Decolonising African Higher Education

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.

Christopher B. Knaus is a global critical race practitioner focused on collaborative disruption of anti-Black education and the centring of Black and Indigenous affirming systems. Dr. Knaus serves as a Professor of Education at the University of Washington Tacoma and Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa.

Takako Mino is a scholar-practitioner, who studies and strives to actualise a humanising education. Dr. Mino serves as an adjunct lecturer at Ashesi University in Ghana and co-founder of upcoming Musizi University in Uganda.

Johannes Seroto is a research practitioner in Indigenous knowledge systems, the history of South African education, and colonial, post-colonial, and decolonisation studies. Dr. Seroto serves as a Professor of the History of Education at the University of South Africa.