The dominance of the spirit of neo-liberal capitalism in contemporary higher education practices in post-colonial Africa: a reconstruction of an African ethic of indigenisation

Abstract

This paper argues that while there are some academic efforts have been made to fulfil the need to indigenise African universities, these efforts have been greatly overshadowed by the hegemony that neo-liberal capitalistic practices have at our contemporary African universities. The post-colonial African university has become more oriented towards the promotion and dissemination of the values of neo-liberal capitalism. In this orientation, African indigenous values are only appealed to in order to domesticate capitalistic economic practices in Africa. It is also argued that African universities have adopted a Euro-centric approach in their academic orientation at the expense of African indigenous knowledge systems and values. In so doing, the salient presumption is that African indigenous knowledge systems and values have nothing to contribute to the transformation of African societies. Another argument that is advanced in this paper is that the reconstruction of the post-colonial African university is only plausible on the premise that these universities actively appropriate African indigenous knowledge systems and values in theory and practice. Keywords : Neo-liberal capitalism, hegemony, African indigenous knowledge systems. Indilinga Vol. 6 (1) 2007 pp. 14-25