Coloniality of knowledge, hybridisation, and indigenous survival: exploring transnational higher education development in Africa from the 1920s to the 1960s

Abstract

This historical multi-case study uses the concepts of coloniality of knowledge, critical hybridity, and indigeneity in examining higher education development in Africa through the efforts of Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, two educational reformers and former international students in the USA. We develop a framework for examining how transnational interactions between the Global North and the Global South shape higher education development. Implications are presented for the importance of flexible theoretical understandings of transnational higher education interactions as well as higher education practices in international student and scholar exchange and other transnational higher education engagement.

Keywords:

• Transnational educational interactions
• critical hybridity
• indigeneity
• US coloniality of knowledge
• African higher education development

Notes

1. In 1932, the Higher College of Yaba was founded in Nigeria followed by the establishment of the University College Ibadan in 1944 (Anyanwu 2011; Ikejiani and Anowi 1964). In Ghana, the British colonial government founded Achimota College, a technical college modelled after Tuskegee College, in 1927 (Akurang-Parry 2007). This was followed by the establishment of the University College of the Gold Coast in 1948 (Akurang-Parry 2007).

2. Birth certificates were not commonly issued then so Kwame Nkrumah’s exact birthdate is unknown.