De-neocolonizing and Redesigning African Education for Success in the Digital Age

This brief research will focus on the importance or need for the African education system to make its starting point in the African sociocultural and development context. This means that African education needs to be anchored in its local cultural assets and stock of practical knowledge that serves society’s survival needs. No society is without some level of organized systems of education and institutional structures that made functioning of a community possible across its history. It is on these systems that “modern” education should be built to expedite the development and transformation of African societies. As the education sociologist Durkheim (Education and sociology. The Free Press, 1956) theorized, because education is context and history specific, only indigenous educators and people who understand the strengths and weaknesses of their education or knowledge system to address local needs and aspirations should be the authors of their conventional education system. No outsider could or should design the education system of another society, however sophisticated his/her knowledge might be. Because the primary mission of education at present is to promote new ways of solving old problems that society’s traditional education systems could not address, it is essential for conventional education to start with studying indigenous education and knowledge systems, their strengths and weakness, as a starting point to a more robust education that is relevant to society’s development needs as experienced by Africans.