Decolonizing Knowledge, Education and Social Development: Africanist Perspectives

Abstract

Education is viewed, in general terms, as conductive to social development, intended her as the overall and contextual wellbeing of individuals, communities and societies. Both the ideational and select practices of development emerged and expanded in the past 70 or so years. With colonial education continuing unchallenged in ‘postcolonial’ Africa, complemented by the importation of prepackaged, non-functional development schemes, the need for knowledge and learning reconstructions are urgently needed in the continent. It is with that in mind that this paper undertakes both historical and actual analysis of the situation, beginning with the critical readings and relevant analytical, counter-colonial problematizations of Eurocentric and by extension, monocentric modalities of knowledge, education and development. To be sure, the arbitrary constructions of both the terra and persona Africana by European and Euro-American thought leaders who served as the theoretical vanguards for colonialism and contemporary global capitalist domination has led to, and sustains the current situation with respect to African educational and social development contexts. The appreciation of the historical analysis here, as critically attaching to current situations, is important in achieving the needed counter-Eurocentric discursive formations and related reconstructive educational and development possibilities.