IJTM/IJCEE PAGE TEMPLATEv2 - openaccesslibrary.org

Conference of the International Journal of Arts and Sciences
1(6): 62 - 70 (2009)

CD-ROM. ISSN: 1943-6114
© InternationalJournal.org

Africanisation: The dilemma to Africanise or to
globalise a curriculum

Willa Louw, University of South Africa, South Africa

Abstract
Africanisation is generally seen as a renewed focus on Africa, to reclaim
what has been taken from Africa. A new sense of pride is emerging. This
sense of pride is evident in the local curriculum: there is a renewed focus
on indigenous knowledge systems, the diverse student body in higher
education institutions, and an African community competing with the
demands of a global society. This paper, while sympathetic to the demands
of globalisation, will focus on study materials in the South African
distance education that reflect the underpinning of an African philosophy
while it maybe should be adhering to the demands of globalisation. This
paper will also attempt to create awareness in all communities worldwide
of the need to be involved in their own curricula by not only looking at
problems such as language, culture and values, but also to start at the very
beginning namely the philosophy behind the design of such study
materials.

Keywords: Africanisation, westernisation, rational animal, curriculum
development, study materials, indigenous knowledge, distance education,
globalisation

1 Introduction

At the moment in Africa, there is a sense amongst the citizens that they are
no longer identifying with the Western world but are becoming a continent
in their own right. South Africa in particular has become a country in
search of itself. It was colonised by the Dutch in 1652, conquered by
Britain in 1803 and unified in 1910 after a devastating war. After that, a
quasi-Western state was created. This came to an end in 1994 when a
predominantly white government gave way to a government where
‘Africans’ rule: even the state president calls himself an ‘African’, a term
that implies that he associates himself with this continent.

Desmond Tutu, a well known priest in South Africa, says: “In the end our
purpose is social and communal harmony and wellbeing. Ubuntu does not
say ‘I think therefore I am.’ It says rather ‘I am human because I belong. I
participate. I share.’” (Pioneers of Change Associates, 2006:16) In this
paper the author will therefore reflect on a literary search she conducted on

Africanisation in an attempt to suggest ways to create a rich environment
for active learning for the student studying here in Africa while he or she
is competing with the rest of the world.

2. Africanisation and Westernisation

Africanisation has become a very important issue for the people in search
of unity, in search of a belonging and a sense of being proud of who and
what they are and what they stand for. Makgoba (1997:199) gives the
following definition of the word ‘Africanisation’; he says it is not about
excluding Europeans and their cultures, but about affirming the African
culture and its identity in a world community. “It is not a process of
exclusion, but inclusion… [I]t is a learning process and a way of life for
Africans. It involves incorporating, adapting and integrating other cultures
into and through African visions to provide the dynamism, evolution and
flexibility so essential in the global village. Africanisation is the process of
defining or interpreting African identity and culture”.

Africans are becoming ‘proudly South African’ by reclaiming their own
identity and by focusing on the context in which they live. Ramose (1998)
described this as “a conscious and deliberate assertion of nothing more or
less than the right to be an African”.

The Wikipedia encyclopaedia defines westernisation as follows:
(Westernisation) “is a process whereby non-western societies come under
the influence of Western culture”. The online Thesaurus dictionary
describes Africanisation as: “to make African, as a culture; to transfer to
African control; to become African”.

These two definitions show a difference in focus. The Western world is
not defined by its territory but by the people. In the case of Africanisation
it is confined to a continent and to a community. Most of the whites might
as well still be Western inhabitants living in South Africa. Globalisation
and Westernisation seem to be two sides of the coin because the global
community looks at the Western culture first. The Sankofa Youth
movement ([email protected], 2007) says: “By ‘Africanisation’, we
mean the embracing of our African heritage, and developing a sense of
loyalty towards the Motherland - Africa. This involves adopting and
promoting African culture, putting it on the pedestal currently occupied by
the west”.

This is more easily said than done in the education field where all these
diverse students enrol at an African higher education institution where
study material must be designed to fit all, while it also keeps its eyes on
the global goalposts.

3. A diverse student body enrols at an African
higher education institution

The tertiary education student body in Africa is characterised by cultural
and economic diversity. Most of these students come from an
educationally disadvantaged background and are often unprepared for
tertiary education. Nicholson (2004) says, “Education will not be truly
accessible to all South Africans until a means is found to support the
educationally under-prepared student to achieve his or her full potential”.
Preschool education has also been totally neglected in the education of
Africans (Vilakazi, 2000: 210). Children are often enrolled in primary
schools at the age of four so that the mothers can return to work in order to
support the family. These children are too young for this type of education
and fail repeatedly, resulting in the teacher as well as the youth becoming
disillusioned with education. Proper, affordable preschooling is necessary
to overcome these problems of disinterest and inadequate reading and
writing skills in later years.

The profile of a student enrolling at an African tertiary institution is also
changing; it now tends to be black and female and is becoming younger
than previously. Students tend to enrol the year after matriculation
whereas previously they only came at a much later age. Tertiary
institutions take these profiles into consideration when designing study
materials but, in my opinion, not enough pre-tests are done on the different
kinds of intelligences and the different learning styles.

4.The role of higher education in South Africa

The role of higher education is essentially to focus on and sustain tertiary
institutions. Government, which also forms part of the community, is in
essence the body that funds education. Makgoba (2003, 1) goes on to say,
“[It] occupies a special place in the hierarchy of any society, [as it]
responds to the changing and competitive world of knowledge, values and
norms for and on behalf of society. It champions and promotes the
knowledge, values and ideals of that society”.

Horsthemke (2004: 573--574) quotes McGregor (1996) when he says that
higher education, in order to promote Africanisation, should change in the
following ways: in the composition of students; the administrator bodies;
the syllabus and its content; the curricula; and the criteria that determine
what excellent research is.

I see it differently; I feel it is the task of everyone in the academic world to
change higher education by changing what they can in their everyday
involvement in educating the nation. Higher education has to focus on the
rebirth of an African voice and identity in this big Outcomes-based
Education (OBE) debate. OBE is the paradigm of education in South
Africa at the moment, and the rules of OBE are a given, but a community
should not forget how a person learns? Learning styles and learning
intelligences as mentioned earlier are not yet receiving the focus that they
need.

Africanisation should therefore be taken seriously by government, by
higher education and in particular universities. The students are making
choices that influence their future and that of their environment. More and
more students are choosing a career path in the Economic Sciences to
graduate in the world of finance, only to discover at a later stage there is
no work for them. The universities see these subjects as the ‘fat financial
cows’ of the institution, which are supporting other subjects that attract
fewer than twenty students, subjects like the sciences and technologies that
the community needs most at this stage. Cooper (2002:18) says that higher
education institutions are playing a key role in the making of the African
middle class, by thrusting thousands of new graduates into middle class
labour positions. During the strike of South African government officials
and teachers in June 2007, a local news source remarked that government
is concentrating on the up-and-coming middle class and that they have lost
track of the impoverished masses. Cooper (2002:18) also predicts this:
“Unless new and substantial policy initiatives are embarked on in the next
decade, it is likely that the new African upper-middle, and middle-middle
class strata, will be faced by more and more discontent cohorts of higher
education students, and the aspirant students, who face increasing
difficulties entering such education channels and obtaining jobs thereafter.
If the school system is improved to increase the number of matriculants in
the next decade, and if the current high levels of unemployment amongst
the working and other classes are maintained, a future scene could be set
for substantial potential conflicts.”

In an African education institution it becomes a challenge to transmit
knowledge to the lifelong learner in this country and in the rest of Africa
because “traditionally, education preceded along colonist lines with
virtually total disregard for indigenous knowledge systems” (Makgoba &
Tleane, 1998).

Indigenous knowledge should therefore be included in this above
mentioned transformative curriculum design which might lead to
curriculum reform in the long run.

5. Indigenous knowledge

The African reality should be taken seriously in curriculum design and
knowledge, skills/competencies and values should be taught holistically
from this perspective. Indigenous knowledge should be the point of
departure when designing study material. Relevance also becomes an issue
when researching indigenous knowledge: what is relevant in study
material and what is not? The focus should be on problems facing Africa.
Kunnie (2000:159) observes that “all critical and transformative educators
in the country need to embrace an indigenous African world view and root
the nation’s educational paradigms in an indigenous socioculture
epistemological framework”. Sipho Seepe (Seepe 2000:139) agrees. He
maintains, “Starting with indigenous knowledge systems would encourage
learners to draw on their cultural practices and daily experiences as they
negotiate and grapple with new situations and unfamiliar terrain.”

This unfamiliar terrain is often outside the learner’s own village, either in
Africa or in the rest of the world. The Internet has brought the global
community into the local village and although knowledge should be
contextual, it should not be context-bound. “Knowledge, correctly seen, is
anchored objectively by truth, or facts, that is, by the way the world is”
(Horsthemke 2004:573).

Those advocating the Africanisation of a higher education institution
should keep in mind that their teachings are dominated by what is
happening in the global community and their eyes should be on the bigger
picture. Nevertheless, they should not forget to emphasise the local
village’s ‘place in the sun’ and where this all fits into their own cultures,
values and indigenous languages and how one can combine all this in
order to create study materials that can compete globally.

6. Indigenous languages

Although Tleane (Makgoba & Tleane, 1998) suggests that there should be
at least a standardisation of African languages, Horsthemke (2004: 577-
579) considers this to be impractical. He says that Africa has a
multilingual and multicultural population where multilingualism should be
encouraged since it not only prepares us for the future and ‘the tough
world of global competition’, but also because linguistic diversity is a
resource for creativity. He is in favour of mother-tongue education in the
early years, in accordance with the South African Bill of Rights which
upholds the right to speak the language of your choice and to be educated
in your mother tongue at primary school.

In South Africa, even in academic institutions, people are becoming more
and more relaxed about how they use English – traditionally one of the
languages of tertiary education. For example, indigenous words such as
‘eish’ (this is too much), ‘gogo’ (grandmother) and ‘bakkie’ (little truck)
have become part of the everyday vocabulary. Horsthemke (2004:578)
says “it is not just a matter of accommodating English as a useful tool but
also not losing any of the indigenous languages in the process”.

To the author’s mind, the use of English as an academic language has
changed tremendously here in South Africa. Gone are the days when
academics tried to impress one another with their rich vocabulary.
However, this does not mean that academic writing is now of a lower
standard; it just indicates a different register. Africanisation has taught us
to negotiate in order to accommodate all second- and third-language users,
and higher education should embrace this trend when designing a local
curriculum.

7. Africanisation of the local curriculum

The internet has brought the global community into the local village and
although, as discussed previously, knowledge should be contextual, it
should not be context-bound. “Knowledge, correctly seen, is anchored
objectively by truth, or facts, that is, by the way the world is”
(Horsthemke, 2004:573).

In an attempt to Africanise higher education institutions one should keep
in mind that their teachings should be dominated by what is happening in
the global community and their eyes should be on the bigger picture as
well.

Should you need to visit a rubbish dump in South Africa, you are likely to
be asked at the gate if you have any study guides from the University of
South Africa (Unisa) that you wish to discard. The reason for this is that
Unisa is a distance education institution that mails mostly printed material
to its almost 250 000 students, and at some of the rubbish dumps, these
jobless individuals are sitting reading all the study material they can lay
their hands on in order to improve their education. This gives rise to
questions such as: “Who are our learners?”, “For whom are we
curriculating?” and “What are their needs?” Horsthemke (2004:573)
remarks that knowledge is a human construction defined by a human
purpose.

Yael Farber’s SeZaR, an adaptation of Julius Caesar as an example, is an
attempt to Africanise a Shakespearean play. The play is no longer about

Rome. “This production is, in a generous way, squarely and pointedly
about Africa.” (SeZaR, 2001:102-104) The production is a postmodern
universal play about national and international governments and
boardrooms, but Farber focuses his attention relentlessly on Africa and
even the costumes are generic African. African issues do not become a
by-product but stand centre stage. Local tertiary institutions should
therefore also present study material that is easily accessible and
comprehensible to all students.

The Sankofa Youth Movement ([email protected], 2007) as another
example, created a youth movement for people of African descent.
Sankofa is an Akan word used in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, meaning: san
(return) ko (go) fa (look, seek and take), expressing the notion of looking
at the past in order to move forward. Although this movement is based in
Britain, it has international scope. The mission of its members is to create
an increasing awareness of their common origin, and to emphasise cultural
similarities between people of African descent. They are thus trying to
create a unity amongst Africans, while at the same time facilitating
Africanisation. By discussing discrimination they have faced in the past,
they highlight the fact that they are all in the same boat whether they like it
or not. And that is, according to this movement, a definite unifying factor.

It becomes clear that it is time to rethink our local content. By changing
the curriculum in accordance with societal needs, we are changing the way
“teaching and learning is organised” (Horsthemke, 2004:573). Vilakazi
(2000, 196) goes on to say that there is an urgent need for the education
and the development policies to be synchronised and for a specific local
curriculum with ‘appropriate knowledge’ to be designed. A restructured
curriculum is therefore needed where the African reality is taken seriously
and a rich environment for active learning can take place.

8. Conclusion

Africanisation is important for the whole African community; not only
does it give each individual a sense of belonging on this continent, but it
also unifies a very diverse community with diverse cultures and values.
We are forced to turn to the past in order to create a unified future. The
Internet has brought the global community into the local village and
therefore we must also look at the disadvantaged schooling system of the
past and reconsider how we can create study material to bring together
groups, communities, organisations and even nations by initiating
conversation. We, as Africans, are all obliged to respond to this calling:
the students, the parents, the institution, curriculum designers, academics
and industry, to name but a few.

These are different contexts and different problems indeed, but unified
under an African continent competing in the global arena. Locally,
everyone needs to explore Africanisation in his or her own territory and try
to create a rich environment for active learning which can raise worldwide
awareness of the curriculum we cherish and ultimately present a challenge
to the global teaching and learning platform.

Africanisation reflects our common legacy, history, and postcolonial
experience. Through this legacy, we connect with the broader African
experience and establish the threads that bind us together in a single strong
rope – embodied in what is referred to here as ‘Africanness’. We then
confront our own sense of Africanness, transcend our individual identity,
seek our commonality, and recognise and embrace our otherness when we
compare ourselves with the rest of the world.

References

Bostock, S. (1998). Constructivism in mass Higher Education: a case
study. Retrieved 18th of October, 2007 from http://www.keele.ac.uk

Bonnett, A. (2004). The idea of the West. United States of America.
Palgrave.

Bostock, S. (1998). Constructivism in mass higher education: a case study.
Retrieved 18th of October, 2007 from http://www.keele.ac.uk

Cooper, D. (2002). The skewed revolution: trends in South African higher
education 1988-1998. Paper presented at a seminar, Rand Afrikaans
University, Johannesburg, 16 August.

Higgs, P, Vakalisa, NCG, Mda, TV & Assie-Lumumba, NT (eds). (2000).
African voices in education. Lansdowne: Juta.

Horsthemke, K. (2004). Knowledge, education and the limits of
Africanisation. Journal of Philosophy of Education Society of Great
Britain 38(4).

Kunnie, J. (2000). Indigenous African philosophies and socio educational
transformation in ‘post-apartheid’ Azania. In Higgs, P, Vakalisa, NCG,
Mda, TV & Assie-Lumumba, NT (eds). 2000. African voices in
education. Lansdowne: Juta.

Makgoba, MW. (1997). Mokoko: the Makgoba affair – a reflection on
transformation. Florida: Vivlia.

Makgoba, MW & Tleane, C. (1998). Africanisation and education.
Lunchtime talk presented at University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
23 September.

Makgoba, WM. (2003). An African vision for mergers. Mail and
Guardian supplement, 2-8 May.

Matos, N. (2000). The nature of learning, teaching and research in higher
education in Africa. In Higgs, P, Vakalisa, NCG, Mda, TV & Assie-

Lumumba, NT (eds). 2000. African voices in education. Lansdowne:
Juta.
Nicholson, C. (2004). The challenges of teaching legal history to a
demographically diverse and educationally under prepared student body.
Refereed article 11(4), paper presented at a conference at Murdoch
University, Western Australia, July.
Pioneers of Change Associates. (2006). Mapping dialogue. Retrieved
17th of October, 2007 from http://www.pioneersofchange.net
Ramose, MB. (1998). Foreword to Seepe, S (ed). 1998. Black
perspective(s) on tertiary institutional transformation. Johannesburg:
Vivlia.
Quotes and References. (2006). REAL (rich environment for active
learning). Retrieved 18th of October, 2007 from
http://Quotes.internetl.net
Sankofa Youth Movement. Retrieved 19th of June, 2007 from
http://www.ligali.org/me2we/sankofa.htm , [email protected].
Seepe, S (ed). (1998). Black perspective(s) on tertiary institutional
transformation. Johannesburg: Vivlia.
Seepe, S. (2000). Africanisation of knowledge: exploring mathematical
and scientific knowledge embedded in African cultural practices. In
Higgs, P, Vakalisa, NCG, Mda, TV & Assie-Lumumba, NT (eds).
(2000). African voices in education. Lansdowne: Juta.
SeZaR. (2001). Shakespeare in Southern Africa 13:102-104. Retrieved
17th of October, 2007 from
http://ise.uvic.ca/Library/Criticism/shakespearian.sasz2.html
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language. (2003). 4th
edition. Houghton Mifflin.
The Unisa 2015 project team. (2006). The Unisa 2015 strategic plan.
Retrieved 18th of October, 2007 from www.unisa.ac.za
Vilakazi, HW. (2000). The problems of education in Africa. In Higgs, P,
Vakalisa, NCG, Mda, TV & Assie-Lumumba, NT (eds). 2000. African
voices in education. Lansdowne: Juta.
Wikipedia®. Retrieved 17th of October, 2007 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westernisation