Thread by @folukeifejola

By 2050 more than half of the world's population will live in Africa. There will still be the recent and less recent African Diasporas, which would also have increased in size. What does this mean for universities as centres of knowledge production and transmission? My thoughts..

This means that if there is a degree offered in a university which does not engage with Africa or African produced knowledge, then by 2050 the knowledge produced by and transmitted in that degree programme will probably only be relevant to less than half of the world.

This means that if a university does not make concerted efforts to produce & transmit African produced knowledge e.g. by having an African studies degree or an African research centre, then by 2050 the knowledge produced in and transmitted by that university will probably...

only be relevant to less than half of the world. If an academic journal does not have regular contributions from African-based researchers, then by 2050 the knowledge produced in and transmitted by in that journal will probably only be relevant to less than half of the world.

And so on and so forth ad infinitum... So what do we do? Well there is a lot we can do and I promised a short thread. So briefly: engage in more equal collaborations, make efforts to re-balance resource and material inequalities between researchers in the Global North and South

Hold conferences in the Global South, Curriculum reviews etc etc
Also @InsaNolte makes some suggestions in this lecture for #AfricanStudies which are applicable to other disciplines. (I always give additional readings)

A lot the the above feeds into the decolonisation movement as well as the related question of what universities are meant for. If universities are only meant to award degrees so graduates can earn higher salaries, then ignore me. But if the purpose of universities is to produce

knowledge, then we must critically consider what knowledge we are producing, what knowledge we have previously produced and the purposes for which we are currently producing knowledge. We must also consider whose voices are left out and marginalised in knowledge production.

@threadreaderapp please unroll thank you very much