2023/05/04 by Desmond Ikenna Odugu
Social Sciences · #African Education and Politics #African cultural and philosophical studies #Global Educational Policies and Reforms
paper · doi:10.1080/0046760x.2023.2182914
openalex publication_date 2023/05/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Examining developments in the history of education in Africa as a whole raises far-reaching philosophical, anthropological and historical questions about what Africa is and whether such a history is even possible as such. The course of that history and its tributaries wend around social theories; its dominant issues, tensions and gaps represent ideological interventions that highlight competing narratives in attempts to theorise social progress along a set of converging historiographic projects through which the conflicts between positivist, Marxist and poststructuralist (and other critical theory) perspectives – and the Eurocentricity of their objects – become visible. Anticipating broadened inquiries that centre Africans in historical narratives concerning education in Africa, this review (a) critiques historians’ obsession with and dissensions on colonial education, (b) clarifies epistemic ruptures in the well-worn quest for ‘truth’ in history evident in that obsession, and (c) proposes some prospects for decolonial futures in the history of education in Africa.