<p>This study offers a critical comparative reconstruction of Julius Nyerere’s and Paulo Freire’s philosophies of education for liberation. It asks how their respective socialist frameworks conceptualise the relationship between colonial domination, capitalist political economy, and curriculum as a site of political and moral struggle. Employing a comparative philosophical methodology, the analysis is grounded in an integrated theoretical framework that brings socialist humanism into dialogue with postcolonial–decolonial critique of coloniality and political economy. The study reconstructs five dimensions of their educational thought: conceptions of domination, the human person, political economy, pedagogical modalities, and the locus of transformative agency. The analysis demonstrates that while both thinkers reject the neutrality of schooling and affirm praxis as central to liberation, they advance distinct strategies within socialist educational thought. Nyerere articulates a state-coordinated, development-oriented socialism grounded in national self-reliance and collective reconstruction, whereas Freire advances a dialogical model centred on conscientisation, popular democratic agency, and vigilance against the reproduction of domination. Their divergence reveals a productive tension between institutional transformation and critical subject formation. The study concludes that this tension reframes contemporary debates on curriculum, decolonising education, and the public purposes of schooling in postcolonial contexts. Rather than offering a unified reform model, it positions liberation pedagogy as an ongoing negotiation between material transformation and democratic agency.</p>