AFRICA AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION

AT HOME AND GLOBALLY:

Memory and Imperative for Renewal through Purposeful Fusion

Professor N’Dri Thérèse ASSIÉ-LUMUMBA

Africana Studies and Research Center

Professor, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Johannesburg

3rd ANNUAL ERIC MOLOBI MEMORIAL LECTURE

Council Chambers

University of Johannesburg

Thursday, 2 August, 2018

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INTRODUCTION

The Vice Chancellor and Principal of the University of Johannesburg, Professor Tshilidzi

Marwala, Members of the Executive Leadership Group of the University of Johannesburg,

Member of the UJ Senate, Mrs. Martha Molobi (Dr. Eric Molobi’s wife) and the Molobi Family,

Panyaza Lesufi – MEC for Education: Gauteng Province and other Government officials, Mrs.

Zanele Mbeki – Office of the Former President Thabo Mbeki, all protocol observed,

distinguished guests, friends, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen: It is my distinct honor and

utmost pleasure to be invited to give the third Eric Molobi Memorial Lecture.

Excellencies and Distinguished Guests: In the language and culture of the Baoulé of Côte

d’Ivoire (among the Akan-in Ghana/Côte d’Ivoire), where I come from, it is customary that

before speaking to an illustrious audience such as this one or to a highly respected person, there

is an expression that is frequently used in the beginning, known as “Kaflè”. It is a one catchy

phrase, but has a very complex and comprehensive meaning. Kaflè is essentially an advance call

by the speaker, requesting for forgiveness just in case the speaker offends a person directly or

indirectly. In the speaker’s mind, the ideas may be well formulated, but when articulated into

words, may not capture the noble intent of the speaker and lead to unintended interpretations.

Therefore, your Excellencies and Distinguished Guests of different generations gathered here, I

humbly submit to you Kaflè, and before I proceed to deliver my address, I ask you to grant me

the permission to speak.

Allow me to use a quote that reflects the colonial legacy in my education by citing the French

writer, Pierre Corneille in his classical play Le CID when Rodrigue stated: “Je suis jeune, il est

vrai, mais Aux âmes bien nées, la valeur n'attend point le nombre des années.” Which is

translated literally as “I am young, it is true; but to well-born souls, value does not wait for the

number of years.” That is to say, young people who are educated apply their critical insight to

their social environment and do not wait to take part in the struggle against oppression.

Over the centuries and recent years, to continue to use Pierre Corneille’s term, there have been

numerous well-born souls on the African continent in general and in this country in the context

of the struggle against colonial rule and its last brand of Apartheid. Dr. Molobi epitomizes the

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essence of a well-born soul who did not wait for chronological age to set in before engaging in

the struggle for freedom, justice and the quest for basic humanity, a struggle for which he paid a

heavy price with his own freedom as he spent years in prison.

According a saying of the Akan people of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire where I am from, “the name

of a good person who transitions to the world of the Ancestors becomes wealth that is inherited

by all” (Sran kpa ouli i douman di adja). We are here precisely because we have inherited the

name of a well-born soul, a good person: Dr. Eric Molobi. It is a privilege and an honor to be

associated with this commemoration.

In June, the University of Johannesburg, specifically the Ali Mazrui Center for Higher Education

Studies and its Director, Professor Michael Cross, hosted several activities of the World Council

of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) including a symposium titled “Comparative

Education for Global Citizenship, Peace and Harmony through Ubuntu” jointly with

International Conference of the Indian Ocean Comparative Education Society on “Rethinking

Epistemologies and Innovating Pedagogies to Foster Global Peace.” At the end of these

meetings, the participants from other African countries and across the Globe, took part in a tour

of The Hector Pieterson Museum that commemorates the 1976 killing of the SOWETO uprising

that shocked all of us, even those who then were young students too.

I had the privilege of teaching many South African students in different institutions in the United

States, including Cornell University. Allow me to single out my former Ph D student Tshidi

Muendane who was my Teaching Assistant and worked with me tirelessly when I was serving as

Director of the Cornell Program on Gender and Global Change (GGC). Following a class

session on South African school children who demanded to be educated instead of being mis-

educated and were met with brutal force, she mentioned “I was one of those children.” I only

learned later, after she passed away in 2011, that she was indeed a well-borne soul who went into

exile at very early age. I am referring to Colonel Alice Temba.

So, your Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, I am moved to participate in the continued

remembrance of a great son of Africa, Dr. Eric Molobi. I locate my lecture in a historical

framework according to the outline on the screen.

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1. RELEVANCE AND IMPORTANCE OF PERSPECTIVES AND APPROACH TO

DEVELOPMENT WITH EDUCATION

In this address, I draw from my earlier research projects and publications over the years. My

main argument is that Africa has contributed a lot to the creation of institutions of higher

learning in the past and is capable and poised to make unique contributions to learning and

knowledge production for future comprehensive human development. In order to address issues

and challenges of the moment, we are compelled to acknowledge the three interconnected and

indivisible moments in the lives of people and societies, which are the past, present and future.

1.1. History is Not Destiny

I would like to start by start by stating that History is not destiny, whether it is or perceived as

positive, negative, or with balanced representation from within or external viewpoints. The past,

present and future are intrinsically intertwined and it is not philosophically, politically, socially

and practically possible to successfully deal with only one or two moments. Usually, while the

present time and the future are acknowledged, there can be an assumption that it is possible to

dismiss or neglect the past and focus on the present situation and seek a better future.

1.2. Significance of Historical Perspective

In the CONFESSIONS, Book 11, Chapter 20, Heading 26, St Augustine stated: “Perhaps it might

be said rightly that there are three times: a time present of things past; a time present of things

present; and a time present of things future. … The time present of things past is memory; the

time present of things present is direct experience; the time present of things future is

expectation.”1

Thus, historical consciousness is critically important in analyzing the present and projecting into

the future. The African American historian John Henrik Clarke articulated in his book and 1 St. Augustine, CONFESSIONS, Book 11, Chapter 20, Heading 26

(http://www.ourladyswarriors.org/saints/augcon11.htm (last accessed on February 20, 2016)

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videotape entitled the Great and Mighty Walk, how crucial history is in managing the present and

projecting the future in the search for a satisfactory model of society. He stated:

History is a clock that people use to tell the political and cultural time of the

day. It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human

geography. History tells the people where they have been, what they have been,

where they are, and what they are. Most important, history tells the people where

they still must go and what they still must be.2

1.3. Sankofa and Its Meaning in Africa’s Effort toward Social Progress

This perspective captures the spirit of the Akan guiding wisdom encompassed in “Sankofa”

represented by a mythical bird. According to the Sankofa, individuals, groups, and communities

must look back to the past, so they can reposition themselves in the present moment to more

strategically move forward. The Sankofa Bird is neither stuck in the past nor full of

unproductive and paralyzing nostalgia, what Ali Mazrui refers to as “Gloriana”. The Sankofa

Bird keeps moving forward while looking back to take stock for lessons and if necessary, to

adjust the thoughts, actions and strategies. This is a statement about agency, as individuals and

groups must act towards the collective advancement.

One dimension of the Sankofa Bird that is very important and yet can be easily overlooked is the

symbol of the egg in the beak, which denotes the future. It suggests that the future is delicate and

requires alertness to ensure that it is nurtured and actualized. In terms of the call for our

permanent attention to find the best path and move forward with a clear sense of direction

regarding ideas, knowledge production and actions for collective advancement, I would refer to

what Mudimbe captures in the need for “epistemological vigilance,” which leads to the argument

of Africa’s past roles in the earliest civilizations and subsequent development of higher

education.

2 J. H. Clarke [videorecording] : A Great and Mighty Walk, Black Dot Media ; New York : [Distributed by] Cinema Guild, 1996.

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2. AFRICA AND HER CONTRIBUTIONS TO EARLIEST CIVILIZATIONS

2.1. Th Nile Valley Civilization and Other African Sites of Advanced Knowledge Sites

In the aforementioned Clarke’s Great and Mighty Walk as well as in the unique works of the

physicist, archeologist, Egyptologist, linguist Cheikh Anta Diop they share their findings on

Africa’s pivotal and long-standing roles in setting the foundations of world civilization, they also

argue that Africa was poised for greater strides when European destructive intervention

interrupted the Mighty Walk with the transatlantic enslavement that lasted for centuries

culminating in colonization that was formalized with the 1884/1885 Berlin conference.

A refined definition of higher education which recognizes historical development shows that

although the Africans (as well as other world regions at earlier periods) did not set up academic

learning spaces that are the same as universities in the 21st century societies, but they had their

own systems of education encompassing all levels that fulfilled missions that were not

essentially different from the essence of those of institutions of higher learning today. In the case

of Ancient Egypt, for instance, as Lulat (2005) states,

the Egyptians may not have had exact replicas of the modern university or

college, but it is certainly true that they did possess an institution that, from their

perspective, fulfilled some of the roles of higher education institution. One such

institution dating from around c. 2000 B.C. E. was the per-ankh (or the House of

Life). It was located within the Egyptian temples, which usually took the form of

huge campuses, with many buildings, and thousands of employees (p. 44).

The academic disciplines that were reformulated later within new institutional structures in the

medieval time, were in fact devised in the Ancient Egyptian education system thousands of years

earlier and then inspired the Greeks as attested by Herodotus. Medicine and the array of its

subfields and science, law, architecture, religion, philosophy, art, and so forth.

It was not just Ancient Egypt, but rather the entire Nile Valley Civilization that requires

consideration, especially as the Upper Nile gave a lot to the magnificence and majestic

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achievements of the Lower Nile/Delta that are more often referred to when talking about ancient

Egypt.

Furthermore, there were at different historical moments other centers of higher learning that

flourished in different parts of Africa before or at the same time as those in the most advanced

parts of Western Europe at the time. The connection between historical roots and the state of

contemporary higher education in Africa resonates with the arguments that universities are

guardians of “the heritage of the past … enshrine both hope and nostalgia” and “are linked to

ways of life which may be out of date but which, since they are collective stereotypes, continue

to appeal to the imagination of the young and to guide many of their choices” (International

Association of Universities, ibid., p.8). In his book entitled Universities: British, Indian,

African, Eric Ashby (1966, p. 3) stated:

An institution is the embodiment of an ideal. In order to survive, an institution

must fulfill two conditions: it must be sufficiently stable to sustain the ideal

which gave it birth and sufficiently responsive to remain relevant to the society

which supports it. The university is a medieval institution which fulfills both

these conditions. The ideal—the disinterested pursuit of learning—which drew

scholars to Oxford seven centuries ago still unites a guild of scholars in that city,

and similar guilds flourish in hundreds of other cities. Yet the university has kept

pace with the mutations of society; a college in California is as relevant to modern

American society as the studium generale in ancient Paris was relevant to church

and state in the Middle Ages.

2.2. Black Athena and the Foundation of the Greek/European Civilization

The world-renowned Professor Martin Bernal, in the first of his acclaimed book Black Athena:

The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Volume I: Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785-

1985 (1987) published in three heavy volumes, confirmed that European revisionists claimed

that the Greek Civilization was their sole creation which occurred ex nihilo was a relatively a

recent phenomenon. Indeed, as he argued, in fact the Greek Civilization came later and

borrowed from Ancient Egypt, the same way the lower Nile Valley Egyptian Civilization grew

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out of and was connected to the Upper Nile Valley earlier civilization. In the 19 th Century, after

centuries of Transatlantic enslavement and obsession with the conquest and domination of the

African continent, the racialized revisionist history was put in place and cut the historical and

organic development between Egypt and Greece.

Professor Ali Mazrui (2013, p. 22) advances the concept of “macro-plagiarism as a massive

borrowing by one civilization from another in a manner which deliberately obscures origins and

denies acknowledgment and attribution. …Hijacking ideas is almost the name of the game in the

ethics of Western scholarship! (Mazrui 2013, p. 22). Professor Mazrui (2013, p. 22) further

argues that:

Martin Bernal’s thesis is not that ancient Greece plagiarized from other

Mediterranean cultures and deliberately withheld attribution. Bernal’s argument is

that the failure of attribution is much more recent – going back to the first half of

the 19th century. According to Bernal, the Greeks themselves basically

understood that their culture had arisen “as the result of colonization, around 1500

B.C., by Egyptians and Phoenicians who had civilized the native inhabitants”

(Bernal 1987, 1).

Mwalimu Mazrui (2013) went on to add the notion of “Cultural parental abuse” in referring to

the pillage of Africa paired with neglect to recognize that it is where human experience and

civilization started. Cheikh Anta Diop, in his scientific works on the centrality of Blacks in the

building of Ancient Egyptian civilization, refuted the European recent narrative of negating

Africa’ accomplishments.

2.3. “They Came before Columbus”

In discussing higher education in general or the specific aspect of science and technology, it is

worth providing a brief historical background of African contributions. While it may at first

appear a digression, it is important to recall here Clarke’s notion of history as a compass. Indeed,

historical evidence shows that people tend to develop first the kind of technology that is most

relevant and useful for their interactions in their physical and social environment. Thus, for

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instance, people who live near oceans, rivers, or lakes tend to develop skills that enable them to

make the best use of water as a source of food provision and means of transportation that enable

them connects them to people other shores, rather than being conceived as “natural” separations

from dwellers on the other sides. Thus, the African people near the Atlantic Ocean, for instance,

developed relevant skills and technologies that permitted them to satisfy their curiosity in seek to

see what was on the other side.

The most notable among many transatlantic expeditions was led by Bakari II who sailed to what

was later named the Americas nearly two centuries before Columbus. “Bakari II traveled in

America in 1312. This fact was recorded by historiography. Ibn Abdallah Al Omari gives an

account and discusses it in his Masalik al absar wa Mamalik al amsar, which was published in

1324, twelve years after the event. Bakari’s son, Kanku Muusa, who was famous for his

sumptuous 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca, discussed it with the Sultan of Egypt, then guardian of

Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina” (Sertima, 1976). Indeed, the region of the Gulf of Guinea and

Senegambia developed marine technology and knowledge of the movements of the oceans that

made such trips possible.

At that time, Europeans respected the Africans as a people with will, a sense of direction, and

achievement and deemed them worthy of partnership and exchange at all levels. As Basil

Davidson argues, there was a mutually accepted belief of being “different” in their appearance

and their cultural experience, “but equal in their human worth” and genius as argued by

Davidson (2004). Thus, there is now readily available historical evidence of the African presence

in other parts of the world, specifically in Asia and Central and South America, prior to the

transatlantic enslavement period. As a matter of fact, research conducted from the perspectives

of various disciplines has found converging historical evidence and conclusions that confirm the

African voyages and settlements in Central and South America, even earlier. The African people

on the coastal areas have been particularly involved in exchange with people from outside the

continent. While visitors came from other continents to Africa, Africans visited other places

beyond their borders. Such voyages could be made only with the use of relevant scientific

knowledge and technological instruments of that period.

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Besides the conventional sources that have been mostly generated by, and used in, Western hard

sciences, social sciences, the humanities, and specifically in historiography, Africa offers her

own means of accounting for the veracity of these transoceanic voyages and settlements by

Africans in ancient times. The caste-like system of Sahelian societies in West Africa have

created a specialized social category, the griots, who are considered and act as the repository of

historical memory of these societies. Although this source alone could create skepticism among

some and legitimate concerns among others, the griotic account remarkably coincides with other

sources. Indeed, the Olmec stone heads, the terra cotta, the skeletons, the ancient maps, the

pyramids, and the measures and numbers, for example, converge to make a resounding statement

about the evidence of the African presence on the Western shore of the Atlantic Ocean prior to

Columbus (Sertima, 1976, 1987).

These African pre-Colombian voyages, contacts, and settlements provide manifold positive

contributions to African historiography. Indeed, they help to unravel further the fact that

Africans coming to the Americas could not be limited to the tragic experience of the transatlantic

enslavement. They also highlight the scientific genius among the Africans that enabled them to

master the movements of the sea and to create the appropriate means of transportation to travel

across the Atlantic Ocean (Leo Weiner 1920).

What may appear as a historical digression from current and pressing matters of African

development challenges and Africa’s past roles the in the evolution of education in general and

the universities in particular, is in fact of direct relevance. Indeed, African historiography

provides intellectual and methodological tools to investigate what scientifically the people of

Africa and its Diaspora are capable to offer in the domains of thought and other disciplines

including science and technology in the twenty-first century and beyond. Recent efforts to

rediscover and recover the wealth of writing systems around the Sankore University in Timbuktu

is only a sign of the beginning of what should be an epic enterprise good in itself for Africans

and humanity and also as an investment in building African intellectual and technological

capacity.

3. AFRICA AND PAST HIGHER EDUCATION DEVELOPENT

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3.1. Endogenous Systems: Unified Discipline

Historical facts attest to the ancient and indigenous roots and long experience of institutionalized

higher learning in Africa, with variable coverage of the population and degrees of

systematization according to sub-regional specificities in different historical periods. It has been

authoritatively articulated, based on history (Ajayi et al., 1996) that despite arguments which

denied systematic organization of the higher learning space in Africa before the advent of

Western colonial control, “It is now clear that indigenous education involved far more than an

inward-looking process of socialization” and composed of elementary, secondary, and higher

levels (Ajayi et al., 1996, p. 4). These authors show that “indigenous higher education produced

and transmitted new knowledge necessary for understanding the world, the nature of man (sic),

society, God and various divinities, the promotion of agriculture and health, literature and

philosophy” (Ajayi et al., 1996, p. 5).

3.2. Afro-Islamic Institutions Ajame and Ancient Manuscripts

Furthermore, “the roots of the University as a community of scholars, with an international

outlook but also with responsibilities within particular cultures, can be traced back to two

institutions that developed in Egypt in the last two or three centuries B.C. and A.D.” with the

Alexandria model and the monastic system with sophisticated knowledge production (Ajayi et

al., 1996, p. 5). The propagation and establishment of Islam in North and West Africa led to the

emergence of renowned institutions of higher learning founded on Islam, for several centuries,

among which the most famous were universities such as Karawiyyinn in Fez (Morocco) in 859

A.D., Al-Azhar created in Cairo (Egypt) in 970 considered the “oldest continuously operating

University in the world” (Arab Information Center, 1966, p. 282), and Sankore in Timbuktu from

the twelfth century.

In this context, the dissemination of learning led to the appropriation, by the Africans in West

Africa, of major aspects to advance learning and scholarship. Of great significance was the

transcription of African languages using Arabic (Moulaye Hassane 2008, Ousmane Kane 2011,

Habib Sy 2014). Ali A. Mazrui (2012:6) argues that:

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While Euro-colonial and post-colonial American branches have been important

stages towards the emergence of the global university, we should bear in mind

the real origins of the global university. Muslim Africa virtually invented the

global university in its simpler form. The standing monuments to that Muslim

African invention consist today of Al-Azhar University in Cairo and the

Qarawiyin Center of Learning in Morocco, both of which are over a thousand

years old. These two Afro-Muslim institutions are centuries older that Oxford

and Cambridge in England, and certainly even more ancient than Harvard, Yale

and Princeton.

A characteristic of the early “Afro-Muslim institutions” (Mazrui 2012:6) was their reliance on

Arabic as the language of instructions. It was used directly or indirectly through Ajami in which

Arabic script was used to transcribe African languages (Hassane 2008, Kane 2011). As argued

by Ousmane Kane in his book Non-Europhone Intellectuals (2011:23) “Arabic has been for

many of the Islamized peoples the equivalent of Latin for the peoples of Western Europe, mutatis

mutandis. Learned people in the Islamized world not only learnt Arabic and contributed to Arab

intellectual history, but they appropriated the Arabic characters in order to promote their own

languages.” These African Muslim institutions are also older than those created in Medieval

Europe as sites of Western intellectual development that have, through various mutations, made

their way to the 21st Century.

4. EUROPEAN HIGHER EDUCATION: EXPANSION AND CUMULATIVE PROCESS

4.1. Paris and Bologna Models and Intra-European Learning and Diffusion

In Europe, the development and expansion of centers of higher learning in the Middle Ages

constituted the initial foundation of modern universities in the Western tradition. Like the

African institutions mentioned above, the nascent European universities of the Middle Ages

emerged out of the leadership of religious institutions, Christianity in the case of Europe.

Universities created in specific locations in Medieval Europe shared a common religious

authority: the Catholic Church. The influence of the Church and the religious content and

character of formal education grew and, finally by the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the goal of

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education became less uni-dimensional. The Church ceased to be the sole social system which

controlled education for the use of its outcome. At that time, there was a certain “urban

renaissance” with a “small local bourgeoisie” that understood the relationship between education

and the economic system that they were controlling. In its search for an education that would

help produce the needed human resources to meet their growing economic needs, that “small

bourgeoisie” contributed significantly to creating more schools for the acquisition of the

knowledge that they needed and that was not included within the sphere of control of the Church.

The domains that needed specialized knowledge included trade, administration, and law. This is

the context in which more schools were created, many of them were under the initiative of

political authorities such as kings, princes, and authorities in the growing urban centers. The

graduates of these schools had employment opportunities offered by the socio-economic

structure at that time. This constituted a key factor that triggered the motivation for wanting an

education culminating into the development of the urban middle class.

In France, for instance, the basic curriculum of the education that was taking its modern form

consisted of the “seven liberal arts” (grammar, rhetoric, and logic, which composed the trivium;

arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, which composed the quadrivium), while education

in theology, law, and medicine represented the embryonic form of higher education.” During the

thirteenth century, the future educational system of France was set upon its foundations. As

Chevalier et al. (1968, p. 15) explain:

Professor and students obtained autonomy from the state of the time and partially

from the Church and constituted in bodies which took the name of universities

provided with certain privileges and some independence. These universities

provided themselves a four-faculties internal organization: faculty of arts

distributing a kind of secondary education oriented around the study of liberal

arts, which after seven years of studies, led to the final diploma, which from the

14th century, took the name of baccalaureate; the baccalaureate holders were

allowed to enter one of the three other faculties (theology, law, and medicine)

which, at the level of higher education, delivered the license and doctorate

degrees and opened access to the profession of teaching, law, administration, and

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medicine.

It is worth recalling that the Ancient Egytian education system had organized education system

of higher learning thousands of year earlier, even if the contemporary system today is often

credited to this medieval European contribution in a very long history cumulative process in

which Africa was at inception.

When the development of the universities started, Western Europe was confronted with major

problems of underdevelopment and social fragmentation in the war-ridden nations in the making.

However, the social and religious groups that founded and shaped the universities did not spell

out a clear societal mission in a way that is similar to the unison call of African leaders, who

have been positioned to assign a specific mission to their higher education institutions, especially

the universities. A perceived and actual initial social disconnect between European universities

and their social environments led to the notion of the university as an “ivory tower” wherein

reflection becomes an end in itself.

This perception of the distance between the role of the university and the needs of its social and

national surroundings is in part based on historical facts. However, the location of the learning

space vis-à-vis global society, and the social characteristics of those who were in charge of

knowledge production within the university at that time (i.e., professors and monks), should not

literally be interpreted as a sign of total isolation and lack of societal mission of these

institutions. Indeed, in the nineteenth-century Europe—at the time of its formal colonization of

Africa—there existed a clearly articulated connection between education and national

development (Assié 1982).

Of critical importance is the fact that by the Middle Ages, when European institutions of

contemporary Western traditions were emerging and evolving in Europe, in Africa major

institutional histories had already been written and others were in the making, with ancient and

indigenous roots and a long experience of institutionalized higher learning in various societal

settings. This contradicted earlier and simplistic arguments advanced by European colonists that

rejected the existence of systematized organization of higher learning in Africa before European

colonial rule “It is now clear that indigenous education involved far more than an inward-looking

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process of socialization”, and composed elementary, secondary, and higher levels (Ajayi et al.

1996:4) and “indigenous higher education produced and transmitted new knowledge necessary

for understanding the world, the nature of man (sic), society, God and various divinities, the

promotion of agriculture and health, literature and philosophy” (Ajayi et al. 1996:5). The

Parisian elitist and selective model and subsequent development of Sorbonne was dominated by

the Christian religious congregations especially the Jesuits and Oratorians while in the Bologna

model with a participatory framework whereby students played central roles.

4.2. Humboldt and the Contemporary American Model

It took centuries to consolidate European states and social institutions, together with educational

institutions, especially higher education with universities at their center. In Europe, the dialectics

between nation building, construction and refinement of an economic system of production,

political processes, and the making of educational systems and of institutions of higher learning

reflected continuity and internal contradictions of the European context. The key actors,

decision-makers, classes, and various interest groups and agents of change grew out of this

context and historical process and context. Thus, “the past” and collective memories, regardless

of whether those memories are full of “nostalgia” or sorrow, are shared from within.

Another important characteristic of early European universities was the fact that they did not

develop simultaneously in all European countries or in all regions within any given country. For

instance, when in the Middle Ages universities were flourishing in other parts of Europe,

particularly with the Bologna and Paris models, the area that is Germany today, had no

university. Yet, in the early nineteenth century, especially with the Humboldtian introduction of

a model establishing a dynamic, dialectical, and mutually reinforcing relationship between

teaching and research, German institutions became a model for what has become the

contemporary research university in the United States—which in turn inspires other institutions

around the world. Thus, there were countries from which European culture and institutions

expanded, at different periods and paces, to the entire European continent, especially Western

Europe, throughout the following centuries.

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The main argument here is that the established traditions that constitute models today took time

to be contituted and borrowed from elsewhere.

5. AFRICAN MEMORY, AGENCY AND FUTURE POSITIONING THROUGH FUSION

BY CHOICE

5.1. Two Sides of Education and Possibilities for Memory Recovery

In the European centers that were being developed since Medieval time, there was a process of

appropriation of what they had learned from elsewhere, including parts of Africa at various

historical moments. The development of centers of higher learning in the Middle Ages in Europe

were considered as the original foundation of higher education while it was not the case. Thus,

Mwalimu Mazrui argues about “macro-plagiarism on 20th century Western civilization” in

which the European “deliberately obscures origins and denies acknowledgment and attribution”

of what was taken from others including the Africans, in a process of where “hijacking ideas is

almost the name of the game in the ethics” (Mazrui, 2013).

Certainly, European shaped higher education over the centuries and while they were

consolidating their systems, their major involvement in Africa, from earlier periods continued

through the Transatlantic enslavement and their gradual settlements on the African continent,

culminating into the 19th Century Berlin Conference, partitioning of the African continent and

subsequent colonization after the African widespread and fierce resistance was overpowered by

more deadly weapons from the European side.

Given the ideology of colonization which required control of the colonized, European colonizers

did not initially transfer their higher education at the time to Africa. Even basic and secondary

education was carefully designed and implemented with the goal of controlling the colonized.

Ironically, however, while most of the contemporary African education systems and especially at

the higher education levels were designed by the Africans after independence, they have been

reproducing the colonial systems with a mentality of the colonized and dominated.

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While multiple post-independence analysis of each of the colonial model has concluded its

fundamental shortcomings and limited relevance, there has not been any major breakthrough in

imagining, conceptualizing, designing and implementing satisfactory African models.

5.2. Vision with Science &Technology for Development, AU Agenda 2063, Continental

Education Strategy for Africa (CESA)

AU Agenda 2063 and more specifically the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA)

stipulated that its mission is to:

reorient Africa’s education and training systems to meet the

knowledge, competencies, skills, innovation and creativity required to

nurture African core values and promote sustainable development at

the national, sub-regional and continental levels

(https://edu-au.org/strategies/cesa).

The questions are: HOW, BASED ON WHAT, BY WHOM, WITH WHOM? In the nineteenth

century, there was an interesting discourse called the “Freetown debate,” in which James

Johnson and Edward Blyden from the African Diaspora, advocated a liberal-arts–classical

education that would link contemporary Africa with ancient civilization, a period in which

African achievement loomed large. Johnson and Blyden were critical of missionary education

that they considered Eurocentric and limiting. For them the content of education on the period

since the beginning of the transatlantic enslavement did not offer enlightenment but rather had

been contaminated by what they called the “race poison” (Ajayi et al., 1996, p. 20). However,

when Blyden became the President of Liberia College, he produced and maintained a very strong

classical European-type of curriculum. The gap between the strong belief by Blyden in the

capacity of the people of African descent to establish solid African-centered institutions and the

experience of Liberia College under his leadership, constituted a prelude to the major

contemporary issues of entrenched neo-colonial influence in African institutions of higher

learning. However, it does not mean that it is impossible to take a strategic path to advance free

of the burden of the colonial weight in “decolonizing the mind” (wa Thiong'o, 1998).

17

5.3. The Gender Factor in the Recovery and Fusion by Choice

Several empirical studies lead the similar findings and conclusions about the deficiencies in

women’s voices and gender balance in academic spheres and knowledge production. Many

African scholars, especailly women, have called for epistemological relevance in the discourse

on gender in academia in the interest of Africa (Oyewumi, 1997, 2011) while others focus on the

contemporary framework for continued efforts to control Africa, especially through the

globalization process (Steady, 2004). In “An investigative framework for gender research in

Africa in the new millennium” Steady (2004) specifically examines the impact of external

concepts, methodologies and paradigms in African gender studies by presenting evidence that

their supporting academic structures validating the exploitation of the continent. This author

proposes African-centered approaches for gender research in Africa based on an understanding

of African socio-cultural realities, feminist and womanist traditions and philosophies.

In order for African countries to develop institutions of higher learning that are capable of

promoting social progress amidst the global context, they must secure permanent solutions to the

structural gender inequality in these institutions. Women’s roles as researchers and research

topics on gender will make a contribution in the search for such solutions.

5.4. Fusion by Choice and New Contribution to the World

Africa can and needs to free itself from the idea that it is the only continent that borrows, even if

the burden of the colonialization and continued neo-colonial constitute real factors. There has

been a universal fluidity of ideas, inventions, borrowing and circulation of conception of

systems. Africa must the have freedom for adoption and fusion by choice in building on local

cultural foundation “Home-Grown” models while using selected elements from elsewhere.

While education is social institution that is used by dominant powers to control and reproduce

systems of inequality, possibilities for structural change are imbedded in the critical/innovative

side of education. Thus, the future represented by the egg in the beak of the Sankofa Bird is

delicate, unknown but does not belong to any one, any groups, any nation; Africans have the

18

capacity to shape their future by learning from the past to assess the present situation to advance

in asserting and consistently exercising agency.

Historical facts show that borrowing is built in human history since the earliest time. Human

history, the creation and building of social institutions, including education in general and

institutions of higher learning, are characterized by a permanent cumulative process. Borrowing

is universal and essential to the advancement of the world. In a presentation I made in Beijing

(China) in August 2016 titled “Science, Technology and Higher Education for Development in

Africa: Potentialities and Inadvertent Effects of Leapfrogging toward Social Progress” I argue

that even leapfrogging is based on what has been produced before from various sources. How to

build on the achievements from various sources, appropriate them, domesticate them and create

new contemporary African models with their features?

It is essential to know the history, critically embrace the culture with agency to dissect it and

build on the positive and constructive parts and renew it and help address the challenges of the

day. For instance, while in embracing and domesticating the new technology there must be an

African effort to combine technology and humanism as an African contemporary contribution to

the advancement of higher education for development on the continent and globally?

An important component of my arguments is that beyond the search for solutions to Africa’s

own predicaments, Africans can, and should, more vigorously engage in the promotion of such

alternatives beyond the physical/state borders of the continent. Education, and particularly in

universities, constitutes a channel of global cultural transfer. However, the premise of the

current universities and institutions of higher education is rooted in a colonizing philosophy.

There is a need for an internally grounded search. Although there is no claim of pure African

cultural and philosophical tradition, there is still an African specific foundation with potential

potency. As Mwalimu Mazrui has argued, Africa has the capacity to assert its power and

authority to promote solutions for herself and the world from a position of strength, determining

its comparative advantage, not by trying to imitate and follow the mirage of catching up. Of

particular significance is humanism embedded in the Ubuntu paradigm.

Certainly “…the Ubuntu worldview articulates essential “oneness of humanity, a collective,

community, and a set of cultural practices and spiritual values that strive for respect and dignity

19

for all humanity” (Goduka 2000, 72). Ubuntu acknowledges and emulates shared humanity in its

complexity encompassing an interdependent ecosystem of humans, nature, and the planet

(Letseka 2000; Waghid 2014). V. Y. Mudimbe (1988, p. 1) articulating the essence of Ubuntu

argues that it is a belief system that embraces a collective ethos asserting that “to be is

necessarily to be in relation” to others and the “center is a human being who is free and at the

same time highly dependent upon others, on the memory of the past, and on emphasizing the

balance between nature and culture” (V. Y. Mudimbe (1988, p. 1). In this conception, there is an

affirmation of equality and existential worth among human beings and the broader environment

and the totality of its constituents even the ones that may appear to the humans or specific

cultures and societies as unimportant or outright “irrelevant.” Every human being has a unique

contribution to the society and we are co-dependent on each other” from “Conceptualizing

Gender and Education in Africa from an Ubuntu Frame ” (Assié-Lumumba, 2018).

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Dr. Emefa Amoako from Ghana but based at Oxford and I co-edited a book entitled “Re-

visioning Education in Africa: Ubuntu-Inspired Education for Humanity. This book was

published by Palgrave MacMillan in New York this year. In the concluding chapter we

(Amoako and Assié-Lumumba, 2018,) argue:

regional and continental organisations to reposition themselves as leaders at the

meeting point/the Confluence of the global (international agents of change) and

local (national/regional/continental agents of change) to redefine a more relevant,

indigenously reflective, accessible and quality type of formal education for their

people. In the de-culturation and possible reculturation, Africa must aspire for

socially inclusive initiatives in which Africa’s education, economy and politics

and others must be extensively linked to the continent’s needs in terms of history,

culture and genuine concerns with emphasis on its communal mutually dependent

values, which is the hallmark of African existence (Abdi, 2010).

Africa has undertaken the “Great and Mighty Walk” with ingenuity and confidence, laying the

foundation for and paving the way to humanity for a long period of time. African people have

continued to assert their capacity across the continent in different historical moments although

20

they also endured the trauma of the catastrophic Transatlantic enslavement and thereafter

colonization of Africa with its brand of apartheid. However, even with atrocious episodes

embedded in the African psyche, Africa has the responsibility to reclaim its past by learning

from its history and the evolution of the word to effectively evaluate the challenges of the present

and firmly shape its renewal. Fusion by choice is necessary, with critical thinking in learning

from the totality of the past and applying the creative capacity of the present time for the future.

Now with a liberated mind free from colonial constraints, Africans can and must reposition

themselves with poise and might when solving the problems of the continent while promoting

global social progress for our common humanity.

FORWARD-LOOKING IMAGINATION, REFLECTIONS AND ACTIONSTOWARDS STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION:

Past, Present, Future

Akan Adinkra ideogramSankofa Sankofa

Nea onnim no sua a ohu

"he/she who does not know can know from learning”“knowledge, life-long education and continued quest for knowledge”

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