Francis Nyamnjoh: March 2012

About Francis Nyamnjoh

Francis B. Nyamnjoh is Professor of anthropology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa
Department of Social Anthropology University of Cape Town
5.23 Arts Building
Private Bag X3
Rondebosch 7701
Cape Town
South Africa
Tel: +27 21 650 3681
Fax: +27 21 650 2307
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March 2012

The Greenhouse Effect of Colonial Education in Africa

By Francis Nyamnjoh
(A revised version of this paper is published by the Journal of Asian and African Studies (15 February 2012, DOI: 10 1177/002190961141724) under the title: "Potted Plants in Greenhouses: A Critical Reflection on the Resilience of Colonial Education in Africa")

Abstract
This paper argues that education in Africa is victim of a colonial and colonising epistemology. Whatever appellation we give it, this epistemology takes the form of science as ideology and hegemony. With rhetoric on the need to be competitive internationally, the elite have modelled education in Africa after educational institutions in Europe and North America, with little attempt at domestication. This journey, endowed with the mission of annihilation or devaluation of African creativity, agency and value systems, leads to an internalised sense of inadequacy. It has compelled Africans to “lighten their darkness” both physically and metaphorically for the gratification of colonising and hegemonic others. The paper argues that the future of education in Africa can be hopeful through a meticulous and systematic creative process of cultural restoration and endogenisation, in tune with the negotiation and navigation of myriad possibilities in the lives of Africans small and big, poor and rich, rural and urban, and in between. If Africa is to be party in a global conversation on knowledge production and consumption, it is appropriate that it does so with the interests and concerns of Africans as guiding principle.

Click here to download or read the article.

March 13, 2012 in Africa, African Affairs, Education | Permalink | Comments (1)

Language, Mobility, African Writers and Pan-Africanism

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh & Katleho Shoro (Paper published in in: African Communication Research, Vol.4(1):35-62)

Abstract
This paper argues that pan-Africanism is best seen and articulated as a flexible, inclusive, dynamic and complex aspiration in identity making and belonging. The micro and macro level importance of pan-Africanism, makes writing it both abstract and grounded, local and global, just as the unity, solidarities and relevance it seeks and promotes. Pan-Africanism, far from promising a single identity, is about offering a mental space for disparate identities to co-exist in freedom and dignity. The paper explores how African writers have dealt with the issue of language and mobility central to pan-Africanism, and argued in favour of recognising the creative negotiation and navigation by Africans of various linguistic and identity margins in their flexibility and conviviality about what it means to be African.