Decolonizing the African University Pedagogy Through Integrating African Indigenous Knowledge and Information Systems

Abstract

This chapter examines the prospects of reaffirming the importance of Africa’s indigenous knowledge in global scholarship. Since colonialism, there has been a persistent tendency for Western knowledge framers to demean African indigenous knowledge (AIK). This tendency has implications for the global cosmopolitan society where indigenous knowledge is commendably of benefit. The chapter suggests a convergence of Western knowledge and AIK bases to counter neocolonial hegemony in knowledge production. Such transformation supports the intellectualization and decolonization of the African university pedagogy by integration of indigenous knowledge. The attempt for colonialism to miseducate the colonized Africans suffocated the potential of AIK, a process that has been reproduced in post-colonial formal education. The chapter advocates for the reconsideration of the place and significance of AIK in the formal university pedagogy as a deliberate strategy to decolonize dominant hegemonic epistemology.