In this study an attempt is made to critically re-examine the narrative of decolonization of education in Africa and question the extent to which the supposed decolonization processes in place are sensitive and responsive to new forms of exploitation of Africa as may arise from new centres of global power such as China. 

It does seem, this paper contends, that while the dash to outflank and roll back unwarranted colonial influences on African education systems has been anecdotal, little has been done by way of equally making sure the line of attack has not grown too thin and weak for an unlikely “Chinese Alexander the Great” to artfully and daringly break through and inflict another blow to the quest for a decolonized Africa. 

Around 1884-85 at Berlin Conference the powers that be in Europe decided to conquer Africa and divide it up for profit [1]. They meticulously parcelled out Africa as political spaces to establish what would become colonial states with imperial subjects to be regulated. Education was copiously employed as “a tool of communication between the colonizer and the colonized. Emphasis on the individual and de-emphasis on community and culture resulted in ideological dissonance.The consequence of the colonial encounter between Europe and Africa (This is equally true for the rest of the colonized world) was to establish thereafter the parameters for global power and the gateway of acceptable language, knowledge, jurisprudence and thought” [2].

It was, therefore, right and proper on the part of Africa to undo these unwarranted colonizing practices or, to use Wiredu’s apt definition, “divest African (educational thought and practice) of all undue influences emanating from X (its) colonial past” [3]. These undue influences, so to speak, are given a new lease on life every now and then by the fact that African nations still by and large use the colonial-era curriculum frameworks, power relations and institutional structures to enact and validate schooling for its human capital formation [2]. 

Moreover, the sway of colonial-era practices and influences still linger on. Connell [4] contends that “contrary to some of the early theorising about ‘globalisation’, the world is not becoming a homogenized single culture. It is becoming more unequal and more complex, with new kinds of power centres, new patterns of exploitation (Author’s emphasis italicized)”. The rise of China as a new power centre could come with a price tag of new patterns of exploitation, albeit more muted and less refuted.

The section that follows includes a mention of the methods of study for this paper; and a critical analysis of the narrative of decolonization of education in Africa. The next section critiques the decolonizing potential of the narrative in light of the “neo-colonial impulses” exhibited by China in its rise [5]. Closing remarks are offered by way of deconstructing “accepted assertions to find other meanings than the one constructed (about China): the idea of (China as an altruistic business partner to Africa) suggests the possibility of fiction” [2].

Study Methods

Two explanatory frameworks suit the purpose of this study. The first is Margaret Archer’s social realism which explains that a social system such as education (structure), an ideology such as colonization (culture) and their respective social actors (agency) are logically related to each other in both material and ideational ways [6-8]. In other words, the elements of structure, culture and agency act together as a conditioning milieu for interactions borne of an encounter such as that between Europe and Africa in the late 19^th century. It is, therefore, ideal for re-examining the narrative of decolonization of education in Africa. 

The second framework is Syrotinski’s deconstructive post-colonialism [9] which can help us to “speak of what can be, despite the trauma of colonialism and the incapacity of the post-colonial state” [2]. This makes it ideal for “looking beyond the text” [2] and critiquing the representation of China in the post-colonial epistemic subtlety of “partnerships” in the context of African development and, by extension, education systems therein.

The Genesis and Axis of the Narrative

Let us begin with the actual event of colonization and then explain its empirical and real bearings, as Bhaskar [10] would postulate. It all started one fateful day as it was for Friday (The name Robinson Crusoe gave to the native man he rescued from cannibals on the island where Crusoe had started life from scratch after solely surviving a shipwreck, according Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel, Robinson Crusoe.) in Daniel Defoe’s 1719 Robinson Crusoe. In that famous English literature classic:

“Crusoe, the Western European Self, is equated with futurity, vision, civilisation, rationality, language and light. Crusoe begins imposing cultural imperialism. He gives Friday his new name and instructs “Friday” to call him “Master”. Crusoe then teaches Friday English language needed for master-servant relationship; and he wants Friday to be useful, handy and dependent. Crusoe then converts Friday’s religion.” [11].

That is a picture of what transpired when Europe embarked on its colonial adventure in Africa. The difference is that Robinson Crusoe is a work of fiction, colonization was not. The scale and gravity of the colonization project were enormous and ominous. What began as a trickle of “discoverers and pioneers” quickly swelled into waves of European settler communities which swept across the African continent. Soon settler economies erupted all over the place and disrupted the African way of life; anchored in a ruthlessly efficient colonial administration that had since changed the face of labour migration in Africa. Europeans were quickly and decisively able to “prove [their] superiority through [the] tongue, pen, gun and the Bible”[11]. The mode of interaction between the colonizer and the colonized was based on acculturation using a number of tools such as ‘assimilation’ and ‘association’ [2]. 

The acculturation drive itself was erected on the fundamental notion of Africans being inferior out and out. “These mechanisms [assimilation and association] were justified by treaties that disempowered and fervent evangelising, as well as arguments that alluded to both imperial profit-making and humanitarian munificence” [2]. Missionaries from Europe took the lead to lay the groundwork for an education system that would “civilise” the people of Africa and make them Christians as well [12]. 

An important feature of that system of education was its delivery “in the medium of one foreign language or another” [3]. An apt account of what this new “event” of colonizing educational practices meant was captured by President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania when he noted that Western education:

“laid heavier emphasis on subservient attitudes and on white-collar skills; it emphasized and encouraged the individualistic instincts of mankind, instead of his cooperative instincts. The result of this educational philosophy is the accumulation of individual material wealth which is used as a criterion of social merit and worth” [1].

So, the most direct empirical bearing of colonization of education in Africa as such was the weighty psycho-existential complex resulting from the “juxtaposition of the black and white races”, notes Fanon in 2008 [13]. The quality of education was deliberately poor and its spread almost followed the pattern of agricultural produce in terms of which parts of Africa had more potential for exploitation [2]. “Colonial education was hegemonic and disruptive to African cultural practices, indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing”, Shizha attests [14] .

What is real (underlying mechanisms and structures) about colonization of education in Africa was that it set into motion oppressive assumptions validating Europe’s empire-building through feeding European industries with raw materials; and subsequently turning the colonies and the post-colonial world into ready sources of research data for metropolitan sciences on which today’s world economy of knowledge has been built [5]. This has come to determine how knowledge is circulated (“In this division of labour, the “theory” part of the production of knowledge was located in the institutions of the metropole. The processed knowledge was returned to the colonial or semi-colonial periphery in the form of applied sciences [4]) in the current neoliberal setup. Africa still by and large looks to the West for intellectual authority with regard to how disciplines and research methods are defined and refined, how curricula are taught and how publication and recognition of academic excellence are practised [4]. 

This state of affairs has two serious implications. First, African human capital formation in the mainstream economy is as a matter of necessity conditioned by “expertise” in “metropolitan theories and methodologies” [4]. Second, the growing desire on the part of post-colonial Africa to claw back a rightful place in generating mainstream economy knowledge has put a lot of strain on the structures and curricula of its higher education to “prove its worth”. This could well mean “marginalising areas of knowledge that can’t easily be commodified (including the humanities, critical social analysis and pure science) and standardising curricula internationally on the model of elite universities...” [4]. The pressure to change is, therefore, real, vexed and intense for Africa.

So much more for decolonization of education! “Despite the advent of decolonization that started in the 1960s, African education systems mirror colonial education paradigms inherited from former colonial governments” [15].

It is pertinent as such to revisit the structure, culture and agency that education systems in Africa have employed to decolonize over the last four decades or so.

In terms of structure, the African social setup preceding colonization had an education system that was structured around “shaping people’s attitude to nature [life], history and destiny” [1]. European colonialism undid this local knowledge-“knowledge that is unique to a given culture or society” [15], and introduced in its place the “organized activities that take place in schools that are intended to transmit skills, knowledge (and attitudes)” [2]. 

Decolonization of education in Africa is supposed to question what makes up the structure and curriculum of this “modern” education and how it is transacted through institutional settings and power relations that validate it. However, to date, most African nations still go about the business of public education not only using a colonial language but retaining the salient features of the colonial-era education. 

For example, “the school structure and taught content in Uganda has changed a little since independence from Britain in 1962” [2]. Post-colonial curriculum reforms in Africa have produced mixed results, to say the least. President Nyerere was inspired by Paulo Freire when he introduced a farm-school system in Tanzania during the post-independence transformation of the country [2]. It did not, however, gain the presumed popularity. President Nkrumah of Ghana had a similar grand vision for his country when he set up the Ghana Education Trust to wean his people off dependence on a colonial-era misfit. But that proved futile when a military coup in 1966 threw Ghana into an era of political turmoil, economic hardships and poor public services [16]. 

South Africa is among the most recent of African nations to try its hands at decolonizing its education system. In 1995 it added indigenous knowledge [17] onto its stock of curriculum in a redesign bid. But these spirited attempts have met with little or no success due to a poor balance between Africanising and internationalising the education systems in question.

An ideal decolonization of African education systems would be systemic, systematic and unapologetic in indigenization of education frameworks, education policy influence, culture-based curriculum, language education and educational leadership capacity [18]. One would almost certainly add institutional support, funding and research. Its common themes should include:

“(African) identity reinforcement and celebration; reviving naming and other family-based traditions; language immersion at all levels; schools that are calendared with the seasons’ community needs in mind and that teach from traditional culture frameworks and values; expanding ideas about classroom design, informal spaces, and the environment to enhance learning; and instilling a sense of purpose plus fostering spirituality in the youth” [18]. 

In reality, the structure of current education systems in Africa betrays these ideals. In terms of culture, the urge to decolonize African education systems cannot ignore the fact that formal education introduced during colonial rule could not be thrown away altogether or they would risk throwing away the washing-basin together with the water. This is simply because acculturation “is also a fact of history not particular to Africa” [2], and the “primary definition of education is acculturation” [19]. The challenge for decolonization of education is, therefore, to culturally create a “hybrid identity” that sits across indigeneity and modernity. In the words of Oelofsen, this archetype should foster Africans “who are comfortable” in both their indigenous and modern outfits. One wonders if that is not the case already with a slant!

There is little by way of concerted efforts by African governments to use culture as a tool of nation building. On the contrary, Obanya [19] was of the mind that African governments seem to have over-borrowed “foreign culture the way [they] have done with foreign money”, landing the continent in a possible “culture debt trap”. The educated class in Africa is fast becoming incapable of mastering their national languages. 

That said, the call for decolonizing African education systems is not being backed up with robust enhancements such as “ development of indigenous languages for use in education; educational materials development, national authorship, printing and publishing; other cultural industries that can impact on education (film, the media, music/dance, traditional medicine); development of school architecture and classroom environments that can conform with local climate and culture; school calendars that blend neatly with local work and leisure programming; and building of strong school-community ties” [19]. So, African education systems do not fully utilize local climate and culture effectively in their decolonization drive to propose new ways of thriving on the ticket of indigeneity.

Agency, hence, becomes of little value. African elites as the main social agents or actors in the push for decolonization are not using the precepts after preaching the same. Unlike the elite-led nationalist movements that dismantled the colonial rule in Africa, today’s African governments and their elite class “have been known to stifle research aimed at redesign (of education systems) for politically selfish reasons. Due to the nature of anti-colonial struggles, post-colonial initiatives immediately following independence were characterised by an uncomfortably close relationship between the political and the intellectual” [2]. Smith and Jeppesen [20] add their voice to Adebisi in noting that politicians and commentators are most likely to “emphasize points of fracture over enduring continuities”. 

Others [21,19] attribute this conditioning to the manner in which human capital transfers from the colonizers to their colonies’ elites had been made (assimilation produced highly dependent elites on their former colonial masters, for instance). They also contend that the elite class in Africa defeats the very purpose of decolonizing education by designing the relevant policies while at the same time educating its children abroad. “This is one strong explanation for the failure of educational reforms on the continent, i.e. their rejection by the ordinary citizen as being inferior” [19]. Thus, the element of agency in decolonization of education in Africa is lost in the shuffle of its elite class’s inability to accumulate meaning [22].

In the next three sub-sections, this study will show how using Margaret Archer’s realist social theory to revisit the narrative of decolonization of education in Africa shows that it risks becoming a metaphor. The narrative aside, how much has been done to interrogate the validation of school knowledge in post-colonial Africa? How much local culture and fervour feature in African education systems? Tuck and Yang [23] worry that “the easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to “decolonize our schools” or use “decolonizing methods” or “decolonize student thinking” turns decolonization into a metaphor”. 

China and its Rise in Perspective

Indeed, Africa’s long-held engagement with decolonizing its education systems and other sectors of national life will more likely continue to reflect tensions and inhibitions on the part of the continent as it encounters new centres of power and as the groundswell of China’s rise breaks in the new global context. China, in particular, is interesting because it has pronounced that its new partnership with Africa is altruistic, strategic and economic in the so-called “win-win” rhetoric, all the way from the world’s second economic superpower.

But the fact of the matter is different. China has “invested heavily in techno-science with economic and military payoff” [4] and is fast “accumulating money and meaning” to position itself at the helm of global economic power [22] which obviously necessitates being equally at the heart of global epistemic power. Does this imply possible new forms of exploitation to do with Africa? Yes. How? Let us take a walk through the literature on China-Africa cooperation and draw out points for reflection on how it impacts decolonization processes inclusive of African education systems. As Obiorah [24] puts it, “The vexed question of China as [an] alternative political and economic model for Africa warrants nuanced analysis”.

Let us see this in the structure-culture-agency continuum and then deconstruct the narrative. Structure-wise, historical relations between China and Africa, mainly featuring ideological solidarity back in 1950s-1980s, witnessed a dramatic turn as China shifted to trade in the 1990s and adopted a business partner’s posture [24]. Quickly a pattern emerged of China increasing the volume of its aid to Africa without strings attached, cancelling its debts, fuelling trade with a focus on oil (China reportedly had oil stakes in as many as 11 African nations in 2004 [25]. “By 2009, almost 80% of Chinese imports from Africa consist[ed] of metals and petroleum products” [26].), and offering a novel alternative political and economic model anchored in South-South cooperation and a win-win partnership. 

The appeal was instant and a big sigh of relief among many African elites [25]. At the 2006 Beijing Summit for the China-Africa Cooperation Forum (FOCAC), it was apparent China had crossed the Rubicon as it made massive pledges towards Africa [26]. The trade volume between China and Africa jumped from $10.8 billion to over $220 billion in 2014; with China pledging $60 billion more in assistance and investment in 2015 [27].

The key pledge was to set up and promote a new kind of strategic partnership with Africa in which “political equality, mutual trust, economic win-win cooperation and cultural exchange” would be pursued [28]. The catch in all this is that China “professes itself to be without political motivation” [29]. But beyond the rhetoric, it has become clear that China is out for resource exploitation . This has since been a source of alarm and apprehension about the possibility of China staging a “neo-colonial” agenda, given the unequal relations between China and Africa. 

The West took up the alarm and blew it out of proportion, charging China with the assault of neo-colonialism. This would mean in colonial parlance that China is now in practice either “exerting power over the policy and economic trajectory of [Africa] through means other than direct political control”; or that the Chinese model of economic ties is such that decolonized African countries would now have to “remain dependent upon the exportation of raw materials to fuel growth in the developed world” or China, to be precise [30]. It is a far-fetched claim, of course. But there is a grain of truth in it; and that alone, warrants scrutiny.

Critics argue that Africa won’t reap any tangible benefits from its partnership with China unless and until it has the elements of national governments that truly enjoy widespread legitimacy; its domestic industries are substantially developed with a domestic capital that gives them an edge and an organized workforce to deploy requisite skills [30]. Concerns to the contrary are well documented. First, aid from China is primarily geared towards “securing commodity and mineral resource assets” for China [28]. A huge part of China Aid, as it is known, goes to relieve Africa’s massive infrastructure deficits, build government complexes and public amenities. 

Second, the design of the infrastructure constructed as such favours “export activities rather than internal production activities and intra-Africa trade” [28]. Third, African producers have poor chance to “undercut Chinese production costs and prices” and so compete with their Chinese counterparts who leave no space even for “significant excess demand [Africans] can aspire to meet” [25,28]. 

Fourth, both China and Africa are vying for investments and markets and there is an imbalance because Africa’s exports to China are capital-intensive in the main. As a result, Africa is “creating jobs in China, while imports from China have undermined job markets in Africa” [25]. Fifth, China almost certainly relies on “Chinese workers and supplies for the construction activities” in Africa; making China “unlikely to have a positive impact on African job markets, local capacities and the transfer of technologies” [28,25].

These tendencies and others do give the impression that Chinese-African economic exchange as it stands could more likely “truncate” Africa’s transformation [28] by “neither fundamentally altering Africa’s asymmetrical integration into global markets, ...nor reducing Africa’s dependence on a few price-volatile primary goods that account for 73% of its export revenues” [25]. In the words of former Tanzanian President, Jakaya M. Kikwete, “China and India will not transform Africa; Africans will transform Africa” [24].

Culture-wise, the Chinese-African partnership has been branded as one between the developing world in the Southern Hemisphere [25]; highlighting China’s “clean slate” as a country that “never took part in the slave trade; its presence in Africa has never been linked to colonialist or imperialist practices; it supported African countries during their decolonization processes; and it is not associated with the Structural-Adjustment policies that have burdened Africa for over 30 years” [30].

Yet, China cannot do business with Africa without the assurance of peace and stability in the latter. Very often China’s unfettered sales of arms to parties in Africa have fuelled conflicts and trafficking in light arms to the extent that these same arms could be turned against Chinese interests in Africa [24,30] . It is therefore, essential that Africans “understand China and its motives for engagement with Africa.” [24]. 

That need is urgent and it demands agency. Agency-wise, in order to create pro-Chinese elites in the future, China has since 2006 embarked on exponential training of Africans. Pursuing elite-focused knowledge transfers in the main, the number of beneficiaries from Chinese scholarships shot up in different fields of study at university degree levels. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce has since 2006 set aside half of its training slots for Africans in short-to-medium-term courses. In 2007, 80, 000 persons (half of whom should be from Africa theoretically) attended over 2, 500 training sessions under the Ministry’s watch [26]. The number of Africans studying in China stands at about 61, 594 as of 2016 compared to the first arrival of just 4 Egyptian students to China in 1956 [27].

China has been effective in garnering agency as such for its partnership with Africa. Tull [25] noted that “China’s elite-oriented modes of assistance have proven extremely effective. They help cultivate the goodwill of African leaders who provide Beijing with diplomatic support and valuable contracts as a matter of reciprocity. In this sense, state elites are probably the economic and, by extension, the political winners from China’s growing involvement in Africa”. This is something the West has done with impunity, too. There is need for actors from African civil society to hold their leaders’ feet to fire and make them account for national interests instead of “elite interests and preoccupations” [24].

Issues about Histories of Emergence

The rise of China as a new centre of global economic power offers Africa a new partnership but one with epistemic subtlety that will call into question Africa’s ability to be sensitive and responsive to new forms of exploitation outside the remit of the “neo-colonial” West. 

For reasons to do with being prudential, African education systems should provide avenues to question the prevailing narrative of China-Africa cooperation from the standpoint of its emergence that could undermine Africa’s efforts to eliminate dependence and so eventually fully decolonize. Even with supposedly a “clean slate”, China could well be reverse-engineering neo-colonial impulses that could amount to a neo-imperial takeover of Africa. African nations need to re-think China and their education systems must “provide [the] standpoints for doing so” [4].

Perhaps, the time has come for a new wave of African thinkers who will embrace another avowed prison break; this time round from the emerging, elusive conceptual confinement of Chinese “partnership” which is increasingly serving China’s interests disproportionately. This task is cardinal as it has been with the tradition of black intellectual maroons (Subjectivity is taken here to mean “one’s sense of self, self-understanding, ways of seeing self and others, worldviews” [31].) [32]. Interestingly, Drichel [33] has taken issue with this urge, arguing that the overemphasis of deconstructive post-colonialism (a formidable payload in the maroons’ arsenal) as a way of keeping in check potentially exploitive belief systems and value structures is itself a “vulnerability” that postcolonial societies should do well to radically accept. This criticism springs from the troubled marriage between deconstruction and postcolonial studies and the tendency it engenders to associate other cases of histories of emergence like China’s rise with “a neo-imperial takeover”. 

Drichel sees that “the traumatic experience of colonial violence [had given] rise to certain mechanisms to defend against a repetition of this traumatic past and prevent a further violation of an already fragile sense of self......What keeps this psyche traumatized is its own defensive response so that ‘self-defence becomes self-attack’” [33]. Simply put, Drichel [33] argues that deconstructive post- colonialism is like a mask that gives the colonized a fragile layer of protection. If the core, the self or identity, surfaces, it will become strength in itself and then there will be nothing left to be vulnerable to. 

Drichel’s argument does sound plausible if one considers, as he does, the fact that the self or identity sits at the centre of postcolonial stakes in resistance, independence and sovereignty [33].Thus, by merely indulging in textual interpretations, deconstructive post-colonialism stirs afresh the wounds of colonial assault on the identity of the colonized. This defeats the very logic of deconstruction which as a matter of necessity should be an acceptance of this vulnerability, argues Drichel [33]. Hence, to charge that China’s advances to Africa are neo-colonial or constitute the stepping-stone to a neo-imperial takeover betrays unfounded fears because deconstructive post-colonialism ends up simply “play[ing] with texts instead of politics” [33]. 

It is interesting Drichel does not seem to think the colonizers’ propensity to insist on their “universalizing mission” is an issue as well. The penchant for leading the civilized world is often taken for granted as part and parcel of the West’s mantra. But it is by and large conditioned by a colonial mindset of initiating the colonized into the ways of the world (the “free world” now being the euphemism). It is right and proper for the colonizers to brace for a radical acceptance of that “susceptibility”, too, if Drichel’s argument is to make any sense at all. As Chen [34] candidly tracks down this nuance, “the task is for the colonising or imperialising population to examine the conduct, motives, desires, and consequences of the imperialist history that has formed its own subjectivity (Subjectivity is taken here to mean “one’s sense of self, self-understanding, ways of seeing self and others, worldviews” [31]).” Deconstructive post-colonialism is the right formidable tool that can expose Drichel’s bias as such. Drichel [33], therefore, stands in need of scrutiny and correction himself. Willinsky [35] has a blunt admonishment in this regard: “imperialism afforded lessons in how to divide the world.” We know too well that colonialism was the stepping-stone to imperialism. This point sums up the first issue about histories of emergence vis-a-vis China’s growing influence in or over Africa, depending on how one sees it.

The second issue comes on the heels of Achille Mbembe’s [36] chastisement of the postcolonial theory on grounds of its slipping relevance. He is in favour of a postcolonial theory that frees Africa from the persistence of colonial import while at the same time allows the continent to “honour responsibly the ghosts of the past, those absent-present figures which continue to haunt Africa’s not so distant history” [36]. Mbembe is unhappy that the “African post-colony” is over-privileging colonization which is only a stretch in the historical swathes of the colonized world; and entertaining an over-hyped sense of difference to the detriment of the discourse. 

But unlike Drichel, Mbembe wants Africa to “stake a strong and active claim for its place within the contemporary world” [36]. This study nods in affirmation because acceptance of any sense of vulnerability dictates that Africa equally proactively responds with urgency to the complexities of global power and China’s place in it. Archer’s realist social theory has a definitive say in why an African subjectivity in post-colonial politics is still vital for moderating its relations with China. We should now turn to discuss this in some detail. The basic tenet of the realist social theory is that humans are “sovereign artificers” in charge of their destiny and are endowed with resolve to re-make their social environment as they see fit.

In that scheme of things, the structural, cultural and agential explanations of China-Africa partnership, as discussed in the preceding sections, constitute the basis of analytical histories of emergence. Archer’s explanatory layout can be used to situate the China-Africa love affair in emergence (The principles of emergence and of analytical dualism (led) Archer to develop the morphogenetic approach to the study of structure and culture” [37]), using her morphogenetic approach which is a cyclical process that involves structural or cultural conditioning (affecting the practices of the life-world), social or sociological interaction (reproducing/transforming the system) and social or cultural elaboration (leading to a new system subject to modification or contestation in a newer cycle) [37].

Archer demonstrated beyond doubt how this cyclical process explains the peculiarities of the education systems of Russia, France, England and Denmark. For instance, she split the emergence of these countries’ education systems into two cycles: firstly, beginning in Europe’s mediaeval times during which the church had a stranglehold on education and then morphing into the rise of the State and its appropriation of all education; secondly, beginning with the sophistication of state structures for education provision and then ending with the array of change patterns evident today in these countries. The first analytical cycle brings out the simple insight that today’s educational practices in these four countries are primarily conditioned by the structure and culture of Mediaeval Europe. The second cycle underscores the transformation of the systems under the State to the point where these are being contested and modified in the neoliberal setting today with a view to unleashing the next leap in social and cultural elaboration of those countries’ education systems. 

Thus, Archer’s realist social theory has shown that “the development which follows one cycle structurally conditions the following one” [37]. By the same token, it can be meaningfully argued that China’s influence in Africa is conditioned primarily by the structure and culture of colonization and that China might seek greater elaboration of the same cyclical charade to look “different.” As Archer would have it, “the endorsement of real but unobservable generative mechanisms derives analysis towards the interplay between the real, the actual and the empirical to explain precise outcomes.”

A couple more examples will do to shed light on how China is using the epistemic subtlety of “partnership” to ward off sentiments about the return of violence in a neo-colonial guise or otherwise. Colonization was a brute. It used violence to make it case of domination. That initial use of colonial violence would constitute the structural or cultural conditioning of Africa, according to Archer’s morphogenetic approach. The second cycle, social interaction, followed close behind. This is what Mbembe refers to as the second violence, basically meaning that the colonialists used violence to legitimize their colonial rule and justify their self-proclaimed mission to “civilize” the colonized [36]. The third cycle, social or cultural elaboration, consolidated the colonial project by normalizing and socializing colonial authority, all embedded in an elaborate web of acculturation.

As can be clearly seen, one cycle conditioned the following and, in the process, produced rationality, a colonial rationality for that matter. It is this rationality that very often is taken for granted, unless Archer’s morphogenesis is brought to bear on it. The essential benefit of the morphogenetic approach is to allow for histories of emergence to be explanatory, retrodictive and corrigible. Conversely speaking, the colonial rationality produced through violence in colonial times has now assumed a new cyclic character in post-independence Africa. The first cycle of structural and cultural conditioning is manifest in African post-colonial regimes’ use of “the relations of subjection perpetuated by a process of the indigenization of the state colonialism had set in motion” [36]. 

This cycle conditioned the following one, social or sociological interaction, as exemplified by African rulers’ penchant for using selective features of ancestral traditions to augment and retain power in their countries. The third cycle, social or cultural elaboration, is best demonstrated by the fact that African countries have modified the colonial rationality of violence to normalize their “exercise of violent power” in post-colonial Africa [36]. As Mbembe concludes, “both the potentate and the increasingly animalized African subject are defined by their mutual dependence on this systemic violence” borne of a colonial rationality [36]. 

There should be a growing wonderment at why Africa will not suffer the same fate at the hands of China borne of a neo-imperial rationality of subtlety. China is using its “win-win partnership” (structural or cultural conditioning), “South-South cooperation mantra” (social or sociological interaction) and “mutual non-interference” (social or cultural elaboration) to trap Africa in its systemic nonviolence or “peaceful rise”, as Chinese would fondly allude to. So far, it is working wonders as African leaders take the bait one at a time or in chorus. 

The tragedy is that history is taught in Africa as a glamorized fossilism, not as a re-imagined dynamism. History is not unimaginatively recounting how 6 million Jews perished at the hands of Nazi Germany. Rather, it is about appreciating why and how countless Germans approved of the Holocaust and watched on as Hitler butchered fellow humans into oblivion. More importantly, history is about spotting the telltale signs of repetition of the same fate. Studying colonialism should point us to its possible mutations of which China’s brisk emergence and Africa’s chronic dependence is one. Empire-building relies on exploitation and deception; and China is building one at the behest of Africa’s credulity. African scholars should help the continent to aptly appreciate the historical use of “smokescreens” in empire building or territorial domination. Europe used the lingering sway of slavery to build momentum for its colonial agenda using the “era of legitimate commerce” and “period of informal empire” as smokescreens [38-39]. 

The European powers tweaked the era (1800-1870) into labels to suit their exploitation without raising any eyebrows. Hence, the same era also took on a new name, a period of “informal” empire. It suggested that what later on came to be Europe’s “actual” empire-building in Africa was well in the making in the dying days of the 19^th century. 

In the same vein, China is using the cliché of a “peaceful rise” as a smokescreen similar to Europe’s “era of informal empire”. The difference between the two is China’s use of the epistemic subtlety of a peaceful rise to allay fears of its truly global dominance agenda. Thus, China is “bidding its time” as it uses Africa’s historical vulnerabilities for its forays into Africa. This conditioning is an attribute of the colonial enterprise. As seen through the lenses of Archer’s realist social theory, the Chinese are trying to get away with an imperial ploy under the wraps of “partnerships”.

Let us turn to one more example before we lay to rest the ghost of scepticism about China and its overtures to Africa. Archer’s morphogenetic approach is an enduring format, indeed. It will yield almost the same nuances if we apply it on the present state of African education systems. Kumar [40] captures the essence of how today’s education systems in the former colonies are very much conditioned by their colonial forerunner. 

In terms of social and cultural conditioning, Kumar [40] argues that “what is taught in our schools and colleges today acquired the status of ‘valid’ school knowledge under a very special kind of cultural and economic stress: the stress of colonial rule.” The colonial rulers introduced education to socialize the colonized in their ways of the world. Socialization took up the place of coercion as the colonized became colonial “citizens” [40]. As for their social or sociological interaction with the colonized, the colonial rulers ensured that the basic organization of knowledge and its mode of delivery would continue beyond the confines of colonial rule. To that end, the colonial masters introduced a utilitarian doctrine for the colonial state that used education to divide their subjects between elites and masses. As a result of this sustained sociological interaction, the few educated locals gradually began to look down upon their fellows; simultaneously, lining up for a share of the colonial cake with the colonizers as they saw themselves fit by virtue of being educated as such. 

Education made possible this second cycle of the morphogenesis. This cycle, too, conditioned the third (social or cultural elaboration) by drastically modifying the behaviour of post-colonial elites in, say, Africa. To date, though to a much lesser extent than it was following independence, Africa’s elite have two main characteristics in their educated personality: “a sense of moral superiority and the urge to assign oneself the task of transforming a given social order” [40]. These are conditioned by a colonial rationality and further elaborated in every new cycle.

A more appalling manifestation of this crafty elaboration borne of a colonial rationality is the poor pay of the schoolteacher. Since colonial days, the State in Africa has made sure the schoolteacher’s salary and status remain chronically low so that the teacher will have little resistance in acting as a conveyor-belt to the “official” curriculum. This colonial conditioning is still very much at work across Africa. No wonder many distortions in school education slip through the fingers of an intellectually comatose teaching profession [40].

To sum up, Archer’s realist social theory does a great service to the cause of unpacking histories of emergence in relation to Africa’s narrative of decolonization. The rise of China and the challenges it poses are real and vexed. It is so because Chinese overtures to Africa literally constitute a contingency that affects the story of Africa’s decolonization and its outcomes. The call to analytical arms is therefore justified given the “interplay between necessity and contingency”.

Africa’s Challenge Ahead

There are no quick fixes. One surest sign that African education systems are not rising to the task is their “urge for quick remedies” which blunts the “awareness that educational reform demands a historically informed perspective” [40]. In that lies Africa’s greatest challenge ahead.

More than sixty years after independence from colonial rule, Africa is yet to “seize back [its] creative initiative in history through a real control of all the means of communal self-definition in time and space” [41]. An essential part of this drive is to claw back its humanity and subjectivity by decolonizing production of knowledge of Africa [41]. African education systems still need to renew their focus on defining the continent’s educational needs within the remit of its own cultural repertoire as a means of tackling cultural domination handed down on the silver platter of colonial education [40]. Over and above, the quest for an all-encompassing ideological push is urgent if Africans are to make a dent in the universe before China’s caprice proves unhelpful.

The marketplace of ideologies (Africa’s most original form of socialism was Tanzania’s experiment with Ujamaa. This African concept of kinship solidarity was transformed into a basis for African socialism. President Julius Nyerere used this concept not only to narrow the gap between the rich and poor but also to discipline Tanzania’s leaders away from corruption and temptation.... French-speaking Africa led the way in cultural ideology. Particularly influential was Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal for nearly fifty years. He became famous for his adherence to a philosophy of negritude. This was a philosophy of nostalgia-idealizing the African past and using it as a guide to contemporary policy” [42]. on the continent will have to be trimmed down for digestion. While renowned scholars like Mbembe are apprehensive about Marxism and indigenism as the dominant brands of political thought in the African post-colony, others like Hotep champion intellectual maroon scholarship as an emancipatory reclamation of Africa’s charred cultural glory [36,32]. 

This intellectual fervour of “maroonery” arrived at the scene in the dying days of the 1990s, much on the heels of Afrocentricity in the late 1980s; both late blooms of Pan-Africanism that dates back to at least 1900 [32]. Mbembe offers a rare rebrand in the form of ‘Afropolitanism’ as an “affirmative future and new dawn for Africa as a whole as it emerges from the ‘night’ of the post-colonial African world” [36]. 

Martin [43] argues in favour of an eclectic emblem, African nationalism, which is “a desire for personal emancipation- a search for equality, rights, self-respect and full participation in the society.” Mazrui [42] affirms that the latter agrees with the anti-colonial struggle which by and large represents Africa’s modern nationalism. 

The most important thing is to improve the form, frequency and intimacy of African nationalism as a rallying point for action; and allow its tentacles to strike hard and deep at the heart of ideological lethargy across the continent [43]. There is no surer sign of ideological numbness in Africa than the dash to feverishly consider the epistemic convenience of China’s “partnership” as the polar opposite of the epistemic violence of colonialism. 

The simple sensation that China is now Africa’s “darling” should worry Africans more than anything else. Why should Africa still need a “sweetheart” anyway? African nationalism must answer that question for the sake of Africa’s survival in the 21^st century and beyond. It must explain why Africa’s dependence is inducing romance against the substance of China’s emergence. How can we have a “win-win” situation when China comes to the table with substance and all Africa is able to muster is romance? The proponents of the win-win chant would argue that we need both substance and romance at the table to strike a “friendship”. Well, why does it always have to be Africa to caress the ornament when it can as well create the moment? Obviously, romance at short notice seems to be Africa’s specialty!

African nationalism has a case to answer before the ancestors or risk falling for imposters! It must resurrect and construct Africa anew. In short, it has to catch the popular mind so that Africa’s subjectivity can be rebuilt; and in this way, Africans can essentially “decolonize” as well as critically “deimperialise”. That is, Africa needs this double-edged thrust to deter any colonial subjectivity or imperial proclivity from dictating the terms of the post colony’s future.

African nationalism must be emblematic, strategic and dynamic; and use the past as its guide to contemporary politics. In that lies the uneasy marriage between China’s emergence and Africa’s dependence. The dominant discourse should be in favour of changing the status quo into reconsidered Afro-Sino relations that are relative in construct, creative in texture and protective in weave. African education systems should lend a hand by widening the social base of political consciousness and action against unequal relations that could lead to a neo-imperial takeover at will.

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