Are grant holders clouding out the space for African scholars in universities?

by Dr Hillary Jephat Musarurwa, PhD

Yesterday, interested to hear the thoughts of our community, we shared a controversial article about the persisting neo-colonial influence of the West on African universities. Dr Hillary Musarurwa pens his response here. His views are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Canon Collins Trust.

I would hasten to say yes, southern African universities do serve neo-colonial ends and this is seen in the way most of our universities in South Africa are structured. They pretty much follow Western pedagogies and teach students how to cram and regurgitate Western theories.

This is exacerbated by what I call, “Academic Colonialism” which has seen many academics from the West migrate to Africa and stay there beyond their studies. Some conveniently come with a small grant, which grows into a bigger pot as times goes by. Do not take me wrongly, I am not anti-immigration, hell no. I do believe that skills should be exported to any country in the world. What I am against is the proliferation of grant holders who cloud out the space for African scholars in universities. This Academic Colonialism is not producing a strong African researcher who can equally apply for and land a big grant from the West. Instead, it is just a tick-box exercise which sees tokenistic capacity building of early career researchers/academics whilst perpetuating the exploitation of an African as a study subject.

On the other hand, Southern African universities should take their position and counter this modern-day form of colonialism and push for decolonialisation of what students are taught and what research focuses on. We need to see an Afrocentric pedagogy emerge across the region. Which should also be complemented by context specific research, that is not extractive and only serves to build a profile for the principal investigator and their team but one that provides tangible solutions and benefits to participants. For this to be possible, grant makers/funders should equitably distribute funds to African scholars not only as equal partners but the lead investigators of studies happening across Southern Africa. Until and unless the African scholar takes a radical stance to decolonialise our universities we will perpetuate the extractive culture of the West and remain as study subjects with no home grown to our everyday problems of poverty, inequality and social injustice.