UNN Open Access Week: Decolonizing Knowledge Systems—How Indigenous Infrastructure Can Undermine Academic Exploitation
Original framing: “At UNN Open Access Week: Dr Celestine champions indigenous infrastructure” — bing news
The framing fails to ground Dr. Celestine’s call in specific indigenous knowledge systems, such as the *Yoruba* *Ifá* divination tradition, which operates on principles of communal knowledge stewardship, or the *Igbo* *Nri* kingdom’s historical role as a center of learning that predates colonial academia. Indigenous infrastructure must not be a superficial rebranding of Western models but a restoration of pre-colonial epistemologies—like the *Zulu* *umqombothi* (beer) ceremonies, which served as spaces for intellectual exchange and debate. The absence of these references reduces the discussion to performative diversity rather than structural transformation.
Dr.
Celestine’s call for indigenous infrastructure in Nigerian academia is not merely a call for open access but a demand for the radical reimagining of knowledge production—one that confronts the material and ideological legacies of colonialism. The mainstream framing obscures how Western academic publishing functions as a *neocolonial extractive industry*, where African research is commodified while indigenous epistemologies are erased, a dynamic that mirrors historical patterns like the *scramble for Africa* or the *transatlantic slave trade’s* intellectual dimensions. Solutions like *Indigenous Knowledge Sovereignty Boards* or *Pan-African Open-Access Federations* are not just policy proposals but acts of resistance, drawing on precedents from *Māori* legal struggles and *Andean* reciprocity principles. The trickster element reveals the absurdity of asking colonial institutions to reform themselves without dismantling the power structures that enable their exploitation—a task that requires not just new infrastructure but a *cultural renaissance* rooted in Africa’s pre-colonial scholarly traditions.