George J. Sefa Dei

Decoloniality and African Education: Contested Issues and Challenges is a vibrant and vital collection of essays that addresses the challenges, possibilities, and responsibilities for the future of de- and anti-colonial African educational. Decolonization has become a buzz word of late, so the term is used in this context with a certain trepidation. But the themes of this book go beyond mere rhetoric by creating specific approaches to dismantling colonial educational systems in African and to create a new environment for African education duly informed by local cultural resource knowing, known from grounded everyday practices of authentic African educators. In other words, a revision of educational practices informed by what educators know and are doing for the lessons in envisioning schooling and education in Africa. In this endeavor, while we seek lessons and partnerships with others, African educators are urged to think through solutions specific to the problems and challenges in schools today, and meet the call of our times to provide education to young learners that not only empowers them, but also provides them with background knowledge, cultural grounding, and specific lessons that will enable them to craft their own futures. So how do we “do” decolonial education from the standpoint of African educators and learners everyday schooling practice and knowledge? Decoloniality and African Education argues that a careful embrace of African Indigenous and cultural knowings determine the successful response to this question. It engages both the “decolonial” and the “anti-colonial,” with a reading that the “decolonial” (as many have pointed out, see Parry, 1994) is a process and a path toward an end, which is the goal of the “anti-colonial” (see Dei, 2022).

Decoloniality and African Education is essential reading for students and scholars committed to the improvement of educational outcomes for African American students. It’s a book that empowers educators and raises awareness about African-based teaching environments. It can be used in a variety of courses, including African Studies, African Development, Anti-Colonial Thought and Indigenous Knowledge, and the Pedagogical Implications of Decolonization.

Connecting cultures to educational settings is an essential component of critical pedagogy. This book addresses many of the key issues and challenges in decolonizing the African school curriculum. It highlights important philosophical arguments on the challenges and possibilities of achieving these goals in a meaningful manner. Topics covered in the book include:

• operationalizing the key terms of “inclusion” and “curriculum”
• strategies for Africanizing the school curriculum, and
• the implications of local knowledge for schooling reform

• how do we frame an inclusive anti-colonial African future and what is the nature of the work required to collectively arrive at that future?
• what education are learners of today going to receive and how will they apply it to their schooling and work lives?
• how do we re-fashion our work as African educators and learners to create more relevant understandings of what it means to be human?
• how do we challenge colonizing and imperializing relations of the academy? What are the possibilities and limits of counter-visions of education?
• how do we make school curricula inclusive through teaching, research and graduate training in questions of Indigeneity and multi-centric ways of knowing?

Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance is an excellent text for use in a variety of upper-division undergraduate and graduate classrooms. It is also a valuable addition to the libraries of writers and researchers interested in indigenous studies and decolonialism.