Africa Education Review
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raer20
Moments Of Dislocation: Reflections on the
Colonial Vestiges Embedded in African Higher
Education
Delali Amuzu
To cite this article: Delali Amuzu (2022) Moments Of Dislocation: Reflections on the Colonial
Vestiges Embedded in African Higher Education, Africa Education Review, 19:1, 15-33, DOI:
10.1080/18146627.2022.2150241
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Published online: 05 May 2023.
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Article 
Moments Of Dislocation: Reflections on the 
Colonial Vestiges Embedded in African Higher 
Education 
Delali Amuzu 
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3904-3334 
University of Ghana 
delamuzu@ug.edu.gh 
Abstract  
Africans have exhibited tremendous resilience, coping abilities, and strategies 
to survive in multiple spaces globally despite the tensions and challenges 
associated with the Euro-colonial enterprise. However, the charge to liberate the 
African mind remains unabated and requires the unpacking of the complexities 
of the colonial schema, to advance African agency. The colonial is alive and a 
lack of scrutiny frustrates an understanding of its nuances and the guises in 
which it manifests, causing the colonised to perpetuate its plans in ignorance. 
The article presents selected areas where Africans have been de-centred in 
consciousness. Termed “moments of dislocation,” these areas are historical, 
linguistic, inferiorisation of the African being, and journey to the West. 
Although these themes may not be exhaustive, they offer a path to instigate or 
sustain conversations about the insidious effects of the colonial, and potentially 
inculcated into discourses and praxis towards mental liberation. Identifying 
these disorders contributes to the comprehension of coloniality of knowledge, 
schooling, power, and being. Through critical African education, these concepts 
would receive unremitting scrutiny for African agency. 
Keywords: higher education; decolonisation; colonial education; critical African 
education; African culture   
 
 
Africa Education Review https://doi.org/10.1080/18146627.2022.2150241 
www.tandfonline.com/RAER ISSN 1753-5921 (Online), ISSN 1814-6627 (Print) 
Volume 19 | Number 1 | 2022 | pp. 15–33 © Unisa Press 2023 
 
Amuzu 
Introduction  
The centrality of culture in framing humanity and human endeavours is indispensable. 
Socialisation, through its multiple agents and forms, remains the vehicle to transmit and 
sustain culture. In a much broader and deeper sense, this socialisation process is what 
we call education. And it is in furtherance of the indispensability of culture to humanity 
and also meaningful education that scholars endorse culture and cultural perspectives to 
shape any worthy system of education (see Dei 2009; Mbiti 2015; Sesanti 2019; Tamale, 
2020). According to Mbiti (2015, 7–8): 
The word culture covers many things, such as the way people live, behave and act, and 
their physical as well as their intellectual achievements. Culture shows itself in art and 
literature, dance, music and drama, in the styles of building houses and of people’s 
clothing, in social organizations and political systems, in religion, ethics, morals and 
philosophy, in the customs and institutions of the people, in their values and laws, and 
in their economic life.  
Mbiti’s extensive and meticulous conceptualisation illustrates the profound scope of 
culture in human activities. Culture is fundamental to all forms of education because it 
is the ideology that informs a person’s humanity and employs tools like literature, 
music, dance, and clothing, among others, to perpetuate itself. It is with this mindset 
that African scholars must continue the multilayered analysis of the hegemonic cultural 
aspirations of European colonialism in Africa. 
European colonialism in Africa created a binary between African and European 
cultures, and hierarchised them (Nkrumah 1963). To the colonists, African culture was 
unworthy, hence the civilising mission. The condescending dispositions towards 
African culture upset the humanity of Africans, treating adherents of the culture with 
contempt. Natives socialised in the domineering culture tend to denigrate their own 
culture because of privilege and power. While culture and identity are sites of 
postmodernist discourses and scrutiny, highlighting the fluidity embedded in such 
conceptions, there appears to be a prevailing cultural insufficiency, nervousness, and 
cynicism among Africans. The damage to Africa’s past and the ignorance of the totality 
of African history fuels the outlook that African cultural worldviews are insignificant, 
thus the urge for abandonment. 
Awakening African cultural consciousness in education is crucial to the nurture of an 
African identity and economic and technological advancements. I argue for the rescue 
of the best of Africa’s antiquity in relation to contemporary realities because of the 
sustained negative stereotypes and perceptions of Africans. Totally abandoning the past 
threatens the future because of its influence in shaping human endeavours. For Africans, 
dislocated by European and Arabian imaginations and constructs, it becomes important 
for a renaissance in African cultural worldviews for pride and agency. 
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While the schooled (“educated”) African is critiqued for lacking African agency in 
almost all facets of life (Amuzu 2019, 2021; Nketsia 2013), they should escape blame 
because they lack appropriate socialisation. To embrace Europe is still seen as 
“modernity,” while embodying Africa is backward or “traditional.” Even when things 
African are embraced, it must satisfy a certain European standard or be cleansed in 
“Euro-sanctity.” For instance, Ghanaians commonly perform two marriage 
ceremonies/rites; first, the traditional rites before proceeding to the church for blessings, 
as if the former is not sacred. Ghanaians tend to forget that a great deal of human 
symbolisms and representations are fundamentally traditional, be it clothes, 
technologies, or outlooks on life. In the intelligentsia, it is common to find debates and 
discussions on the theme “Tradition versus Modernity.” While the issues of modernity 
(see Gyekye 1997; Wallerstein 1995) and the postmodern (see Bertens 2003; 
Wallerstein 1995) have received deserved attention, these conversations seem not to 
attract critical interrogation in the African academe. Indeed, what is “modern” (as also 
suggested in notions of the postmodern) will continually be conceptually abstract, 
expansive, and plural. Yesterday’s modern is today’s ancient and today’s modern, 
tomorrow’s ancient. Also, the fact that the pyramids of Giza continue to baffle 
contemporary science does not make them modern. Apart from novel 
inventions/phenomena, the modern is essentially improving traditional ways to suit 
present and future needs. Simply put, it is the traditional that is enhanced or modernised. 
The quest for modernity should not instigate the abandonment of worthy 
traditions/culture or the haste to replace them without meaningful consideration of 
“cultural politics.” The aspiration should seek to improve African traditions and culture 
to meet present-day needs. 
According to Nketsia (2013), African culture remains visible despite Arab and 
European attacks. This visibility does not radiate into national governance, education, 
leadership, and economics because “highly educated” is trapped in a binary of devotions 
and realities: the bait of “Euro modernity” branded by individualism or African cultural 
expectations that eschew values of individualism. Similarly, Kasongo (2010, 314) 
argues, “One could infer that when Westernisation was imported to African countries, 
the hidden side of modernism was materialist interests. Civilisation was just another 
concept of domination: imposition of incoming new culture over traditional cultural 
values.” Obanya (2011, xxv), sharing his view on cultural relevance and the symbiotic 
relationship it has with any worthwhile process of education, observes: 
In all other parts of the world, the educated is usually the cultured; in Africa, the 
educated is the de-cultured. Educational reforms undertaken in the continent since the 
1960s have not strictly addressed these fundamental issues. Instead, reforms have 
simply tinkered with curricula, school calendar and the mere proliferation of institutions. 
In support, Tangwa (2011) notes that ideas such as ethics, education, and culture are 
allied concepts in traditional African education. So “it goes without saying that culture 
is central for any system of education, and inevitably so” (102). Culture therefore 
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structures and embodies modes of judgment. Culture functions to construct social 
organisations, conception of the material and immaterial world, and perception of “Self” 
in relation to others. Despite the strong supposition for African higher education to be 
shaped by African culture, no culture is static and I do not assume the indefinite 
preservation of the authenticity of African culture. African culture will continue to 
receive influences, but its foundations must remain. Worthy aspects must be kept and 
enhanced, while undesirable aspects must be extinguished because, ultimately, cultural 
destruction bequeaths ignorance and inappropriate behaviour. 
The impact of European colonialism in Africa is multidimensional, bequeathing many 
systems and structures rooted in its schema. The lack of agency reflects in performing 
basic functions like naming children, where European (supposedly Christian) and 
Arabian (supposedly Islamic) names are revered. I join the many scholars who have 
argued that the African has been dislocated from their cultural centricity (see Ake 2012; 
Mbiti 2015; Nketsia 2013; Nwokeocha 2014). I call the occurrence of these anomalies 
“moments of dislocation” and this article categorises these moments. Although these 
dislocations are vast and it is virtually impossible to capture their full diversities and 
complexities, the article concentrates on the following dislocations: historical, 
linguistic, journey to the West, and inferiorisation of the African being—suggesting 
ways to improve these anomalies. Overall, the article argues that colonialism 
hoodwinked Africans; however, the relics of the colonial system, especially its agents 
of socialisation, make Africans co-authors in their mental enslavement. I discuss these 
moments of dislocation in connection with the call for African universities to re-
examine their activities to make education meaningful. 
The Moments of Dislocation 
I acknowledge the tensions of contemporary life in Africa with all its historical and 
contemporary difficulties and the tremendous resilience, coping abilities, and strategies 
Africans have employed to live in different spaces across the globe. However, the 
charge to liberate the African mind requires advocates to help to deconstruct the 
complexities embedded in the colonial schema. There is a need to segregate items, 
phenomena, ideas, and concepts among others and present them as specific elements 
worthy of interrogation to advance African agency. These moments of dislocation 
should guide, alert, and refresh the memory of educators and education stakeholders of 
the potential themes to inculcate in discourses and praxis towards mental liberation. I 
will now discuss the background leading to the moments of dislocation, their prevailing 
effect(s), and measures to redress them to promote African agency in education. 
Historical Dislocation  
Historical dislocation is arguably the most devastating discontinuity that can be inflicted 
on the consciousness of any individual or nation. European colonialism and Western 
education carved a new Africa, African, and African history devoid of any antiquity. In 
fact, it was and is still common to hear “educated” Africans say with pride that “African 
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history started with the European discovery of Africa.” These “educated” persons 
proudly denigrate their essence and being because they do not know better. History, 
according to Clarke (1994, 44), “Is a clock that people use to tell their political time of 
day. It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human 
geography.” However, that Africa is still grappling to develop contemporary systems, 
ideologies, and governance structures, among others, reflects the disconnection with its 
past because “History tells a people where they have been and what they have been … 
where they are and what they are. Most importantly, history tells a people where they 
still must go and what they still must be” (Clarke 1994, 44). 
Reiterating the importance of historical knowledge to any people, Chang (2006, 447) 
quotes Marcus Garvey as saying that “a people without the knowledge of their past 
history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” Similarly, Achebe (2012, i), 
writing on Biafra and the Nigerian civil war (1967–1970), cites the Igbo proverb that “a 
man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his 
body.” In line with Africa’s peculiar circumstances, Achebe (2012, i) states: 
The rain that beat Africa began four to five hundred years ago, from the “discovery” of 
Africa by Europe, through the transatlantic slave trade, to the Berlin Conference of 1885. 
That controversial gathering of the world’s leading European powers precipitated what 
we now call the Scramble for Africa, which created new boundaries that did violence to 
Africa’s ancient societies and resulted in tension-prone modern states. It took place 
without African consultation or representation, to say the least. 
The perspectives of Clarke, Achebe, and Garvey exemplify the importance of history. 
In Africa, Eurocentric considerations significantly shape the structure, content, and aims 
of education. Tokenistic considerations are granted to African worldviews, particularly 
its ancient history—it is either hidden, attributed to non-Africans, or viewed from anti-
African perspectives. Despite these visible machinations in scholarship, African 
literature, artefacts, and objects of historical significance rest in museums across Europe 
and North America. However, in designing a system that hails Europe and scorns Africa, 
Europe tied its emergence into global affairs with a distorted origin of Africa’s history, 
concealing or distorting what existed prior. Regrettably, Africans still hold on to the 
myth of the “discovery of Africa.” Hoskins (1992, 250) therefore indicts Eurocentric 
scholars of “500 years of distortion, falsification, and misrepresentation of the historical 
truth, with the sole purpose to ossify, defend, and perpetuate the Big Lie of European 
supremacy, invincibility, and originality co-terminus with the Big Lie of African 
inferiority and nothingness.” Since the Eurocentric agenda was to clothe Africa as 
needing “civilisation,” Clarke (1970, 3–4) insists:  
Civilization did not start in European countries and the rest of the world did not wait in 
darkness for the Europeans to bring the light. … Western historians have not been 
willing to admit that there is an African history to be written about and that this history 
predates the emergence of Europe by thousands of years. ... It is too often forgotten that, 
when the Europeans emerged and began to extend themselves into the broader world of 
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Africa and Asia during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they went on to colonize 
most of mankind. Later, they would colonize world scholarship, mainly to show or 
imply that Europeans were the only creators of what could be called a civilization. In 
order to accomplish this, the Europeans had to forget, or pretend to forget, all they 
previously knew about Africa. 
Asante (1996, 22) also shares his concerns:  
Not that the overthrow of the Latin-based model of education by the Greek-based one 
was not anticipated by the colleges and universities of the 19th century, but the 
enthroning of Greece at the head of every discipline in the West carried within it certain 
dangerous seeds of European hegemony that eventually would demand a response from 
non-Europeans. Almost in every quarter of the academy and from every continent have 
come those responses.  
Asante (1996) disputes the imposition of Eurocentrism as a universal way of knowing 
and the solitary root for educating. I concur with Asante that there is nothing wrong so 
long as Eurocentric views form the basis of European history and knowing. Asante, 
quoted in Turner (2002), faults the structure of African Studies in American and 
Western universities; it is limited in scope and denigrates Africa and Africans. Asante 
says Europe has removed Africa from its “position” and subjectivity, losing agency. At 
the moment, Africa is “only on the periphery of Europe. We could only become sane if 
we understood that we were agents in the world—not spectators, but participants in 
history, and actors in history” (Turner 2002, 717–18). 
History, undoubtedly, is an important tool for African transformation. African 
scholarship must interrogate the past to understand its dynamics and perceive history 
subjectively. African history should not only elicit the tragedies and recollection of 
misrepresentations. The past is always alive, hence the need to dislocate Africans 
historically to make Africa’s past unattractive. Europe then becomes a saviour, and the 
prevailing Western tastes, perspectives, lifestyles, and preferences reflect this 
redemption. 
Inferiorisation of the African Being  
The disparaging historical narratives about Africa inferiorised Africa and Africans in 
the world’s consciousness. To dominate and subjugate a people, it is crucial to make 
them imbibe and internalise a sense of inferiority. From the thirteenth century onwards, 
Europeans employed pseudo-scientific narratives to advance a course to despise 
Africans and justify their enslavement and subsequent colonisation. The Arabs had 
earlier (circa eighth century) employed similar means to enslave Africans (Azumah 
2014). The colonial school emerged with a trope of “enlightenment,” yet subtly 
engineered a subliminal promotion of a sense of inferiority. Whether intentionally or 
coincidentally, the word “black,” which is associated with Africans, has virtually no 
positives in its usage in the English language, the adopted lingua franca of many African 
countries. 
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The desire and schema to confer inferiority on “blackness” is reflected in the thoughts 
and deeds of many European leaders and scholars. For instance, in 1937 the former 
British prime minister, Winston Churchill, stated: 
I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of 
America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to 
these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise 
race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. (Hayden 2015) 
A prominent European scholar, Hegel, maligned Africans, equating them to animals and 
further claiming that Africa lacked history. This thought puts into perspective the 
treatment meted out to Africans in the West. Hegel is quoted as saying: 
The Negro, as already observed, exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and 
untamed state. We must put aside all thought of reverence and morality—all that we call 
feeling—if we would rightly comprehend him; there is nothing harmonious with 
humanity to be found in this type of character. (Georg 1956, 93) 
Abdi (2011, 85) also quotes Hegel: 
Africa is not interesting from the point of view of its own history … because Africa is 
in a state of barbarism and savagery which is preventing him from being an integral part 
of civilization. Africa, as far back as history goes, has remained closed and without links 
with the rest of the world. It is the country of gold which closed in on itself, the country 
of infancy, beyond the daylight of conscious history, wrapped in the blackness of night. 
Casely-Hayford (2012) further argues that there was an agenda to destroy, dismiss, and 
discredit ancient African achievements. Europeans fiercely disputed African feats in 
Great Zimbabwe, West Africa, Bunyoro, Buganda, and Benin. Even the movie, The 
Gods of Egypt (Iwanyk and Proyas 2016) cast “Whites” for lead roles—contrary to the 
African [Black] ethnic make-up of ancient Egypt in that era. The systems to sustain this 
agenda persist, however subtle they may appear. In scholarship, the origins of various 
academic disciplines are on either a Graeco-Roman pedestal or placed somewhere in 
Europe. However, Asante (2009) mentions Thales, Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, 
Solon, Lycurgus, Anaxagoras, Herodotus, Homer, Eudoxus, and other early Greek 
scholars as studying in Africa. According to the Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, 
Kemit (Egypt) was “visited by Orpheus and the poet Homer in the earliest times and in 
later times by many others, such as Pythagoras of Samos and Solon the lawgiver” (n.d., 
239). Diodorus says that Greeks admired Egyptian achievements “and for that reason 
those men who have won the greatest repute in intellectual things have been eager to 
visit Egypt in order to acquaint themselves with its laws and institutions, which they 
considered to be worthy of note” (239). In Book VII of Laws (Jowett 1925), Plato 
expressed disgust about education in Hellenes (Greek) compared with Kemit. He 
proclaims, “O my dear Cleinias, I, like yourself, have late in life heard with amazement 
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of our ignorance in these matters; to me we appear to be more like pigs than men, and I 
am quite ashamed, not only of myself, but of all Hellenes” (337). 
Some scholars have questioned the ethnicity (Africanness) of Kemit, including 
Professors Shinne (Canada), Mokhtar (contemporary Egypt), and Abdallah 
(contemporary Sudan). According to them, Africans did not construct that civilisation 
(Van-Sertima 1989). Therefore, at the UNESCO conference on “The Peopling of 
Ancient Egypt” in 1974, Diop (1978) employed a blend of linguistics, culture, and 
science to establish the commonality between the ancient Egyptians and the rest of the 
African continent, emphasising that the civilisation was built by Africans (Black 
people). Diop scientifically examined skeletal remains and cleansed skin pigmentation 
of mummified bodies to establish his case. Obenga (2004) also showed linguistic and 
philosophical commonalities between ancient Egyptians and other Africans. The 
UNESCO conference concluded that, although a “preparatory working paper sent out 
by UNESCO gave particulars of what was desired, not all participants had prepared 
communications comparable with the painstakingly researched contributions of 
Professors Cheikh Anta Diop and Obenga” (Diop 1978, 102). Bernal (1991, 2006) also 
showed the influence of Africa and Asia on early European civilisation. 
Asante (2007) consequently argued that unearthing Kemit threatened the foundations of 
Eurocentrism. To accept Kemit as “Black” automatically meant that “Geometry, 
mathematics, politics, sculpture, art, astronomy, medicine, and the names of gods owe 
their existence to the Black people” (56). He contended further that glorifying and 
imposing European histories on non-Europeans conferred notions of inferiority on non-
Europeans, especially Africans, given that Europeans put African at the bottom of their 
human ladder. Eurocentric education coerces African students to concede as “heroes 
and heroines individuals who defamed her people during their lifetime is being actually 
decentered, marginalized, and made a non-person, one whose aim in life might be some 
day to ‘shed her blackness’ as a badge of inferiority” (Asante 2007, 80). Asante says the 
doctrine that shapes American academe 
Seems to rest upon the belief that the European culture is the world’s only source of 
rational thought. Every sequence of courses in the disciplines seems to assume that 
whites created the foundations of all knowledge on the basis of European values. And 
there is rarely anything in the structure of the curriculum to challenge that assumption. 
(2007, 22) 
Alternative narratives have become necessary to entrust the requisite episteme needed 
to liberate the minds of both the colonised and coloniser. European expansionism has 
associated Africans with signs and symbolisms contemptuous of Africa and Africans, 
shattering self-confidence and instigating the desire to shed “Africanness.” However, 
Downing (2013, 139), citing Marcus Garvey, writes that “if you have no confidence in 
self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even 
before you have started.” A sense of inferiority diminishes human potential and when 
this inferiorised people are forced into systems that perpetuate low socio-economic 
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conditions, this belief is reinforced. Over time, they act and think according to their 
subjugated realities because they lack self-value, self-worth, and self-esteem. As Biko 
(1978, 68) articulates, “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the 
mind of the oppressed.” Asante (2007, 56) therefore says “the first step to liberation 
comes with being liberated in the mind.” Despite the dehumanisation of Africans, 
studying about Africa’s antiquity would lead to the realisation 
That this race of Black men, today our slave and the object of our scorn, is the very race 
to which we owe our arts, sciences, and even the use of speech! Just imagine, finally, 
that it is in the midst of people who call themselves the greatest friends of liberty and 
humanity that one has approved the most barbarous slavery, and questioned whether 
Black men have the same kind of intelligence as whites! (Volney 1787, 83)  
Linguistic Dislocation 
Closely linked with historical amnesia is linguistic dislocation. The pre-eminence of 
language to humanity is extremely profound, such that its loss or neglect has dire 
consequences for the individual and society. While this section will attempt to cover the 
important issues concerning linguistic dislocation, it definitely cannot cover the 
extensive scope of this anomaly. Language grants identity and connects people to a 
culture and lifestyle. A language’s significance in capturing the mind of people made it 
fundamental to the European colonial project.  
When a colonising force occupies a nation, the replacement of the local language with 
that of the colonisers is instrumental in disempowering the denizens of the occupied 
territory. If integral aspects of cultural identity and sense of purpose are embedded in 
language, then that may be altered by replacing local words with imported ones that 
reflect concepts useful to the invader. (Katz 2015, 559)  
It does not come as a surprise that European languages are privileged despite their 
disempowering tendencies to African consciousness. Whereas some Africans boast of 
their inability to speak African languages, other pretend not to speak them because of 
the fortification of European languages as tongues of nobility. According to Higgs 
(2012, 28–39):  
It is argued by protagonists of an African Renaissance in education, that the norm for 
educational achievement and success for African children and students is that of 
Western European capitalist elitist culture, where the English language is sacralized, and 
the internalization of bourgeois European values is seen as the index of progress.  
Ngara (2007, 8) blames the African elite for the perpetuation of the colonial status-quo 
as they “tend to marginalize indigenous cultures” and “some people measure success in 
life by the distance one moves away from one’s indigenous culture.” The use of foreign 
languages as the main medium of instruction in schools contributes to Africa’s 
underdevelopment because it hampers meaningful participation in learning. However, 
Bronteng, Berson, and Berson (2019) found that many Ghanaian parents were sceptical 
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about the policy that requires the use of mother-tongues in the early years of schooling. 
Apart from the privilege, status, and hegemonic attributes of the English language, the 
hesitancy could be because “The elite’s children attend local elite schools or go to 
schools abroad and come back as the flight been to or Made in USA” (Ngara 2007, 8). 
Commenting on the power dynamics associated with the English language, former 
Ghanaian president, Jerry John Rawlings, observed that Ghanaians have “adopted the 
language of the West without its integrity. We have used the English language as a 
symbol of authority and power but not as a symbol of respect and integrity” 
(Myjoyonline 2016). The dysfunctional effects and the limitations of European 
languages on Africans are multifaceted. They facilitate easy brainwashing and inhibit 
the essence of African cultural, economic, social, and spiritual being. According to 
Amegago (2000), English limits expressions in African performing arts because it 
struggles to reveal philosophical ideas, losing much in translation, thus stifling 
creativity. Nwokeocha (2014) postulated that the demarcations in Africa and the 
imposition of foreign languages frustrates and stalls the integration of Africans as it is 
easier to relate to the coloniser than other Africans. 
Despite the imperative to promote African local languages to develop them, the English 
language cannot be neglected because of its dominance across the globe. However, 
Africans should not privilege these foreign languages over local ones. Considering 
Africa’s multi-ethnic demography, African countries could nurture different 
community-based lingua francas. For African integration, other jurisdictions can follow 
the East African region by institutionalising Swahili. 
“Journey to the West” 
Although the West portrays Africa as “the problem” and Africans as “a social problem” 
(Hewitt, n.d., 4), the nature of African education drives Africans to constantly embark 
on a “journey to the West”—this is the state of the “educated” consciousness (Nsameng 
2004; Nukunya 2003). They are always running away from Africa’s Euro-constructed 
“primitive” past and “troubled” present. Ake (2012) sees Western social science as 
imperialistic because of its regular binary categorisation of things as “good” and 
“bad”—the good being Western and the bad linked with non-Western (especially 
Africa/Black). In this scope of analysis, development translates into westernisation and 
pursuing development becomes a desire to mimic the West. This notion of development 
“encourages dependence and inculcates a sense of inferiority in the people of developing 
countries” (Ake 2012, 11). Africans accommodating that narrative are “admitting their 
own inferiority and the superiority of the West. Their drive for development becomes a 
manifestation of their belief in their own inferiority and reinforces this belief” (Ake 
2012, 11). Such pursuits “involves looking up to the West since it occupies the superior 
and enviable position of having attained the ‘good’ state of being” (Ake 2012, 11).  
Kashoki (1982) accordingly contends that, despite the increase in African scholars, truly 
African scholarship is rare. According to Hoskins (1992, 250), the nature of African 
education makes it difficult for Africans to “extricate themselves from this vicious, 
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divisive, and deleterious Eurocentric psychological dependency complex.” As a result, 
the highly schooled African knows more about Europe than their own society (Nukunya 
2003). They are ignorant of “how their villages or traditional areas were governed but 
were expected to know the workings of the British Parliament, the American War of 
Independence and the British conquest of India” (Nukunya 2003, 141). Nukunya (2003, 
114) states that Eurocentric education makes the African admire “ballroom dancing” 
but perceives that “traditional dancing was for illiterates.” Furthermore, Nukunya 
(2003) writes that the “educated” “must put on European attire when going to work. 
Even outside the workplace he must dress up in a manner befitting his status, in suit, 
shirts and trousers, shoes and if necessary a hat to match” (141). Sometimes, “educated” 
Africans Europeanise or anglicise their names to “celebrate” their “emancipation.” As 
witnessed in the motion picture, Heritage Africa, an “educated” Ghanaian colonial 
administrator had to change his name from Kwesi Atta Abusomefi to Quincy Arthur 
Bosomfield to show his liberation (Europeanisation) (Ansah 1988). This journey, 
unfortunately, remains the focus of schooling in Africa. Ngara (2007, 8) thus argues that 
“African politicians merely pay lip service to the indigenization rhetoric but, in reality, 
they lack political will to effect the desired change in Africa.” 
Dupes or Catalysts? 
According to Rodney (2009), colonialism and colonial higher education plunged Africa 
into underdevelopment. Ake (2012) shares Rodney’s sentiment, saying that colonialism 
and everything it came with was to develop the colonising power. Colonialism sucked 
Africa into a system of exploitation that it is still grappling to extricate itself from, and 
according to Woddis (1967), the colonial venture was robbery. 
Some scholars have viewed colonialism as valuable to Africans. Western education 
transferred advanced technologies, healthcare amenities, and advanced systems of 
transport to the colonies. For instance, Frankema and van Waaijenburg (2005), Moradi 
(2009), and Austin, Baten, and Moradi (2012) contend that colonialism helped African 
colonies economically and the consequent relationship with former colonists has been 
worthwhile to African countries. 
It is worth mentioning that Africa had established political and governance systems and 
achieved technological advancement that would have made Africa progress creditably 
without enslavement and colonialism. Instead, the colonial scheme established powerful 
agents of socialisation in Africa to sustain its enterprise. The effects of white supremacy 
and the psychological dependency of the colonially educated African is reflected in their 
insistence on colonists replicating European universities in Africa (see Lulat 2003). 
While their disposition could be borne out of scepticism considering that Europeans 
questioned Africans’ intellectual capacity, Mbabuike (2001, 328) states that 
What we are currently witnessing in Africa is the metamorphosis of culture propelled 
by education and new ideas. The outcome so far is a slowly developing cultural hybrid, 
which is neither purely African nor predominantly Western. But the tragic irony in this 
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evolution is that the educational propulsion has significantly steered Africa in a 
retrogressive and authoritarian cultural direction.  
The complicity of Africans in European expansionism has often been exaggerated. 
Certainly, some insiders were complicit in these activities because the royal and 
commoner, for instance, experienced colonialism differently. However, I contend that 
the reason people are quick to point at African complicity is a product of the disrespect 
exhibited towards the African being—simply, it is easy to blame Africa and Africans 
without consequences. Indeed, similar arguments are not proffered to other people who 
suffered other forms of destruction. Europe duped Africa and designed systems of 
socialisation that make Africans catalysts in creating and sustaining conditions that lead 
to undignified lives. The critical question is whether Africans are conscious or 
unconscious catalysts. 
Way Forward  
According to Tamale (2020, 1), it is only with “an in-depth appreciation of the history 
of colonization and all its supporting discourses … that there can be a successful 
extrication from the bondage of colonization and domination.” To repel coloniality—
“invisible power structure that sustains colonial relations of exploitation and domination 
long after the end of direct colonialism” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2012 cited in Tamale 2020, 
xiii)—and its manifestation in knowledge, being, and power in Africa necessitates a 
higher education project: critical African education (CAE). I conceive CAE as a 
reflective process where Africans make critical efforts to nurture knowledge, skills, and 
attitudes beyond Euro-Asian thoughts, forms, ideals, and categorisations. It must 
endeavour to expose dominant hegemonies that silence the humanity of other people 
and their ways of knowing, striving to detach from such hegemonies. 
The CAE project must first instigate a confrontation and disruption of notions of 
epistemic hierarchies, ahistorical paradigms, implicit assumption of irrationality of the 
“Other” and of Eurocentric knowledge as universal. Despite the transformations in 
higher education, the clannish Eurocentric colonial philosophical foundations, 
privileges, content, and practices remain sturdy. CAE must extend beyond tokenistic 
tinkering of curricula without dealing with issues of philosophy, structures of privilege, 
and practices. As Higgs put it, 
This implies that, all educational curricula in Africa should have Africa as their focus, 
and as a result be indigenous-grounded and orientated. Failure to do so, it is argued, will 
mean that education becomes alien, oppressive and irrelevant, as is seen to be the case 
with the legacy of colonial and neo-colonial education systems in Africa. (Higgs 2012, 
39) 
The project ought to stress a political position of Afrocentricity and African 
consciousness. The discourse must push the understanding that contemporary African 
ways of being are largely products of colonial violence (Fanon 2004). They continue to 
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determine the values Africans employ to shape interactions at individual, societal, state, 
and inter-state levels. Education thus becomes central to exposing and striving to 
dismantle the asymmetrical power relations that were created based on uncritically 
accepted dominant narratives, assumptions that are reinforced through schooling and 
reiterated consciously or unconsciously. Importantly, teachers, scholars, and all 
stakeholders in education must frequently rethink education and employ methodologies 
that address the contextual biases against Africa. To this end, Africa’s classical 
civilisations and local knowledge (often disregarded) could pivot the analysis to 
map the histories and understanding of the ethos of Euro-colonial education and its 
multiple disordering predispositions. These should define the emphasis 
and countenance of CAE because the colonial single narrative about Africa and white 
privilege has resulted in structural legacies that disempower Africans, thus the need for 
counter-narratives. 
The second emphasis of the CAE project must consciously heed to and amplify the 
silenced and neglected African voices and narrative—Spivak’s (1988) subaltern. 
Grosfoguel (2007, 213) contends that subaltern epistemic perspectives are “knowledge 
coming from below that produces a critical perspective of hegemonic knowledge in the 
power relations involved.” Academics must consider collaborating with other like-
minded scholars whose ideas they could draft in the quest to dismantle colonial 
framings. Educational content and research must confront these dominant voices, 
explore local knowledge systems, and privilege subdued voices and local realities in 
ways that beneficiaries of schooling would find their realities meaningful and worthy of 
embrace. Educational policy initiatives should stipulate the centring of local culture and 
African worldviews in teaching and research; these could be tied to funding (if any). All 
students, irrespective of their programme of study, must be made to take compulsory 
courses in ancient African history and achievements to disabuse their minds of the 
worship of powerful hegemonies. 
Additionally, Euro-colonial education offers lots of promises, but inconsequential 
solutions to the African cultural crises it bequeaths. CAE, by situating African 
discourses in a meaningful context and framework, would likely steer learners to 
decipher the machinations that engineered present circumstances and conditions. In that 
case, being African will not be a badge of opprobrium to be cleansed through the 
acquisition of European values; rather, a people needing renaissance in multiple ways. 
This is important to help learners chart a path to self-determination and upholding their 
identities because the school operates in a largely culturally de-centred site with 
constricted structures. Attracting palpable criticisms must not prevent the pursuit to 
liberate succeeding generations, because an African consciousness might instigate the 
need for a struggle that offers optimism and the possibility of a better future. 
Universities must become sites for relevant cultural and political consciousness and 
resistance to nurture a “new African.” 
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A project of this nature must develop into a movement to achieve its fullest potential 
and impact. The depth of the task ahead is reflected in Tamale’s (2020, 3) claim that, 
currently, “perhaps with the exception of South Africa, Africa’s geopolitical and 
conceptual awareness about issues of decolonization and decoloniality remains very 
low.” Although debates about intellectual and cultural hegemony are not new to Africa, 
the dominant Eurocentric narratives have possibly sedated a significant part of the 
continent to think that the colonial is past and dead. A reminder to African scholars in 
the critical space to lead the conscientisation charge is needed. Another bottleneck is 
the structural and institutional challenges that frustrate and stall the development of such 
radical positions in the academe. Nevertheless, academics must leverage the “little 
power” they wield to start these thoughts in their classrooms, seminars, and other 
sites. Periodic conferences would also be beneficial, as it is these spots of action that are 
likely to aggregate into a movement.  
While I acknowledge the funding challenges in this pursuit, this is where African 
politicians must play a role in providing funds for such initiatives. CAE could 
potentially reform African higher education radically and uphold African cultural 
awareness through its activities.  
Concluding Remarks 
In Things Fall Apart, Achebe (2008, 141) summarises how colonialism dislocates the 
African. The following conversation should suffice: 
What has happened to that piece of land in dispute? Okonkwo asked.  
Obierika: The white man’s court has decided that it should belong to Nnama’s family, 
who had given much money to the white man’s messengers and interpreter.  
Okonkwo: Does the white man understand our custom about land? 
Obierika: How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our 
customs are bad, and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our 
customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned 
against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his 
religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won 
our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things 
that held us together and we have fallen apart.  
The colonial mindset continues to disorder the African mind. Resisting the coloniality 
of knowledge, and of being, requires a radical transformation of African education. This 
requires a complex journey to apprehend the essence of the colonial enterprise through 
a systematic extrication of the colonial tracks in its broadest and minutest sense to lay 
bare how various strands influence people, their societies, and the world. It is in this 
regard that the article examines how European expansionism dislocates Africans 
through a Eurocentric cultural imposition process designed to erase African 
consciousness. The task is for educators and all other stakeholders in education to 
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remain conscious of and challenge hegemonic Eurocentric standpoints and constructs 
that are hostile to Africans.  
The pursuit and mainstreaming of an African intellectual stance that provides 
frameworks to transform educational practice, theory, and research in Africa becomes 
critical. This article has considered schemes engineered to deny African thoughts, ideas, 
and agency. Positioned on the margins of dominant narratives, they present adverse 
implications for African educational theory, research, and practice. The activism to 
decolonise African education to include relevant methodologies and paradigms to chart 
a different course to offer future possibilities for meaningful education must not cease. 
Critical African scholarship must contest, de-construct, and re-construct the 
unfavourable imageries of Africa and Africans, not ignorantly regurgitating the falsities. 
Institutions of higher learning must depart from the colonially engineered function to 
uphold Eurocentric hegemonic power and domination. Scholars must interrogate 
Africa’s antiquity to bring to the fore alternative perspectives that boost Africa’s 
competitive edge. The quest to empower African learners must begin with emancipatory 
knowledge that offers them identity and cultural pride and work to liberate them from 
ways of thinking that function to oppress them. 
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