Transforming epistemologies in the postcolonial African university? The challenge of the politics of knowledge (original) (raw)
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Bringing Africa into New Epistemologies: Rethinking the University in Africa
Journal of Educational Research and Reviews, 2022
The concepts Africanization and decolonization have been stressed in the 1960s by the founder leaders of the free African states. Pan African leaders such as Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Kenneth Kaunda and Julius Nyerere sought to establish truly independent states free from Europeanization and colonialism. The mission was to liberate various institutions from colonial ills. These leaders wanted to transform government institutions including institutions of higher learning. The 1960s witnessed the leaders' search for relevance and liberatory philosophies. Since the advent of colonization, the African continent there has been the gradual alienation that has seen the African lose not only culture but history, language and indigenous ways of thinking. The leaders in newly independent states strived to redress this barbarism veiled as modernism which was widespread in African institutions. This article examines the reasons behind the sustained calls for Africanization and decolonization in higher education institutions in Africa. The following five topics are examined: i) Why re-Africanize the university in Africa ii) Revisiting and fostering the relevant soul of the university iii) New epistemologies and reawakening the renaissance of knowledge iv) Research, curriculum and pedagogy infusing the new idea of a university v) Rethinking thinking
Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, 2015
Manuel Castells (2001), who is regarded as one of the most influential social scientists commenting on the role of higher education in contemporary global consciousness, describes the roles of universities as the generation of new knowledge, the conceptualisation and diffusion of ideology and forms of knowing, the recreation of elites, and the development of skilled labour. The tension between the utilitarian role, on the one hand, and the generation of new forms of knowledge and the contradictions inherent in this, on the other, is the focus of this widely influential new book. The African university, despite calls for it to act as an instrument of development in the post-colony and engine of an African renaissance, has struggled to assert itself within the paced global knowledge economy which requires the university to 'become a central actor of scientific and technological change' and to become the centre of 'cultural renewal and cultural innovation … linked to the new forms of living' (Castells in Cloete et al., 2015, p. 2). Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education builds on these premises and explores the trends and debates around the intended and emerging identity of African flagship universities in eight countries by relying on comparative indicators and sets of data. Empirical data from universities and governments on research levels and outputs, numbers of students and staff, and contextual factors, are used to present a textured analysis of the eight flagship universities, which are the
Kronos, 2017
The decolonial departure point of this article is that every human being is born into a valid and legitimate knowledge system. This means that African people had their own valid and legitimate indigenous systems of education prior to colonisation. However, the dawn and unfolding of Eurocentric modernity through colonialism and imperialism unleashed a particularly racial ethnocentric attitude that led European colonialists to question the very humanity of African people. This questioning and sometimes outright denial of African people's humanity inevitably enabled not only genocides but epistemicides, linguicides and cultural imperialism. The long-term consequence was that Western education became propagated as the only valid and legitimate form of socialisation of humanity across space and time. Needless to say, indigenous African systems of education were displaced as the idea of the modern university took root in Africa. This article flashes back to precolonial African/Nilotic/Arab/Muslim intellectual traditions in its historical reflection on the idea of the university in Africa. It posits a 'triple heritage' of higher education, which embraces Western imperial/ colonial modernity and anti-colonial nationalist liberatory developmentalism in its engagement with the contested idea of the university in Africa. The article critically examines the long and ongoing African struggles for an ' African university'. It locates the struggles for an African university within the broader context of African liberation struggles, the search for modern African identity, autonomous African development and self-definition. Four core challenges constitutive of the struggle for an African university are highlighted: the imperative of securing Africa as a legitimate epistemic base from which Africans view and understand the world; the task of 'moving the centre' through shifting the geography and biography of knowledge in a context where what appears as 'global knowledge' still cascades from a hegemonic centre (Europe and North America); the necessity of 'rethinking thinking itself ' as part of launching epistemic disobedience to Eurocentric thinking; and the painstaking decolonial process of 'learning to unlearn in order to relearn', which calls on African intellectuals and academics to openly acknowledge their factory faults and 'miseducation', cascading from their very production by problematic 'Western-styled' universities, including those located in Africa, so as to embark on decolonial self-re-education.
The politics of knowledge in South African universities: Students’ perspectives
Transformation in Higher Education
Knowledge-making in South African universities is set up and framed in particular ways, with a Euro-centric bias. We argue that many of the contributions that African first year entering students could make to this process of knowledge-making are dis-abled, leading to alienation. In this article, we argue for a different perspective and approach to teaching and learning in the humanities. Former Extended Studies students from a South African university have worked collaboratively in a knowledge-making project, and using data generated from this, suggest different kinds of environments and strategies for more inclusive teaching and learning. Using an African feminist theoretical and methodological lens, we consider alternative ways of knowing, and recognition that supports powerful senses of belonging and agency, using examples from student experiences of an Extended Studies humanities programme. We contrast this with how humanities programmes are experienced by some first-year stude...
DECOLONISING AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES THROUGH TRANSFORMATION INTO ENDOGENOUS KNOWLEDGE PRODUCERS
Proceedings of 8th International Conference on Appropriate Technology, Songhaï Center, Porto-Novo, Benin, November 22-25, 2018, 2018
The growing consensus is that the legacy of colonialism greatly influenced and currently shapes the process of knowledge production in Africa. This viewpoint holds that while colonialism ushered African societies into modernity, according to the European model, it had also been responsible for suppressing local knowledge traditions and altering their development path. On the other hand, endogenous knowledge has become an important component of bottom-up approaches to strengthening sustainable development processes. The debates on sustainability and rural development in late 1990s brought about the realisation that a different type of knowledge production is required to link scientific and other forms of knowledge. In this paper 1 , ideas generated in the long history of decolonisation debates as well as the shorter one on endogenous knowledge are used to explore the central question of whether the concept of endogenous knowledge can contribute to decolonising higher education. Three countries feature prominently in this exploration-Tanzania, South Africa, and Sudan. While the paper skims the surface of what exists in and around the two areas of study, decolonisation and endogenous knowledge, it contributes to thinking about a decolonising and development approach to education. With a legacy like Rodney's, and new social movements like that led by students in South Africa, it is possible to imagine a better future for the African university.
Epistemological Issues in African Higher Education
African Higher Education in the 21st Century, 2020
Introduction: Knowledge and Higher Education on the African Continent Higher education, and education generally, is a prime site for the transmission, facilitation, development and production of knowledge. This is a truism bordering on platitude. Universities, in particular, are defined in terms of the generation of knowledge. The debate over whether knowledge should be regarded as instrumental, for example in terms of personal or social progress, advancement and transformation, or whether it should (also) be treated as valuable in and for itself indicates only one of many epistemologically charged concerns in African higher education. In this chapter, I aim to provide an overview of a few of the epistemological issues that have arisen over the past few decades concerning higher education on the African continent. First and foremost, the ideas of indigenous (local, traditional) knowledge and knowledge systems, and related ideas like African ways of knowing have received a great amount of attention. The claim is that indigenous knowledge, African ways of knowing, etc. have been rejected, ignored, undervalued, or colonised1-that is, exploited for Western (or Northern) ends and purposes. Second, the notions of diverse epistemologies and epistemological diversity have had both broad and deep coverage, especially in terms of the training, the socialisation into research, received by postgraduate, notably doctoral students in African universities. There is some ambiguity here, in that "epistemological diversity" has been employed, variously, to refer to beliefs and belief systems; methodological diversity, or diversity in research method(ologie)s; diversity of research questions; diversity of researchers and their cultures; and varieties of theoretical knowledge, and knowledge perspectives. What is arguably characteristic of African conceptions of knowledge is a strong relational element that is also found in African ontology and ethics. Coming to know is understood as a process of persons developing insights about one another and with all that exists. This indicates not only an intimate relationship between knower and known, between what it is to know and what it is to be known but in effect also a communalist understanding of knowledge: I know because we know. Or, a knower is a knower because of other knowers.
Africa Development, 2011
Throughout the African continent, albeit a product of imperial domination, every state at independence conceived a national project, which aimed at building a nation-state with a clearly articulated development agenda. Education as a social institution was considered requisite toward the actualisation of the national project. The sub-sector of higher education, and particularly the university, appeared as an indispensable agency. Given the general colonial policy of exclusion of Africans from university education, the right of African states to build their national/public universities epitomised self-determination at independence. The independence movements in the 1950s-1960s coincided also with the regained popularity of human capital theory that stipulated that education, especially the highest levels, constituted an investment for individual socioeconomic attainment and social mobility as well as national and structural development. From its inception, the Western style of university that was conceived out of the colonial experience represented a special site for contention and affirmation of the Africans to realize their national projects. In the context of globalisation, international organisations and programmes such as the World Bank and General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) have emerged as proxies of the old colonial powers with the same goal of influencing the policies that restrict or shape higher education in African countries. Key constituencies of African universities, namely students and teaching staff, have resisted such infringement on Africans' rights to university education and autonomy in determining their domestic policies. The main objective of this article is to analyse the evolution of the African university as a site for the continued struggle for self-determination. It will be argued that, in spite of the history of a few institutions 7-Assié-Lumumba.pmd 19/10/2011, 14:48 177 Assié-Lumumba: Higher Education as an African Public Sphere le personnel enseignant, ont résisté à de telles violations des droits des africains à l'enseignement universitaire et à l'autonomie dans la détermination de leurs politiques nationales. L'objectif principal de cet article est d'analyser l'évolution de l'université africaine en tant que site de la lutte continue pour l'autodétermination. Nous soutiendrons que malgré l'histoire de quelques institutions dans un petit nombre de pays, l'université africaine au XXIe siècle est essentiellement le reflet des rapports coloniaux. Ainsi, par exemple, les nouveaux programmes de Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication (TIC) et d'enseignement à distance, et les universités privées émergentes dans le contexte du mantra de la libéralisation, seront également analysés dans le cadre des politiques de libéralisation qui ont été promues par les mandataires coloniaux mondiaux. Dans cet article, la mission publique de l'université, qu'elle soit publique ou privée, sera examinée. Nous adopterons une démarche fondamentalement historique, évaluant les acteurs et leurs transformations et mutations dans la même réalité de l'inégalité structurelle de pouvoir dans le système mondial, et diverses réponses africaines à travers la résistance et l'affirmation continues. Nous traiterons la question fondamentale de la recherche de l'université publique ou de l'université ayant une mission publique pour la production de connaissances pertinentes dans les diverses disciplines, la pensée critique et les nouveaux paradigmes, ainsi que les méthodologies visant à promouvoir le progrès social au milieu des défis de la mondialisation libérale dominante et des conditions objectives des États, des sociétés et des peuples africains.
Developing Country Studies, 2014
Politics of knowledge production is an attempt to explain the centrality of knowledge in sustainability of human society through time. The article examines how knowledge was produced from the pre colonial, colonial and post colonial Africa and its implications in development. The role of university as the centre piece of knowledge production is interrogated to the extent to which the institution may engineer innovative ideas to catalyse development. The role of politics is also crucial because knowledge production and dissemination operates within specific political trajectories that may constrain or promote it. It is the thesis of the article that Africa's stunted development agenda is largely due to the trajectories of knowledge production and politics associated with it.
Contestation in the 21st Century African University: Local and Global Challenges and Opportunities
In this conceptual article we posit that, if the African university is to locate itself in the 21st century, the precedence of local needs over global demands ought to be central to its agenda. The university space in Africa is a contested arena in which participants are claiming their dominant space in terms of knowledge production, control and responding to local needs. Standing on the one side is the university's commitment to promote transformation by producing knowledge relevant and being responsive to local needs, with the fulfilment of the global demand for knowledge for the global market on the other. This creates an anomaly in the competing demands in university practices that lead to the polarisation of the role of the university. In this article we submit to Guy's (2009, p. 1) assertion that the global and the local are best understood as the two opposite sides of the same distinction, which assists in describing various elements of social movements, inequalities, crises and identities.
Development priorities for African universities
International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning, 2015
African knowledge remains at best on the margins, struggling for an epistemological foothold in the face of an ever dominant Western canon. At worst, African knowledge is disparaged, depreciated, and dismissed. It is often ignored even by African scholars who, having gained control of the academy in the postcolonial context, seemingly remain mesmerized by the Western canon in most dimensions of thought, inquiry, theorization, culture (classical as well as popular), and ideology. Such is the hegemonic influence of historical legacy and current power relations in the production and dissemination of knowledge. This paper argues that African knowledge, given appropriate impetus, can serve as a powerful stimulus to development. Against the backdrop of intractable development challenges, the paper will explore the role of African universities in the creation, dissemination, and support of African knowledge; and the preservation of indigenous knowledge. Since a scholarly effort towards int...