Universities as Sites for Advancing Education for Decolonisation

Abstract

In this chapter, focusing on national policy on higher education, Mudenda Simukungwe discusses whether such policy in Zambia enables universities to engage in knowledge production endeavours that could achieve a decolonised education. Although the national education policy for Zambia by implication is implicitly accommodative of decolonised education, institutions of higher learning, owing to their being grounded in Eurocentrism, lack commitment to appreciate and enact decoloniality. Simukungwe argues that ultimately the Zambian education experience shows a rationalisation of endemic coloniality, regarding coloniality as a natural property of the modern world. This is so, because the endemic and naturalised interpretive frames of Eurocentrism inherently repel tolerance of indigenous frames of thought; ultimately Eurocentrism reproduces itself in the academe, thus epistemically disempowering universities to achieve decoloniality. Simukungwe also highlights that until recently, African political leadership and policymakers have not meaningfully engaged African researchers and indigenous knowledge and aspirations in education policy formulation, but overly relied on foreign expertise as policy consultants on account of their being well grounded in the Eurocentrism that drives modernity. Achieving decoloniality in Zambia, as Simukungwe highlights, would have to include indispensably revising the curriculum and curriculum texts in education institutions, reimagining criteria for academic performance, reconsidering cultural patterns in schools and the general self-image of localness in schools. Developing and implementing mother tongue languages for instruction in schools are also central requirements for progress towards decoloniality in Zambia. The chapter calls for Zambian higher education to aspire developing education models that are majorly grounded in the local socio-cultural context of the people of Zambia, responding to their challenges inasmuch as education aspires for global citizenship. The available policy frameworks, according to Simukungwe, provide room for endeavours of decolonising education systems and institutions in Zambia.