Ramoupi, N.L.L.2019-12-232019-12-232017-03-01http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh/handle/123456789/34308SeminarThe past twenty years of our liberation have disappointed and failed African research and scholarship in South African higher education institutions. In this article, I provide examples of how we have failed to transform the higher education sector. The first example is drawn from two fieldwork studies I conducted at the Universities of Ghana, Legon and of Dar es Salaam on the subject of curriculum and content in higher education in Africa. At liberation, Kwame Nkrumah and Mwalimu Nyerere, founding Presidents of Ghana and Tanzania, respectively, were clear about what they wanted the role of the university and education to be in their independent countries. Nkrumah asked if the university would be permitted to proceed in its established pattern. And the answer for Nkrumah was a confident “No.” A radical shift away from the courses and degree structure already established at the University of Ghana, Legon was required. The President of Ghana knew that the function of the university in the postcolonial period was to study the history, culture and institutions, languages, arts, and heritage of Ghana and of Africa in new African-centred ways, free from the proportions of the colonial era. For Tanzania, “our first step,” said Nyerere, “must be to re-educate ourselves; to regain our former attitude of mind”; he spoke “of the need for an African university to provide an “African-orientated education,” an education aimed to meet “the present needs of Africa.”11 The point I make with Ghana and Tanzania is that there was a bold commitment to radically change the direction of their education systems that was absent in South Africa at the time of our liberation in 1994 (p.1).enliberationAfrican researchUniversities of Ghanapostcolonial periodArticle