8 - A Relevant Education for African Development—Some Epistemological Considerations
Corresponding Author(s) : Francis A. Nyamnjoh
Africa Development,
Vol. 29 No. 1 (2004): Africa Development: Special Issue on 'Philosophy and Development'
Abstract
This paper argues that education in Africa is the victim of a Western epistemological export that takes the form of science as ideology and hegemony. Under the Western epistemological export, education in Africa and/or for Africans has been like a pilgrimage to the Kilimanjaro of Western intellectual ideals, the tortuous route to Calvary for alternative ways of life. Sometimes, with rhetorical justification about the need to be competitive internationally, the practice has been for the elite to model education in Africa after educational institutions in the West, with little attempt at domestication. Education in Africa has been and mostly remains a journey fuelled by an exogenously induced and internalised sense of inadequacy in Africans, and endowed with the mission of devaluation or annihilation of African creativity, agency and value systems. Such cultural estrangement has served to reinforce in Africans self-devaluation and self-hatred and a profound sense of inferiority that in turn compels them to Tighten their darkness' both physically and metaphysically for Western gratification. The paper argues that the future of higher education in Africa can only be hopeful through a meticulous and creative process of cultural restitution and indigenisation even as African scholars continue to cooperate and converse with intellectual bedfellows in the West and elsewhere. If Africa is to be party to a global conversation of universities and scholars, it is only appropriate that it does so on its own terms, with the interests and concerns of ordinary Africans as the guiding principle.
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- Appadurai, A.,•'1999', 'Globalization and the Research Imagination', lnternatioSocial Science Journal, Vol. 51, No.!60, pp. 229-238.
- Bates, R., Mudimbe, V.Y., and O'Barr, J., 1993, Ajrica and the DisciplinChicago, The University of Chicago Press.
- Berger, 1., 1997, 'Contested Boundaries: African Studies Approaching Millennium Presidential Address to the 1996 African Studies Associa Annual Meeting', African Studies Review, Vol.40, No. 2, pp. 1-14.
- Cabral, A., Njinya-Mujinya, L., and Habomugisha, P., 1998, 'Published Rejected? African Intellectuals' Scripts and Foreign Joumals, Publishers Editors', Nordic Journal of African Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 83-94.
- Chinweizu, 1987, The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators Black Slav and the African Elite, Lagos, Preo Press.
- Comaroff, J. and J., 1997a, 'Ethnography of Afiica: The Usefulness of the UseI in R.R. Grinker and C.B. Steiner, eds., Perspectives on A/rica: A Reader in Cult History, and Representation, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 689-703
- Comarotf, J. and J. 1997b, Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics Modernity on a South AJ,-ican Frontier (Volume Two), Chicago, Chicé University Press.
- Copans, J., 1990, la longue Marche de la Modernité Afi"icaine: Savo Intellectuels, Démocratie, Paris, Karthala.
- Copans, J., 1993, 'Intellectuels Visibles, Intellectuels Invisibles', Politù Africaine, No.51, Octobre 1993, pp. 7-25.
- Crossman, P. and Devisch, R., 1999, Endogenisation and Afi-ïcan Universit1 Initiatives and Issues in the Questfàr Plurality in the Human Sciences, Lem The Netherlands, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
- Devisch, R., 2002, Endogenous Knowledge Practices, Cultures and Sciem Some Anthropological Perspectives, unpublished paper.
- Eagleton, T., 1991, ldeology: An Introduction, London, Verso.
- Fanon, F., 1967, The Wretched of the Earth, Hannondsworth, Penguin Book Fonlon, B., 1967, 'ldea of Culture (Il)' in ABBIA: Camemon Cultural Revi No.!6, March, pp. 5-24.
- Fonlon, B., 1978, The Genuine /ntellect11al, Yaounde: Buma Kor.
- Garcau, F.H., 1987, 'Expansion and Increasing Diversification of the Univers Social Science' in: International Social Science Journal, No. 114, pp. 595-t
- George, S., 1992, The Debt Boomerang: How Third World Debt Harms U,;London, Pluto Press.
- George, S., 1997, 'Winning the War ofldeas Dissent', h1tp://www.t11i.org/geo articles/dissent.htm.
- Hawking, S.W., 1990, A BriefHistmy of Time: From the Big Bang to Black HoLondon, Guild Publishing.
- Mafeje, A., 1988, 'Culture and Development in Africa: The Missing LiCODESRJA Bulletin, No. l, pp. 7-f
- Mafeje, A., 1998, 'Anthropology and lndependent Africans: Suicide or End of anEra?', African Sociological Review, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 1-43.
- Magubane, Z., 2004, Bringing the Empire Home: Race, Class, and Gender in B1°itain and Colonial South Ajrica, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Malusi, and Mpumlwana, T., eds., 1996, Steve Biko: I Write What l like,Randburg,Raven Press.
- Mamdani, M., 1990, The Intelligentsia, the State and Social Movements: Sorne Reflections on Experiences in Africa, Kampala, Centre for Basic Research.
- Mamdani, M., 1993, 'University Crisis and Refonn: A Reflection on the African Experience', Review of Afi·ican Political Economy, No.58, pp.7-19.
- Mamdani, M., 1996, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Afi·ica and the legacy of Late Colonialism, London, James Currey.
- Mazrui, A., 1986, The Africans: A Triple Heritage, London: BBC Publications. Mazrui, A., 1994, 'Development in a Mufti-Cultural Context: Trends and Tensions', in 1. Serageldin and J. Taboroff,
- eds., Culture and Development in Africa,Washington D.C., The World Bank, pp. 127-136.
- Mazrui, A., 2001, 'The African Renaissance: A Triple Legacy of SkiIls, Values and Gender' in: S.C.
- Saxena, ed., Africa Beyond 2000, Delhi, Kalinga Publications, pp.29-59.
- Mbembe, A., 1997 'The "thing" and its double in Cameroonian cartoons', in K. Barber, ed., Readings in African popular culture, Oxford, James Currey.
- Mbembe, A., 2000a, De la Postcolonie: Essai sur!'Imagination Politique dans l 'A/i·ique Contemporaine. Paris, Km1hala.
- Mbembe, A., 2000b, 'African Modes of Self-Writing' in: /dentity Culture and Politics: An Afi·o-Asian Dialogue, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 1-35.
- Mbcmbe, A., 2001, On the Postcolony, Berkeley: University ofCalifomia Press. Mkandawire, T., 1997, 'The Social Sciences in Africa: Breaking Local Barriers and Negotiating International Presencc. The Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola Distinguished Lecture Presented to the 1996 African Studies Association Annual Meeting', A/i-ican Studies Review, Vol.40, No. 2, pp. 15-36.
- Moore, H.L., and Sanders, T., eds., 2001, Magical !11terpretatio11s, Material Realities: Modernil)', Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Aji-ica, London, Routledge.
- Mudimbe, V.Y., 1988, The Inve11tio11 o/Afi-ica: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Orciero/Knowledge, London, James Currey.
- Ngugi wa Thiong'o, 1986, Decolonising the Minci: The Politics oflanguage in Afi·ican literature, London, James Currey.
- Ngugi wa Thiong'o, 1997, 'Dctaincd: A Writer's Prison Diary' in: R.R. Grinker and C.B. Steiner, eds., Perspectives 011 Aji-ica: A Reader in Culture, Histo,y, and Represe11tatio11, Oxford, Blackwcll Publishers, pp. 6! 3-622.
- Nossal, K.R., 1998, 'Tales that Tcxtbooks Tell: Ethnocentricity and Diversity in American Introductions to International Relations', http.il.1·ocse1T2.socsci. mcma.1·te,:rn/-poliscil/à Ilt, o/11os.1·aIlt ales.httNyamnjoh, F.B., 1999, 'Africa and the InformationSuperhighway: The Need forMitigated Euphoria', Ecquid Novi, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 31-49.
- Nyamnjoh, F.B., 2001, 'Delusions of Development and the Enrichment of Witchcraft Discourses in Cameroon' in H. Moore and T. Sanders, eds., Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa, London, Routledge, pp. 28-49.
- Nyamnjoh, F.B., 2002, "A child is one person's only in the womb': Domestication, Agency and Subjectivity in the Cameroonian Grassfields' in R. Werbner, ed., Postcolonial Subjectivities in Africa, London, Zed, pp. 111-138.
- Nyang, S.S., 1994, 'The Cultural Consequences ofDevelopment inAfrica' in: 1.
- Serageldin and J. Taboroff, eds., Culture and Development in Africa, Washington D.C., The World Bank, pp. 429-446.
- Obenga, T., 200 l, Le Sens de la Lutte Contre!'Africanisme Eurocentriste, Paris, Khepera and L'Harmattan.
- Okri, B., 1991, The Famished Road, London, Vintage Book.Olorunnisola, A.A., 2000, 'African Media, Information Providers and Emigrants as Collaborative Nodes in Virtual Social Networks', African Sociological Review, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 46-71.
- Onyejekwe, 0. 0., 1993, 'Sorne Disturbing Trends in Tertiary Education in Africa' in I. De Villiers, ed., Southern African Conference on the Restructuring of Education, Pretoria, Human Sciences Research Council, pp. 1-7.
- P'Bitek, O., 1989 [1966], Song of Lawino, Nairobi, East African Educational Publishers.
- Prah, K., I 998, 'African Scbolars and Africanist Scholarship', CODESRIA Bulletin, No. 3 and 4, pp. 25-31.
- Robinson, P., 1981, Perspectives on the Sociology of Education: An Introduction,London, Routledge and Kegan Paul..
- Rwomire, A., 1992, 'Education and Development: African Perspectives',Prospects, Vol. XXII, No. 2, pp. 227-239.
- Schiller, H., 1977, 'The Free Flow of Information-For Whom?' in G. Gerbner, ed., Mass Media
- Policies in Changing Cultures, London, John Wiley and Sons, pp. 105-15.
- Schipper, W.J.J., 1990a, 'The White Man Is Nobody's Friend: European Characters inAfricanFiction', in: Schipper, W.J.J., Idema, W.L., and Leyten, H.M., White and Black: Imagination and Cultural Confrontation (Bulletin 320), Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute -Amsterdam, pp. 31-53.
- Schipper, W.J.J., 1990b, 'Homo Caudatus: Imagination and Power in the Field of Literature', in: Schipper, W.J.J., Idema, W.L., and Leyten, H.M., White and Black: Imagination and Cultural Confrontation (Bulletin 320), Amsterdam: Royal Tropical lnstitute -Amsterdam, pp. 11-30.Sokal, A., and Bricmont, J., 1998, Intel/ectual Impostures, London, Profile Books Soyinka, W., 1994, 'Culture, Memory and Development', in I. Serageldin and J. Taboroff, eds., Culture and Development in Afi'ica, Washington D.C., TheWorld Bank, pp. 201-218.
References
Appadurai, A.,•'1999', 'Globalization and the Research Imagination', lnternatioSocial Science Journal, Vol. 51, No.!60, pp. 229-238.
Bates, R., Mudimbe, V.Y., and O'Barr, J., 1993, Ajrica and the DisciplinChicago, The University of Chicago Press.
Berger, 1., 1997, 'Contested Boundaries: African Studies Approaching Millennium Presidential Address to the 1996 African Studies Associa Annual Meeting', African Studies Review, Vol.40, No. 2, pp. 1-14.
Cabral, A., Njinya-Mujinya, L., and Habomugisha, P., 1998, 'Published Rejected? African Intellectuals' Scripts and Foreign Joumals, Publishers Editors', Nordic Journal of African Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 83-94.
Chinweizu, 1987, The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators Black Slav and the African Elite, Lagos, Preo Press.
Comaroff, J. and J., 1997a, 'Ethnography of Afiica: The Usefulness of the UseI in R.R. Grinker and C.B. Steiner, eds., Perspectives on A/rica: A Reader in Cult History, and Representation, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 689-703
Comarotf, J. and J. 1997b, Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics Modernity on a South AJ,-ican Frontier (Volume Two), Chicago, Chicé University Press.
Copans, J., 1990, la longue Marche de la Modernité Afi"icaine: Savo Intellectuels, Démocratie, Paris, Karthala.
Copans, J., 1993, 'Intellectuels Visibles, Intellectuels Invisibles', Politù Africaine, No.51, Octobre 1993, pp. 7-25.
Crossman, P. and Devisch, R., 1999, Endogenisation and Afi-ïcan Universit1 Initiatives and Issues in the Questfàr Plurality in the Human Sciences, Lem The Netherlands, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
Devisch, R., 2002, Endogenous Knowledge Practices, Cultures and Sciem Some Anthropological Perspectives, unpublished paper.
Eagleton, T., 1991, ldeology: An Introduction, London, Verso.
Fanon, F., 1967, The Wretched of the Earth, Hannondsworth, Penguin Book Fonlon, B., 1967, 'ldea of Culture (Il)' in ABBIA: Camemon Cultural Revi No.!6, March, pp. 5-24.
Fonlon, B., 1978, The Genuine /ntellect11al, Yaounde: Buma Kor.
Garcau, F.H., 1987, 'Expansion and Increasing Diversification of the Univers Social Science' in: International Social Science Journal, No. 114, pp. 595-t
George, S., 1992, The Debt Boomerang: How Third World Debt Harms U,;London, Pluto Press.
George, S., 1997, 'Winning the War ofldeas Dissent', h1tp://www.t11i.org/geo articles/dissent.htm.
Hawking, S.W., 1990, A BriefHistmy of Time: From the Big Bang to Black HoLondon, Guild Publishing.
Mafeje, A., 1988, 'Culture and Development in Africa: The Missing LiCODESRJA Bulletin, No. l, pp. 7-f
Mafeje, A., 1998, 'Anthropology and lndependent Africans: Suicide or End of anEra?', African Sociological Review, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 1-43.
Magubane, Z., 2004, Bringing the Empire Home: Race, Class, and Gender in B1°itain and Colonial South Ajrica, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Malusi, and Mpumlwana, T., eds., 1996, Steve Biko: I Write What l like,Randburg,Raven Press.
Mamdani, M., 1990, The Intelligentsia, the State and Social Movements: Sorne Reflections on Experiences in Africa, Kampala, Centre for Basic Research.
Mamdani, M., 1993, 'University Crisis and Refonn: A Reflection on the African Experience', Review of Afi·ican Political Economy, No.58, pp.7-19.
Mamdani, M., 1996, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Afi·ica and the legacy of Late Colonialism, London, James Currey.
Mazrui, A., 1986, The Africans: A Triple Heritage, London: BBC Publications. Mazrui, A., 1994, 'Development in a Mufti-Cultural Context: Trends and Tensions', in 1. Serageldin and J. Taboroff,
eds., Culture and Development in Africa,Washington D.C., The World Bank, pp. 127-136.
Mazrui, A., 2001, 'The African Renaissance: A Triple Legacy of SkiIls, Values and Gender' in: S.C.
Saxena, ed., Africa Beyond 2000, Delhi, Kalinga Publications, pp.29-59.
Mbembe, A., 1997 'The "thing" and its double in Cameroonian cartoons', in K. Barber, ed., Readings in African popular culture, Oxford, James Currey.
Mbembe, A., 2000a, De la Postcolonie: Essai sur!'Imagination Politique dans l 'A/i·ique Contemporaine. Paris, Km1hala.
Mbembe, A., 2000b, 'African Modes of Self-Writing' in: /dentity Culture and Politics: An Afi·o-Asian Dialogue, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 1-35.
Mbcmbe, A., 2001, On the Postcolony, Berkeley: University ofCalifomia Press. Mkandawire, T., 1997, 'The Social Sciences in Africa: Breaking Local Barriers and Negotiating International Presencc. The Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola Distinguished Lecture Presented to the 1996 African Studies Association Annual Meeting', A/i-ican Studies Review, Vol.40, No. 2, pp. 15-36.
Moore, H.L., and Sanders, T., eds., 2001, Magical !11terpretatio11s, Material Realities: Modernil)', Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Aji-ica, London, Routledge.
Mudimbe, V.Y., 1988, The Inve11tio11 o/Afi-ica: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Orciero/Knowledge, London, James Currey.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, 1986, Decolonising the Minci: The Politics oflanguage in Afi·ican literature, London, James Currey.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, 1997, 'Dctaincd: A Writer's Prison Diary' in: R.R. Grinker and C.B. Steiner, eds., Perspectives 011 Aji-ica: A Reader in Culture, Histo,y, and Represe11tatio11, Oxford, Blackwcll Publishers, pp. 6! 3-622.
Nossal, K.R., 1998, 'Tales that Tcxtbooks Tell: Ethnocentricity and Diversity in American Introductions to International Relations', http.il.1·ocse1T2.socsci. mcma.1·te,:rn/-poliscil/à Ilt, o/11os.1·aIlt ales.httNyamnjoh, F.B., 1999, 'Africa and the InformationSuperhighway: The Need forMitigated Euphoria', Ecquid Novi, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 31-49.
Nyamnjoh, F.B., 2001, 'Delusions of Development and the Enrichment of Witchcraft Discourses in Cameroon' in H. Moore and T. Sanders, eds., Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa, London, Routledge, pp. 28-49.
Nyamnjoh, F.B., 2002, "A child is one person's only in the womb': Domestication, Agency and Subjectivity in the Cameroonian Grassfields' in R. Werbner, ed., Postcolonial Subjectivities in Africa, London, Zed, pp. 111-138.
Nyang, S.S., 1994, 'The Cultural Consequences ofDevelopment inAfrica' in: 1.
Serageldin and J. Taboroff, eds., Culture and Development in Africa, Washington D.C., The World Bank, pp. 429-446.
Obenga, T., 200 l, Le Sens de la Lutte Contre!'Africanisme Eurocentriste, Paris, Khepera and L'Harmattan.
Okri, B., 1991, The Famished Road, London, Vintage Book.Olorunnisola, A.A., 2000, 'African Media, Information Providers and Emigrants as Collaborative Nodes in Virtual Social Networks', African Sociological Review, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 46-71.
Onyejekwe, 0. 0., 1993, 'Sorne Disturbing Trends in Tertiary Education in Africa' in I. De Villiers, ed., Southern African Conference on the Restructuring of Education, Pretoria, Human Sciences Research Council, pp. 1-7.
P'Bitek, O., 1989 [1966], Song of Lawino, Nairobi, East African Educational Publishers.
Prah, K., I 998, 'African Scbolars and Africanist Scholarship', CODESRIA Bulletin, No. 3 and 4, pp. 25-31.
Robinson, P., 1981, Perspectives on the Sociology of Education: An Introduction,London, Routledge and Kegan Paul..
Rwomire, A., 1992, 'Education and Development: African Perspectives',Prospects, Vol. XXII, No. 2, pp. 227-239.
Schiller, H., 1977, 'The Free Flow of Information-For Whom?' in G. Gerbner, ed., Mass Media
Policies in Changing Cultures, London, John Wiley and Sons, pp. 105-15.
Schipper, W.J.J., 1990a, 'The White Man Is Nobody's Friend: European Characters inAfricanFiction', in: Schipper, W.J.J., Idema, W.L., and Leyten, H.M., White and Black: Imagination and Cultural Confrontation (Bulletin 320), Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute -Amsterdam, pp. 31-53.
Schipper, W.J.J., 1990b, 'Homo Caudatus: Imagination and Power in the Field of Literature', in: Schipper, W.J.J., Idema, W.L., and Leyten, H.M., White and Black: Imagination and Cultural Confrontation (Bulletin 320), Amsterdam: Royal Tropical lnstitute -Amsterdam, pp. 11-30.Sokal, A., and Bricmont, J., 1998, Intel/ectual Impostures, London, Profile Books Soyinka, W., 1994, 'Culture, Memory and Development', in I. Serageldin and J. Taboroff, eds., Culture and Development in Afi'ica, Washington D.C., TheWorld Bank, pp. 201-218.