Can the philosophy curriculum be Africanised? An examination of the prospects and challenges of some models of Africanisation

Abstract

By the year 2010 I had begun to seriously question the type of philosophy we learn and teach in universities in sub-Saharan Africa. I also questioned the technique of curriculum deployment. But besides the technique of curriculum deployment which can be blamed on the teachers, one ready suspicion for the poverty of the philosophy education in Africa is the dominance of a Western curriculum. On the basis of this, I identified some new models for Africanising the philosophy curriculum. They are: the B-model, the C-model and the D-model. Of the three, I recommended the C-model to the University of Calabar and am still awaiting approval. However, I realise now that it never occurred to me to double-check on the prospects and challenges of my proposed C-model and the other two models. This is the focus of this paper. First, I want to explain what it might mean to Africanise the philosophy curriculum. Second, I want to describe, however briefly, the structure of the three models. And third, I want to properly examine the prospects and challenges that might confront them in practice, and leave the judgement as to which is better to the reader. My method will consist in critical analysis.