Decolonising higher education in Africa: Arriving at a glocal solution

Re-visiting the decolonising of South African higher education question: A systematic literature review

“…Given the entrenched current colonial character of South African universities, papers I reviewed here that advocate the decolonisation of the university (Fomunyan 2017;Mampane et al 2018;Zembylas 2018;Le Grange 2016;Murris 2016) seem to be consistent with the notion of radical reform. As Glissant (1997) rightly argues, the project of decoloniality must be thought of in terms of knowledge, power, becoming and affect.…”

“…In a study in one South African higher education institution, Mampane, Omidire and Aluko (2018) researched the perspectives of students from different nationalities across Africa about what decolonisation would entail. They adopted a questionnaire, interviews and focus group discussions as data collection instruments.…”

“…It must involve the imperative of intellectual and academic self-determination as well as the contextualisation of knowledge, research, teaching and learning (Kindiki et al 2019). As Mampane et al (2018), drawing from Winfield (2017) say, there is need for curricula that build on the best knowledge, skills and values from around the world. However, while the curriculum is the mainstay of what a university stands for, I argue that a university is broader than its curriculum.…”

Initiating decolonial praxis: childhood studies curricula in an English university

“…Children and childhoods may not be directly comparable across contexts, but they share similarities which allow us to draw parallels based on the experiences of certain groups of children being marginalised (Punch 2016). Such topics are timely in exploring colonial influences in our own context and the experiences of groups that are being excluded in order to maintain the local relevance of teaching (Mampane, Omidire, and Aluko 2018). However, we acknowledge that building understanding is ongoing work with the aim to expand the range of theories that students explore (Nakata et al 2012).…”

“…In its nature, a decolonised education is activist and makes use of the language, space, and authorial voice that we have as lecturers. Decolonisation is a process of highlighting the local versions of realities and developing knowledge that is relevant to students within their specific socio-cultural contexts whilst in line with globalisation processes (Mampane, Omidire, and Aluko 2018). We have begun to illustrate this in our practice by providing 'bodies of knowledge which equip students to participate culturally in particular spaces, providing them with a 'feel for the game' (Dennis 2018, 197).…”