Across the African continent, college student activists have long fought to decolonise African institutions. Reflecting ongoing Western colonisation, however, Indigenous African languages, thought, and structures remain excluded from African universities. Such universities remain steeped in Eurocentric modes of knowing, teaching, researching, and communicating. Students are rarely afforded the opportunity to learn about the wealth of knowledge and sustainable wisdom that was and is generated by their own home communities. Such localised Indigenous African perspectives are critical in a world committed to anti-Black racism, capitalist materialism, and global destruction. This book thus clarifies decolonial efforts to transform higher education from its anti-Black foundation, offering hope from universities across the continent. Writers are university administrators and faculty who directly challenge contemporary colonial education, exploring tangible ways to decolonise structures, curricula, pedagogy, research, and community relationships. Ultimately, this book moves beyond structural transformation to call for a global commitment to develop Indigenous African-led systems of higher education that foster multilingual communities, local knowledges, and localised approaches to global problems. In shifting from a Western-centric lens to multifaceted African-centrism, the authors reclaim decoloniality from co-optation, repositioning African intellectualism at the core of global higher education to sustain an Ubuntu-based humanity.

This book discusses the status and importance of decolonisation and indigenous knowledge in academic research, teaching, and learning programmes and beyond. Taking practical lessons from a range of institutions in Africa, the book argues that that local and global sciences are culturally equal and capable of synergistic complementarity and then integrates the concept of hybrid science into discourses on decolonisation. The chapters argue for a cross-cultural dialogue between different epistemic traditions and the accommodation 'Indigenous' knowledge systems in higher education. Bringing together critical scholars, teaching and administrating academics from different disciplines, the chapters provide alternative conceptual outlooks and practical case-based perspectives towards decolonised study environments. This book will be of interest to researchers of decolonisation, postcolonial studies, higher education studies, political studies, African studies, and philosophy.

This book explores the influence of neoliberal globalisation on African higher education, considering the impact of the politics of neoliberal ideology on the nature and sources of knowledge in African universities. Written by African scholars, the book engages with debates around the commodification of knowledge, socially just knowledge, knowledge transformation, collaboration, and partnerships, and indigenous knowledge systems. It challenges the neoliberal approach to knowledge production and dissemination in African universities and contributes to debates around decolonising knowledge production in Africa. The chapters draw on experiences from universities in different sub-Saharan countries to show how the manifestation of neo-colonialism through the pursuit of the hegemonic neoliberal philosophy is impacting on decolonising university knowledge in Africa. Providing a unique critique of the impact of neoliberal higher education in Africa, the book will be essential reading for researchers, scholars, and postgraduate students in the field of Sociology of Education, decolonising education, Inclusive Education, and Education Policy.

Conceived within a context of transdisciplinarity and pluriversalism, and in rigorous response to the Eurocentric, globalising and nationalising structures of power that undergird and inhabit contemporary praxis in higher education – especially in African higher education – this collection of essays brings to the on-going discourse on decolonisation fresh, rich, probing and multilayered perspectives that should accelerate the process of decolonisation, not only in higher education in Africa, but also in the global imaginary. A remarkable, courageous and potentially revolutionary achievement, this book deserves a special place on curricula throughout the world of higher education.

This timely work investigates the possibility of unyoking and decolonising African university knowledges from colonial relics. It claims that academics from socially, politically, and geographically underprivileged communities in the South need to have their voices heard outside of the global power structure. The book argues that African universities need a relevant curriculum that is related to the cultural and environmental experiences of diverse African learners in order to empower themselves and transform the world. It is written by African scholars and is based on theoretical and practical debates on the epistemological complexities affecting and afflicting diversity in higher education in Africa. It examines who are the primary custodians of African university knowledges, as well as how this relates to forms of exclusion affecting women, the differently abled, the rural poor, and ethnic minorities, as well as the significance of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the future of African universities. The book takes an epistemological approach to university teaching and learning, addressing issues such as decolonization and identity, social closure and diversity disputes, and the obstacles that come with the neoliberal paradigm. The book will be necessary reading for academics, scholars, and postgraduate students in the fields of Sociology of Education, decolonising education, Inclusive Education, and Philosophy of Education, as it resonates with existing discourses.

African Higher Education in the 21st Century explores the philosophical dimension of higher education systems in Africa by analysing its ontological, epistemological and ethical foundations.

Bringing a needed perspective on African Epistemologies on the critical topics of higher education in relation to knowledge systems, this book highlights how knowledge creation processes influence higher education systems, society, and African development. This book uses an interdisciplinary approach to frame the connections between academic knowledge systems. Specifically, it seeks to answer questions on the trends in knowledge mobility, histories, and sociological dimensions in knowledge production in post-colonial Africa. The discussion explores how existing knowledge systems can better align with past and present narratives throughout African history and philosophies. The primary thought behind this book is to deconstruct the idea of a free market, the issue of corruption, racism and the neoliberalist approach to knowledge creation and transmission. Thus, it seeks to answer questions on the history and sociological dimensions of knowledge production in higher education. The book argues that African epistemologies can be better understood by investigating present sociologies and histories shaping African higher education research. Researchers and university students in the field of sociology of education, economics of education, higher education and policy will find this book very useful.

This book brings together voices from the Global South and Global North to think through what it means, in practice, to decolonise contemporary higher education. Occasionally, a theoretical concept arises in academic debate that cuts across individual disciplines. Such concepts – which may well have already been in use and debated for some time - become suddenly newly and increasingly important at a particular historical juncture. Right now, debates around decolonisation are on the rise globally, as we become increasingly aware that many of the old power imbalances brought into play by colonialism have not gone away in the present. The authors in this volume bring theories of decoloniality into conversation with the structural, cultural, institutional, relational and personal logics of curriculum, pedagogy and teaching practice. What is enabled, in practice, when academics set out to decolonize their teaching spaces? What commonalities and differences are there where academics set out to do so in universities across disparate political and geographical spaces? This book explores what is at stake when decolonial work is taken from the level of theory into actual practice. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Third World Thematics.

This book focuses on understandings of higher education in relation to notions of decoloniality and decolonization in southern Africa. The volume draws on a range of case studies in multiple politico-cultural contexts on the African continent, and examines some of the challenges to be overcome in order to achieve education for decolonization and decoloniality. Acknowledging that patterns of exclusion, inequality and injustice are still prevalent in the African higher education landscape, the editors and contributors proffer bold attempts at democratizing education and examine how to cultivate just, equal and diverse pedagogical relations. Featuring case studies from South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, the authors and editors examine how higher education can be further democratized and transformed along the lines of equality, liberty and recognition of diversity. This hopeful and bold collection will be of interest to scholars of decoloniality and decolonization in higher education, as well as higher education in southern Africa more specifically.

The chapters in this book highlight the possibilities and complexities of putting decolonial theory to work in higher education in Northern and Southern contexts across the globe. This book looks at decolonial work as praxis involving transformation at a range of levels from theoretical development, national policy, institutional policy and culture, academic discipline, programme, course, classroom, student and the self. Our authors argue that praxis in their contexts includes working at institutional level to undo the historical power of ‘coloniality’ in universities in the metropoles, introducing Indigenous knowledges into curricula and undoing the effects of ‘coloniality’ in embodiment, temporality and whiteness. We, as editors, argue for the need for transformation of the self as well as structures, and highlight qualities such as reflexivity on our own entanglements with coloniality, and why they occur, in this undoing. The approach offered in this book emphasises the connection between significant personal change as a pre-condition and an epistemological process to connect critical decolonial theory and our teaching practice. The book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Teaching in Higher Education.