Education 5.0: Addressing poverty of thought, academic imperialism

Gibson Nyikadzino-Herald Correspondent

One of the greatest indictments in post-colonial Africa’s academia is the centrality of exceptionally Eurocentric views in the study of many disciplines.

Disciplines such as economics, philosophy, sociology, politics and many others, have a disproportionate amount of material that borrow a lot from Western textbooks, even when these are translated to local or Africa’s languages.

What is even more depressing is that the histories of Africa, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, China, Latin America, the Caribbean and Western Asia are mainly given context by western knowledge production systems and largely influenced by Orientalist discourse.

Therefore, the construction of knowledge through this discourse that the West has been able to dominate the rest of the world and to legitimise its hold of the so-called “uncivilised” other, has consequences if Africans do not decolonise in entirety.

One of the most overlooked aspects in the process of decolonisation regards, in most cases, the use English as the medium of academia.

Already, that removes the essence of a level playing field as the majority of Africans are not native English language speakers.

Despite being somewhat fluent in English, it is not Africa’s native language.

The idea to decolonise the academia and institutions of knowledge production mean there is acknowledgement that the exotic knowledge that has been consumed for long is incapable of instituting self-governance in academia.

For instance, English economic historian Arnold Toynbee in his book, The Study of History summarised what the majority of the Westerners then and even today think about Africans.

“When we, Europeans, call people natives, we take away anything from them, anything that suggests that they are human being. They are to us like the forest which the Western fells down. Or the big game that he shoots down.

“They have no tenure of land. Their tenure of land is as precarious as that of animals they find. What shall we the Lords of creation, the white people, do with the natives we find?” wrote Toynbee.

However, the perpetuation of such ideas in Africa resemble that the “natives” are people who in Western lens should be exploited.

It is therefore important to get rid of this colonial, imperial and neo-colonial representation in the present day if Africans are to preserve knowledge for posterity.

There are people, Africans and non-Africans, who then believe these remarks as they are clearly westernised in orientation, ideology and thought. There are people, for example, who see themselves as ideologically attached to the West.

The other biases that have to be addressed by knowledge systems that are African generated is the presentation of the continent by Western scholarship as a monolithic entity.

This stereotype, however, influences the way people in the West or the metropolis view the rest of the world. This is primarily dangerous, because of its sheer power.

Western scholarship has also influenced the way in which some victims of its knowledge systems view themselves.

In other words, this develops a split consciousness, a scenario where a community of people views itself through its eyes, but at the same time, through the eyes of the Western metropolis or centre of power.

To buttress its power and strength, not only in academia, Western institutions use television, radio, books and the film industry as a simultaneous avenue to project its (mis)representations about Africa.

Television influences perceptions of the world. In many aspects of that regard, standards that end up being generally accepted are those from the West.

While in Africa people do not live in a void, it has to be considered that the systems of knowledge production that Africans want sustained should start from the revamping of their academic, social, economic and political institutions so they reflect their originality.

As Africans our operations should not be influenced by orientalist discourse, especially when it comes to academia, which is influenced by culture.

Laying the foundation on the changing academic realities is espoused in Zimbabwe’s Heritage Based curriculum and the Education 5.0 policy.

These two policies ought to broaden the scope of many fields to uphold the “think Zimbabwean, act globally” phenomenon regarding addressing contemporary challenges.

What is key is dealing with the challenges that face learners while the society do away with systems that constrained societal progress. It is also appropriate in other set-ups and environments to promote the “university without walls” concept where non-intellectual people generate ideas from their social milieu that address their common needs.

To continue using Western or Orientalist discourses in Africa’s education systems changes the way we do things. This forces us to think, act and even write within the parameters of Western discursive practices.

The progress that Zimbabwe is making in remedying this anomaly is an inspiring trajectory.