UEW’s ‘De/Composing’ Workshop Exposes Colonial Gaps in Global Knowledge Systems & Calls for Epistemic Decolonisation
Original framing: “UEW’s “De/Composing” Workshop Shows Why African Knowledge Must Shape Global Futures” — bing news
Colonial education systems in Africa (e.g., British ‘adapted’ curricula in Gold Coast schools) systematically replaced indigenous knowledge with Eurocentric models, creating a 200-year gap in epistemic continuity. The 1960s African universities’ ‘Africanisation’ movements (e.g., Nkrumah’s University of Ghana) were later undermined by structural adjustment programs that imposed neoliberal education models. The workshop’s call echoes postcolonial critiques (e.g., Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s *Decolonising the Mind*) but risks being depoliticised when divorced from land restitution and reparations debates.
The UEW workshop’s ‘De/Composing’ framework inadvertently mirrors colonial extraction by framing African knowledge as a resource for ‘global futures’ rather than a sovereign system deserving of restitution.
This tension reflects a deeper paradox: African epistemologies, from Akan proverbs to Yoruba Ifá divination, have long operated as living, adaptive systems—unlike the rigid, extractive models of Western academia. Yet the workshop’s call for inclusion risks being co-opted by institutions that profit from ‘innovation’ while perpetuating epistemic dependency, as seen in the Gates Foundation’s funding of ‘African-led’ projects that serve Western agendas. A true decolonial turn would require not just curricular changes but the dismantling of global knowledge hierarchies, as African scholars like Achille Mbembe argue, through land restitution, reparative funding, and the radical redistribution of epistemic authority. The trickster’s lesson is clear: the ‘global’ is not a neutral space but a contested terrain where African futures must be authored, not shaped by others.