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Abstract
Education is viewed, in general terms, as conductive to social development, intended her as the overall and contextual wellbeing of individuals, communities and societies. Both the ideational and select practices of development emerged and expanded in the past 70 or so years. With colonial education continuing unchallenged in ‘postcolonial’ Africa, complemented by the importation of prepackaged, non-functional development schemes, the need for knowledge and learning reconstructions are urgently needed in the continent. It is with that in mind that this paper undertakes both historical and actual analysis of the situation, beginning with the critical readings and relevant analytical, counter-colonial problematizations of Eurocentric and by extension, monocentric modalities of knowledge, education and development. To be sure, the arbitrary constructions of both the terra and persona Africana by European and Euro-American thought leaders who served as the theoretical vanguards for colonialism and contemporary global capitalist domination has led to, and sustains the current situation with respect to African educational and social development contexts. The appreciation of the historical analysis here, as critically attaching to current situations, is important in achieving the needed counter-Eurocentric discursive formations and related reconstructive educational and development possibilities.
Contributors are: Levonne Abshire, Claire Alkouatli, David Anderson, Neda Asadi, N’Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba, Gulbahar Beckett, José Cossa, Ratna Ghosh, Shibao Guo, Yan Guo, Carl E. James, Dip Kapoor, Festus Kelonye Beru, Ginette Lafreniere, Qing Li, Oliver Masakure, Magnus Mfoafo-M'Carthy, Greg William Misiaszek, Dolana Mogadime, Samson Nashon, Selline Ooko, Bathseba Opini, Amy Parent, Thashika Pillay, Edward Shizha, Kimberley Tavares, Alison Taylor, and Stacey Wilson-Forsberg.
Contributors are: Levonne Abshire, Claire Alkouatli, David Anderson, Neda Asadi, N’Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba, Gulbahar Beckett, José Cossa, Ratna Ghosh, Shibao Guo, Yan Guo, Carl E. James, Dip Kapoor, Festus Kelonye Beru, Ginette Lafreniere, Qing Li, Oliver Masakure, Magnus Mfoafo-M'Carthy, Greg William Misiaszek, Dolana Mogadime, Samson Nashon, Selline Ooko, Bathseba Opini, Amy Parent, Thashika Pillay, Edward Shizha, Kimberley Tavares, Alison Taylor, and Stacey Wilson-Forsberg.
Abstract
This essay aims to engage, mainly from theoretical perspectives with analytical eclecticism, a historical and contemporary analysis of African educational and social developmental contexts. It relays the real colonial connections that are still attached to this context. The essay relates the historical location as well as the socio-cultural embeddedness of the African philosophy of Ubuntu, which may have indirectly facilitated the initial entry of colonialism. It critically locates the thick philosophical and epistemological problematics that have previously and again, post-factually limited the foundational reconstructions, and by extension, the relevance of Africa’s learning and related possibilities for achieving social well-being. At the end, the essay calls for the urgent decolonization of Africa’s philosophies and epistemologies of education, so that learning contexts can aid the now non-delinkable desires, indeed, needs for social development.