Structural and moral tenets of a decolonization index
Ideals propagated by the Bretton Woods institutions and discussed by future-makers inspired by modernization theory may be adjudged as hypocritical if they simultaneously insist on respect for various worldviews and yet draw up objectives and programs for ‘sustainable development’ that override indigenous African experience and knowledge. The conviction that they are indeed hypocritical intensifies with diagnoses that can hardly escape notice in the foregoing overview of agency in African future-making. One such is that inspirational African voices and foreign articulators have consistently pulled in different directions; and another is that extensive theorizing of decolonization in Africa has come with sparse proposals for its enactment. Additionally, the voices of rural Africa that are predominantly non-commercial farmers and African youth have hardly featured at the table of future-formation. This does not mean that young and rural Africans lack concerns for their future or platforms for expressing these concerns. I mean, rather, that the youth and rural folk exert negligible influence over institutions and structures that draft and oversee future-formation policy. And worse than the conceivable hypocrisy alluded to, is the injustice of placing the aspirations of young and rural Africans on probation forever. I maintain that a focus on research and curricula in African universities would serve as a good avenue to mitigate this injustice; and that my proposed toolkit for decolonizing tertiary education is pivotal for such mitigation, and a morally significant solution to these diagnoses.
But why is decolonizing tertiary education morally significant? A response to this question may be approached from the ends of education. There is near-universal agreement that formal education
1 By which I mean institutionalized instruction and learning in post-colonial polities. is meant to empower its beneficiaries. Often, the goal of formal education claims to provide equal and objective conditions for people to acquire knowledge and ability for self-elevation and contribution to social progress. On this understanding, formal education empowers people ‘to respond adequately to the existential conditions under which they live’. But the impression cannot be avoided, on minimum scrutiny, that the foundations and structure of tertiary teaching and learning in post-independence Africa seem to negate this often-supposed goal. Why so? First, such education continues the intention of colonial administration to train, in a European language, a select group as instruments of the ends of formal institutions in the public and private sectors of society. This makes the very ends of education ‘foreign to any notion of education for the masses’ and renders African beneficiaries misaligned with both their existential problems and technical knowledge bequeathed by their native cultures (Smet 1984: 85-86).
The upshot of such misalignment, in substantive terms, is that tertiary educational policy gives insufficient thought to what educators need to teach to achieve the goals of education stated earlier. Inattention to this need is evidently responsible for the prevailing misfit between the preconceived goal of empowerment and capacities produced by African universities to facilitate the meeting of this goal. Accordingly, tertiary education in Africa may seem to prevent propagation and acquisition of beneficial knowledge and skills to facilitate adequate responses to existential conditions; principally because its goals, methods, and ambience of transmission pay little heed to its cultural environment and life-needs of the majority of Africans.
Yet, pivotal positions of high-authority and policy formulation in the public and private sectors on the continent are, and will continue to be, occupied by university graduates. These reflections place tertiary educators in a morally significant position, i.e. to shape the future by shaping minds for prospective future-making solves the existential problems of the many. Hence the intent and practice of educating these future-makers must be uncompromisingly clear: to diminish the colonial content and elevate positive elements of indigenous intellectual history in their education. The question, then, is: how does one reform tertiary education to enable it to perform intentionally such practices that would enable them to appreciate their future as a cultural fact? Conducting tertiary education by means of a decolonization index, I suggest, would facilitate the achievement of this task and ameliorate the moral wrong of preventing agents from acquiring effective tools for constructing their own futures.
But how may devising such an index be approached? I suggest that we begin by acknowledging notable differences in conceptualizing ‘decoloniality’ among – and even within – humanistic and social scientific disciplines (Taiwo 2022: 6–7, 85). This first step in the process would serve to motivate scholars to generate an intra-and inter-disciplinary understanding of decoloniality in their fields, with emphasis on African needs and scholarship. From this common understanding, a set of core goals that the practice of conceptual decolonization entails in each discipline would have to be formulated. Equitable admission and discussion of diverse situated meanings of ‘concept’ and ‘decolonization’ would be key methodological premises for deliberations in search of consensus in these initial steps. This means that reasoned, situated meanings would have to be admitted as equal candidates in deliberation on what shared goals of decolonization are practicable. From here, the creators of the index would have to review the conceptual map and content of taught courses in the various disciplines to test whether they fit the set of practicable decolonial goals previously defined. The test will suggest what reforms of curricula are needed to produce decolonial minds and avoid inadvertent teaching and research that lubricate colonial engines in their discipline and produce educated citizens that boast little pride in their Africanness.
The next step would be to operationalize the agreed outcomes of curricula reform by designing metrics for an index to rank and measure the performance of teachers and researchers on their conceptual decolonization practice, and to guide improvement of their performance. Two further steps, to strengthen the monitoring and evaluation of the index for future refinement in the discipline, would be required. These are, first, documentation and analyses of the process to provide the basis for benchmarking the process for replication and refinement;
2 A tentative title of the volume could be Conceptual decolonization of African Universities: conceptions, processes and outcomes. and second, creation of a framework to nurture the growth of scholars engaging with the decolonial index, and for producing impactful decolonized research outputs.
Let me now attend to two concerns raised by a reviewer of this chapter (a different reviewer from the one mentioned in Footnote 1). This reviewer wondered whether ranking and measuring teachers’ and researchers’ performance on the index will not ‘invoke fear and diminish freedom for educators to pursue or propose different ideas in higher education learning?’ He also thought the index may impose a ‘hierarchy of performance on the index’, and wondered what such a hierarchy would imply. I think differently from the concern regarding fear and academic freedom. In my view, accessibility to review creates conditions for enlarging academic freedoms and innovative thinking, rather than diminishing them. Such assessment of teaching and research performance is, in fact, central to the growth of academicians and academic institutions. Also, I fail to see how the index would impose a hierarchy in tertiary institutions. I envisage, rather, an impartial and egalitarian positioning of disciplines. As suggested earlier, the first step in formulating the index would be an impartial, intra- and inter-disciplinary discussion of ‘concepts’ and ‘decolonization’, with emphasis on African needs and scholarship. If done properly, the common understanding and shared set of goals adopted as premises for the formulation process would strengthen consensus and a feeling of equality rather than imposing disciplinary hierarchies. The task of operationalizing the design, monitoring, and evaluation of the metrics for the index can be undertaken horizontally and vertically, and internally – by colleagues of the same rank and by more senior colleagues. And subsequent analysis to assess benchmarking for refining the index can also be done, largely, internally. The absence of an external assessing agent should strengthen rather than diminish confidence and collegiality.
Pan-African policy brims with thinking on the relationship between education and future-making, and creatively leveraging this will enable continental attention and operationalization needed to enhance the index’s success. At the institutional level, the AU leads in specifying these relationships. Toward this, the AU has drafted the Continental Education Strategy for Africa 2016–2025 (CEPA 16–25) to revitalize education systems and make them responsive to Agenda 2063 and Objective 4 of the SDGs (African Union 2016). CEPA 16–25 seeks to ‘reorient Africa’s education and training systems to meet the knowledge, competencies, skills, innovation and creativity required to nurture African core values and promote sustainable development on the continental levels’ (African Union Commission 2016: 21). But its twelve strategic objectives and implementation strategies are silent with regard to a proposal for decolonizing education and incorporating indigenous knowledge systems in the development of the knowledge and qualification frameworks needed to achieve the AU’s education vision. Decolonization impulses are also absent from the AU’s Continental Strategy for Technical and Vocational Education and Training; and from the 10-year Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa (STISA-2024). STISA is particularly relevant for this book’s emphasis on rural Africa, as it identifies Agriculture and Food Security as ‘a necessary foundation to achieve a sustainable African Renaissance’ (African Union 2014: 21). Indeed, eradicating hunger and achieving food security on the continent is the foremost priority of STISA-2024 (African Union 2014: 22).
STISA-2024 is particularly relevant for discussions of future-making and rural Africa, because of its emphasis on eradicating hunger and achieving food security in Africa. The economic significance of food security cannot be understated, for the possibility condition of a functional economy is food to secure the health and strength of a working population. In my view, STISA-2024’s food-security priority should serve as the conceptual platform for the Pan African University (PAU). Although PAU’s strategic objective is to ‘become a leading center of excellence in research and higher education for the advancement of Africa’ (African Union 2020) a decolonial focus is yet absent in its objectives and the thematic programs offered by its four institutes. STISA should guide PAU to devise strategies, inspired by my decolonization index, to ward off what has been recently termed ‘food colonialism’. An important aspect of food colonialism is the scant ownership of the development of seeds that grow staple foods in Africa. The current preponderance of genetically modified (GMO) seeds whose initial harvest yields no seeds for planting in subsequent seasons characterizes food colonialism. Cultivation of GMO seeds over indigenous seeds doesn’t only stamp out seeds that have repeatedly fed Africans. It is also responsible for prospectively eradicating agricultural technologies evolved over centuries of practice, and for progressive impoverishment of non-commercial African farmers. Determinate hybrid seeds are bought for cultivation by farmers every year. In addition to the seeds, pesticides, plant nutrients, and fertilizers must be procured to obtain plentiful yields. Yet, these costs are hardly affordable for rural non-commercial farmers. The increasing stranglehold on the means of food production by mostly non-African seeds and agrochemical companies promises progressive food colonization and subverts the AU’s goal of food security for Africa. It also signifies an impoverished future for rural Africa. The decolonization index can serve as a tool for restructuring agricultural science research and curricula in African universities to halt food colonization on the continent, and to reorient Africa’s education and training systems to meet the knowledge, creativity and competencies required to nurture core values for sustainable development.