Toward a Transformative African Curriculum for Higher Education

Abstract

Africans have inherited a Pan European Academy that has occupied almost all of the intellectual space in schools and universities. This Pan European Academy dominates theories, philosophies, and attitudes about research and knowledge, pushing Africans to the margins even in our own narratives of our history. This article is a heuristic toward an Afrocentric re-orientation to all epistemes in order to usher in a transformation of curricula in African universities. This essay asserts the necessity for African scholars to challenge the Pan European Academy’s standing as a universal system of knowledge in order to call into question the defamation of African agency and to institute the Afrocentric transformation of African education. In the end, all changes begin with the individual, and it is from this personal sense of purpose that we will transform the curriculum in a rational manner. I state three propositions: (1) the structure of our education has been totally corrupted by a Pan European Academy that has no interest in African knowledge for African interests; (2) the African people must completely break free from the encapsulating, stifling, and culturally demeaning curricula disseminated around the world by the Pan European Academy; and (3) our liberation will only be complete when we have liberated our minds to see ourselves as the sources of our episteme.

Keywords:

• Pan Africanism
• socialism
• Afrocentricity
• W. E. B. Du Bois
• Kwame Nkrumah
• African unity
• Manchester Pan African Congress