The Nordic Africa Institute started on a modest scale back in 1962 by awarding three travel grants to young Nordic scholars with an interest in Africa. Fifty years later, the institute has become an internationally renowned centre of research, documentation, publishing and networking. By coordinating coherent programmes spanning multiple researchers and several subtopics NAI has helped to strengthen capacity among young academics in Nordic countries by providing travel grants for field research and an academic platform for communicating and discussing research findings. NAI has thus been a key catalyst in social science research on Africa. In this publication, Michael Ståhl contextualises, reviews and reflects on five innovative research programmes undertaken at NAI from the late 1980s into the 1990s. Through these thematic, collaborative programmes, NAI complemented its already established support for individual academic projects. In order to place the five programmes in larger context, brief accounts of the earlier research support provided by NAI are given as is an overview of the subsequent research profile and administration of NAI up to 2012.