Reclaiming Indigenous Cultures in Sub-Saharan African Education

Abstract

The cultures in indigenous Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are heterogeneous. Although there is not a common culture shared by all Africans, particularistic cultures exist in areas where common cultural and/or linguistic characteristics exist. However, African education systems are similar in that they can generally be categorized and conceptualized as circular, organic, or collectivist. In this chapter, a discussion of African cultures focuses on the application of indigenous education methods, which are generally universal to SSA societies. This chapter contends that culture plays an important role in students’ educational achievements, and asserts that despite the advent of decolonization in the 1960s, SSA education systems mirror colonial hegemonic paradigms that are disruptive to African cultural practices. These paradigms were inherited from former colonial education, which undermined indigenous knowledge systems, resulting in dissonances and disjuncture between the cultural and social-specific contexts of cultural education and the pedagogical practices taking place in schools. This chapter offers a decolonizing cultural critique and argument for reclamation of African indigenous knowledge systems in SSA education, and concludes that indigenous knowledge systems are tools that help students to conceptualize knowledge and to enhance academic performance and achievement.