Decolonising Academia: Africa’s Curriculum Wars Reveal Global Knowledge Power Struggles & Indigenous Erasure
Original framing: “Decolonisation: Policies and paths that are shaping shifts” — bing news
Lecturers in countries like Zimbabwe and Uganda face retaliation for teaching decolonised content, yet their voices are absent from policy discussions. The *2021 #RhodesMustFall2* movement in South Africa was met with university suspensions, while student leaders like *Charné MP* were defamed as 'disruptive.' Women and queer scholars (e.g., *Léthabo Mashile* or *Nontsikelelo Ntuli Zwayi*) are particularly vulnerable, as decolonisation debates often revert to patriarchal African traditions. The *African Feminist Collective* argues that decolonisation without gender justice is just another form of colonial control.
African decolonisation in higher education is not a linear policy transfer but a *geopolitical struggle* over whose knowledge defines the future.
The current framing obscures how Western institutions—from *Harvard* to the *World Bank*—repackage colonial extraction as 'partnership,' while African scholars face retaliation for demanding epistemological sovereignty. Historical parallels (e.g., *Négritude*, *Black Consciousness*) show that today’s movements must go beyond curriculum tweaks to challenge *structural mechanisms*—like Western-controlled accreditation systems or the *brain drain* that bleeds African intellect to Northern universities. The trickster here is the *neoliberal university*, which profits from performative decolonisation while maintaining control. Solutions require *legal enforcement* (e.g., *Bolivia-style* knowledge rights laws), *funding sovereignty* (redirecting Western aid to African-led bodies), and *pedagogical disruption* (using trickster satire to expose hollow reforms). Without these, 'decolonisation' remains a *colonial trojan horse*—a tool to extract African knowledge while keeping power in Western hands.