Paper short abstract:

Is decolonisation a threat to academic freedom and by extension a drawback to knowledge production in Africa? I argue that academic freedom itself is a contested concept and ought to go hand in hand with what Ndlovu-Gatsheni would call epistemic freedom.

Paper long abstract:

In pursuit of a cultural policy on education that rested on intellectual decolonisation and Africanisation, Kwame Nkrumah recognised the value of academic freedom as an enabler of knowledge production, but ironically, he sought to sidestep academic freedom to safeguard the ‘national interest’ of the ex-colony that he governed. Nkrumah’s approach necessarily brought him into direct conflict with the hegemonic forces of ‘universal knowledge’ both locally and internationally. His critics often argue that Nkrumah’s pursuit of decolonisation in Africa’s (Ghana’s) higher education is necessarily antithetical to academic freedom. But is this really the case? Is decolonisation a threat to academic freedom and by extension a drawback to knowledge production in Africa?

This paper attempts to make sense of and resolve what I call ‘Nkrumah’s dilemma’. It does so through a measured conceptual clarification of what it means to ‘decolonise’ in the context of Africa’s higher education. Why did Nkrumah find academic freedom, or a universal seeking conception of academic freedom problematic in the context of Africa’s higher education and knowledge production? The paper critically assesses the works of ‘anti-decolonisation’ writers who argue that decolonisation is only meaningful as political and economic self-direction, but otherwise, a hackneyed bad idea that in the main, only ‘mourns the past’, serving to upend Africa’s innovation and agency (Taiwo 2022, 2011; Teferra 2020). In all, I argue that academic freedom itself is a contested concept and ought to go hand in hand with what Ndlovu-Gatsheni would call epistemic freedom.