Knowledge Bank: Politics of knowledge in Africa

In this week’s edition of the knowledge bank, we speak to professor Sabelo Ndlovu Gatsheni about a paper he wrote. This article looks into the complex politics of knowledge in Africa through centering often-ignored contributions of African intellectuals to the decolonisation of knowledge and politics. Thus, the article performs four key tasks: (1) it explains how epistemology frames ontology as its entry into the topical politics of knowledge; (2) it introduces and defines the concepts of the cognitive empire and epistemic freedom as they enable a deeper understanding of the complex politics of knowledge; (3) it historicises African struggles for decolonisation as reflected in African decolonial scholarship and the quests for epistemic freedom; and (4) it makes sense of resurgent and insurgent decolonisation of the twenty-first century as embodied by the Rhodes Must Fall movements in South Africa.

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