What Would the Decolonisation of a Political Science Curriculum Entail? Lessons to be Learnt From the East African Experience at the Federal University of East Africa

ABSTRACT

The #FeesMustFall Movement in 2015 invoked old calls for free education, decolonization and Africanisation of the curriculum, which have deep roots in African political history. From the 1920s, Africans expressed utmost discomfort about the fact that their education systems had been relegated to the periphery and replaced by Western education systems. The school curriculum did not resonate with the reality on the ground and university colleges taught a foreign curriculum. At independence in the 1960s, African countries engaged in intense debates regarding the decolonisation and Africanisation of the curriculum at national universities. Against this backdrop, in this article, we look at Political Science as an academic discipline and extrapolate what it would entail to decolonise and Africanise its curriculum. Using the experiences at the Federal University of East Africa as a reference point, we conclude that the task is not insurmountable and propose a vanguard approach in making this happen.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.