.

But, the damage to African scholarship has been out-of-proportion to the level of funding cuts. There is a widespread perception among scholars both in Africa and Europe/North America that the intellectual output of scholars from Africa has systematically been overlooked and not included in Western academic journals. Western academics have also engaged in "parachute research", dropping into a country, relying on scholars from local universities to facilitate study, and then neglecting to acknowledge that support with co-authorship credit.

Now, let's turn the gaze on the Askhistorians Book List. The vast majority of authors on that list are Europeans or Americans from European or North American institutions. There are a handful of names there like Chinua Achebe, Mahmood Mamdani, Moses Ochonu, Toyin Falola, Sundiata Djata. But, more work is needed to include scholarship from African and Black Diaspora scholars. (I must accept the blame for this, because I have added most of the books on that list)

Now, there are white North American scholars who write about and try to embody the ideal of truly co-operative scholarship. For instance Peter Schmidt has written numerous articles and edited books about Community Archaeology in Africa about how research must include the local community in designing and conducting the project.

How do I decolonize my understanding of the history of Africa?

Folks advocating for decolonizing African history have called for greater representation of African scholars and scholarship in classroom curricula.

From the field of political science, here is an example of a decolonial african politics reading list

Specifically for African history and Archaeology, some good places to broaden your horizons and learn about African scholars are:

New Books in African studies podcast

The Archaeology and Anthropology Podcast has interviewed African archaeologists like Josh Kumbani, Babatunde Babalola, Akin Ogundiran

Africa Past and Present podcast has done interviews with people like Didier Gondola, Cherif Keita, Alois Mlambo, etc.

Toyin Falola is an eminent historian of Nigeria and he frequently gets tabbed to be lead editor for books or book series about African history. He is very conscientious about including contributions from African scholars. If you check out his stuff like Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial and Postcolonial History, you should find some names to follow.

Edit- also, there is Codesria which is an association for African studies based in Dakar, Senegal which promotes a great deal of research.

Additionally, reviewing my post, I notice a few glaring omissions. I mentioned ten male African scholars but zero African women scholars. I should have mentioned scholars like Tabitha Kanong'o, Msia Kibona Clark, Nwando Achebe.

Also, there is the whole dimension of contributions from Black scholars from the diaspora. In Jean Allman's address video that I linked, she made clear that a major demand of Black Caucus/AHSA at ASA conference at Los Angeles 1968 and Montreal 1969 was recognition of the inter-relatedness of African studies with African-American Studies and with scholarship from the diaspora.

So, an important part of decolonizing knowledge about African history must be paying attention to and acknowledging the contributions from scholars from the diaspora, both men and women.