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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