Africans are being urged to use digitization to showcase their culture and education to the rest of the globe, according to historian and professor of African studies Professor Toyin Falola.
He made the announcement during the African University College of Communication (AUCC20th )’s anniversary celebration in Accra.
According to Prof. Falola, African nationalists advocated the establishment of a new socio-political order, which led to the introduction of the modern education system to Africa by European colonialists.
The structure, curriculum, and ideals that underlie Africa’s educational system, he claimed, have frustrated nationalists’ attempts to emancipate the continent’s people.
He claimed that Africa’s educational system required initiatives that expressed Pan-Africanism and promoted Africa to the world through digitalization since it was beyond decolonization.
He suggested that the structures, institutional cultures, curricula, and underlying ideologies that form the foundation of the education system on the continent must be addressed as part of the decolonization process.
He stated that in order to alter the continent’s educational systems, governments must put plans into action.
The objectives of Pan-Africanism and its ideal must be reflected in the African educational curriculum, he added. “This is a conscious endeavor that we must have policymakers, change makers, and governments engage on,” he said.
We must consciously develop Pan-Africanism in its purest form so that our children will be willing to continue it, he added.
“As the link between authentic African traditions and modern lifestyles, our only responsibility is to hold their hands till they get back on track,” said an African of today’s generation. “The generation of Africans today seems to have gone a long way away from the spirit of Pan-Africanism.”
“Let us teach our children about Nkrumah, Lumumba, Mandela, Nyerere, Mbeki and many other heroes of Africa, not in the way that white supremacists have crafted a one-sided monologue about them,” he said. “Rather, in a way that portrays the wholesomeness of their ideas on freedom for Africa and moving the continent forward.”
The complete decolonization of Africa’s educational systems, according to Prof. Folala, would take time and conscious effort to accomplish.
The preservation of indigenous knowledge through digitization and the facilitation of simple access to such knowledge in public libraries must be supported, he said, and stakeholders must be encouraged to do so.