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“Wipe the Blackboard Clean”: Academization and Christianization—Siblings in Africa?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Henk J. van Rinsum
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Abstract:

In this article the author relates the crisis of African universities to their idiosyncratic birth during the colonial period. The African universities were, to a large extent, conceptualized according to the Western template and its inherent epistemology This Western university originates from a local knowledge system that gained a hegemonic position culminating in the colonial period. The author argues for another conceptualization of African universities, based on a diversity of knowledge systems, and refers to processes of (re-)appropriation as seen in the domain of African Independent Churches.

Résumé:

Résumé:

Dans cet article, l'auteur met en relation la crise des universités africaines et leur naissance caractéristique pendant la période coloniale. Les universités africaines ont été dans une large mesure conceptualisées selon le modèle occidental et son épistémologie inhérente. Cette université occidentale trouve son origine dans un système de savoir local ayant obtenu une position hégémonique, culminant dans la période coloniale. L'auteur plaide pour une autre conceptualisation des universités africaines, basée sur une diversité des systèmes de savoir, et se reporte aux processus de (ré-) appropriation tels que ceux observés dans le domaine des églises indépendantes africaines.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 45 , Issue 2: African Universities in Crisis and the Promotion of a Democratic Culture , September 2002 , pp. 27 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2002

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