Seek partnerships that reflect African values - American Professor to tertiary institutions
An American academic, Professor Candace Moore, has called on institutions of higher learning in Africa to work to ensure that global partnerships are reflective of African perspectives and ideologies.
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She advised that while seeking to enter partnerships globally, management of African higher learning institutions must ensure that such partnerships did not tilt towards Western ideas and values to their disadvantage.
Prof. Moore, who is in charge of Higher Education, Student Affairs and International Education Policy Programme at Maryland University in the United States (US), called on African institutions of higher learning to develop an indigenous curriculum to reflect African values and needs.
She said that would help to ensure that products were developed to fit into the country and the continent's development agenda.
Prof. Moore was speaking at a public lecture on the topic: ‘Leveraging African Indigenous Approaches to Cultivating Sustainable Global Partnerships’, at the University of Cape Coast (UCC) last Thursday.
A hybrid event of in-person and virtual events, the lecture was chaired via Zoom by a Professor of Social Justice at the University of Toronto, Canada, Prof, George Sefa Dei.
Indigenous knowledge
Prof. Moore observed that incorporating African indigenous knowledge extensively into curricula would make all understand the power of unity, mutual and self-respect and the need to galvanise efforts towards moving the country and the continent forward together.
She said it was important for institutions of higher learning in Africa not to set up transactional experiences with global partners that reinforced colonial harm and trauma.
She observed, for instance, that if Ghanaian indigenous knowledge such as proverbs and values was carefully rewritten in textbooks, it could create culture-consciousness learning approaches and scholarships that would promote unity for national development.
The professor urged students and lecturers to engage in decolonising approaches and ensure these were critically used to impact policy and curricula.
As a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright US Scholar Programme Award, it allowed Prof. Moore to spend the 2021-2022 academic year in Ghana at the UCC.
She worked with Ghanaian graduate students and academic leaders in the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA) to build cross-cultural engagement with UMD and UCC graduate students in the areas of student affairs and higher education.
With this fair knowledge, she called on faculties to tickle the imagination of graduate students to maximise their creativity by moving from the conventional methods if we are to experience the unconventional.
Authenticity
Prof. Sefa Dei said it was worrying that many African universities had lost their authenticity and adopted Westernised ideologies of learning.
"We have become intellectual imposters because we are not our true selves," he stated.
He called for a rethink on global partnerships to go beyond trying to catch up with the West and to disrupt the systems of approaches and work towards an African-centred paradigm.
Dismantle colonial systems
Prof. Sefa Dei said Africa needed to dismantle colonial systems in the academia and nurture students with indigenous pathways to build them ready for the growth of the continent.
He stated that globalisation had become "what is yours is ours and what is mine is mine," saying “It is time to rethink and ensure global partnerships were set on our own terms.”
He further stressed the importance to ensure such partnerships were to ensure building the human resource and not brain mining.
A Professor at the IEPA, Prof. Martins Fabunmi, speaking on the experiences of a visiting lecturer, commended the IEPA for their conscious efforts at creating a conducive environment for teaching and learning.
