Looking for journalism education scholarship in some unusual places: The case of Africa

Abstract

It is argued in this article that due to the ‘knowledge colonialism’ that exists in the world today, Northern (especially American and British) academic publishing houses have become so prevailing that generations of journalism students in English-speaking African countries have become entrapped in the Northern ‘way of doing things’. In the field of communication studies, this is perhaps best exemplified by the way in which introductory American textbooks on journalism have become not only the major, but more often than not, the sole published source for journalism students in Africa, as well as in the way journals tend to consist of Northern editorial board members, even though the research area is Africa. This situation is discussed against the background of the curtailment on the free flow of information in Africa on the one hand, and the Northern knowledge hegemony on the other. A North–South and South–South publishing model is suggested.