IGWEBUIKE: African Journal of Arts and Humanities

Outside the ravages caused by colonialism and the European advent into Africa, Africa continues to suffer from marginalisation. This continuous marginalisation arises, among many other things, from her various forms of indigenous knowledge being treated either as inferior or second-class to Western knowledge. It is on record that in the 21st century, Western knowledge canons are still often taken as the norms in African research, universities and societies. The uniqueness of this paper is that it theorises that this tragic situation is caused not simply by the West but by many of Africa’s own sons and daughters in the intellectual cycle who continue to re-echo Western thought patterns to the neglect of African intellectual traditions and cultures. Many of Africa’s own researchers continue to privilege Western theories and experience over those of Africa. Many so-called African scholars continue to produce volumes of scholarship on Western subject matters, and very little attention or none at all is given to African subject matter. Many African sons and daughters are experts and specialists on Aristotle, Plato, John Locke, Karl Popper, Max Weber, and many other Western scholars and subject matter, to the neglect of indigenous personalities like Nyerere, Senghor, Kaunda, Nkrumah, King, Cone, Du Bois, West, etc. The paper, through a critical hermeneutics, analytic and evaluative methods, argues that while in a globalised world, African scholars should not isolate their research from the cosmopolitan community, yet there must be a balance in such a way that African epistemologies, logic, and ways of knowing are foregrounded, mainstreamed and centralised in research by African scholars. Social Research and ecological research in Africa should not simply be a re-echoing of the answers provided by Western scholars to Western problems. The paper finds that coloniality is still present in much of the research in Africa, that Africa is still suffering from mental colonialism, and that there is a need to decolonise and Africanise research in Africa. It concludes that if this is done, there will be a promotion of cognitive justice for Africa, and social and ecological research will be more relevant to Africa.

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