Is Africa's Academy African Enough?

Formal education was introduced to Africa with the advent of European colonialism. The purported objective was to build capacity, advance skills and competencies, and widen the knowledge base of native Africans to enable them adeptly partake in and own development processes in their communities. During the colonial period, education focus was put on governance and administration, education, theology, medicine, law, agricultures, and technical education as the key pillars of development.

Years after independence, this Eurocentric education paradigm has not changed much.  The content (what is taught) and pedagogy (how students are taught) has remained the same - Western. Attempts to to de-colonize the African academy are yet to yield recognizable results. Ali A. Mazrui, captures this well by when he posits thus: “Western influence is expressed through another African institution— the university. The university is an analogue to a multinational corporation: born as an extension of a metropolitan university whose direction and instructions come from a European country, the African university continues to serve other than African interests. African educational institutions help produce Westernized or semi-Westernized manpower for the commercial firms and Western values and tastes, thus expanding a culturally-relevant market for Western goods.” The situation that Mazrui alludes to is also detectable at pre-primary, primary, secondary and other tertiary levels of education.  

The school has remained alien to the indigenous African experience. I remember facing this dilemma when I was attending school in rural Uganda. What I was taught at school was remotely linked to the daily experiences that I interacted with at home and in my community. The school curriculum never encompassed local music, dances, folklore, theology, cultural and social values, technology, games and sports, oral literature, history, language, art, and practical skills of production in areas such as agriculture, cottage industries, mining, etc. Instead, emphasis was laid on Western history, theology, geography, civilization, politics, and economics, to mention but the most obvious. Sadly, the curriculum is still the same.

Students attending a class in one of the schools in Uganda

One of the key areas in which the African academy is clearly delinked from the native knowledge bases and structures is the languages used as medium if communication. The medium of information delivery in schools in Francophone and Anglophone countries is French and English, respectively. One might argue that application of these languages has facilitated the integration of the African academy in the global education system, but as Ngugi Wa Thiogo has noted, ‘we (African people) still collect intellectual items and put them in European language museums and archives and people have to dig into those languages in order to access knowledge about ourselves. Our knowledge of Africa is largely filtered through European languages and their vocabulary. Is it not time that our scholarship stopped finding legitimacy in European languages…?’ This intellectual enslavement through languages and other forms has undermined capacity by native people to develop local knowledge. 

Suffice it to note that the process of learning leads to a process of unlearning.  Since language influences interpretation, generation, dissection, development, survival, dissemination and application of knowledge, the western paradigm of education (that centers around western content, pedagogy, and languages) on which the African academy is founded has disengaged the African teacher, student, scholar, academic, and researcher from the African realities. To this end, African knowledge, actualities, and experiences are lost in translation as a result of learning and teaching through the lens of European education and literary prototype.

Consequently, the African education system has produced graduates who cannot suitably serve in their own social, cultural, political and economic environments and contexts. This alienation of the African graduate from his/her local existential realities has rendered western formal education less effective in terms of generating relevant human resources to solve local challenges.

Developing local knowledge will increase Africa’s comparative advantage in the global market. This can only be achieved if there is change in the education criteria, introduce narratives that will exude the indigenous experience and knowledge structures and mechanisms, and stimulate locally oriented productivity. This shift should begin with Africans reclaiming confidence in their own indigenous knowledge and its ability to transform their lives locally.

This tale should prompt a shift in intellectual thinking, and education paradigm and approach. New pedagogic models need to be developed to facilitate a process that would equip graduates with skills, knowledge and competences that are responsive to local conditions and needs. The African academy is yearning for African identity; it needs to be de-Europeanized. Stakeholders such as teachers, policy makers, civil society organizations, local leaders, education administrators, school inspectors, students and curriculum developers need to engage in discourses to identify and draw a roadmap aimed at indigenization process of the academy. This paradigm shift in education system will render formal education much more relevant to the local realities, environment, needs and conditions.