The colonial experience in Africa, characterised by an exhibition of Eurocentric attitudes which questioned the very humanity of the colonised, upheld ‘Whiteness’ as the standard of purity and civilisation. It also subjugated the endogenous epistemologies of the colonised to the ‘pure’ epistemologies and worldviews of the colonialists. This experience occasioned a disruption of the organic trend of Africa’s development, truncating its socio-political and economic trajectories and stagnating/dest…
Read moreThe colonial experience in Africa, characterised by an exhibition of Eurocentric attitudes which questioned the very humanity of the colonised, upheld ‘Whiteness’ as the standard of purity and civilisation. It also subjugated the endogenous epistemologies of the colonised to the ‘pure’ epistemologies and worldviews of the colonialists. This experience occasioned a disruption of the organic trend of Africa’s development, truncating its socio-political and economic trajectories and stagnating/destroying traditional African socio-political values and institutions through its imposition of western standards on colonised societies. The resultant effect – an epistemicide against pre-colonial epistemes, suppressing, vilifying and/or partially destroying such epistemes and labelling them as local, uncivilised and traditional. In contrast, the colonial-imposed Eurocentric, western episteme was upheld as modern and civilised, the standard to which all other knowledge systems had to comply. Such Eurocentric hegemony persists to date. This chapter, therefore, builds on the notion of ‘colonial legacy’ as an insidious challenge to Africa’s development. Utilising the analytic and synthetic methodologies, it avers that epistemic decolonisation is an essential factor in development ethics. Epistemic decolonisation, the demand for the dismantling of Eurocentric hegemonies in African educational systems, and its replacement with African-centered epistemes which identify Africa as the heuristic core of the episteme presents as an imperative for justice, a means for Africans to (re)construct their worldviews to reflect themselves as the centre of such worldviews in relationship with others and for the African educational curricula to be (re)constructed to reflect contextual concerns.