On 11 July 2024, the Unisa Teaching, Learning, Community Engagement and Student Support (TLCESS) Portfolio hosted its inaugural African Knowledge Summit (AKS) 2024, reflecting on decolonisation of the African knowledge landscape, curriculum imbalance from Western knowledge and artificial intelligence, under the theme: Reimagining African Knowledge: Bridging Epistemic Divides in the 21^st Century.

The summit comes at a critical juncture in the higher education landscape, as institutions grapple with calls to decolonise curricula and transform knowledge production. The historic 2015-2016 student protests, known as #FeesMustFall, highlighted the urgency to address issues of epistemic transformation within higher education in South Africa.

From left: Prof Zodwa Motsa Madikane, Vice-Principal of Teaching, Learning, Community Engagement and Student Support; Prof Puleng LenkaBula, Unisa Principal and Vice-Chancellor; and Prof Meahabo Magano, Executive Director of the Department of Tuition Support and Facilitation of Learning (DTSFL)

In her opening remarks, Prof Zodwa Motsa Madikane, Unisa’s Vice-Principal of Teaching, Learning, Community Engagement and Student Support, emphasised the importance of this discourse by citing the author Belsebuub, who wrote: "A world without esoteric knowledge is a poorer place and we as a humanity pay the price for the loss of its principles". Motsa Madikane advised the audience to reflect robustly on students' changing learning preferences, the consequences of #FeesMustFall, and the implied hegemony of Western knowledge.

New frameworks

In her welcome address, Prof Puleng LenkaBula, Unisa Principal and Vice-Chancellor (VC), highlighted the importance of recognising and promoting African knowledge systems. She emphasised the need to ensure that these systems are accorded the same level of respect and validity as those from the Western world. This, she said, may necessitate the development of new frameworks to fully integrate African knowledge into the global academic landscape. She further posed the question: “Are we willing to create new systems, approaches and new structures within the university without fear or hesitation, as long as we are able to substantiate how we can enhance our work as a university?”.

The VC stressed that it is important for scholars to content with the new digital landscape where artificial intelligence (AI) is either enabling or encroaching in the knowledge arena. She continued, "Just recently the university was in the media for being able to identify students who were using AI to submit their work. I had thought the media would commend the university for being able to distinguish between original and AI-assisted work."

She continued: "The role of freedom as a dividend that the democratic era has provided for us as scholars is not fully optimised until we as a university break free from the relational systems borne by apartheid, where instead of empowering, we trample on each other, and where we must create concerted decision, we instead choose to work in silos."

Concluding her message, the VC explained that Africa’s knowledge systems, civilisation and contributions to the knowledge arena will not be manifest if "as academics, we mute ourselves and continue working in isolation from others".

In her introduction of the keynote speaker, Prof Meahabo Magano, Executive Director of the Department of Tuition Support and Facilitation of Learning (DTSFL), challenged the audience to consider Ngugi wa Thiong'o's perspective from the novel Petals of Blood, which explores the revolutionary impulse and its subsequent decline in post-independence Kenyan society. She asked: "In the midst of us talking about knowledge transformation or curriculum transformation, where are the owners of knowledge themselves?".

A rich tapestry

In his keynote address themed and, after political independence: Envisioning the role and place of Africa’s knowledges in the 21^st century education system, distinguished ProfAdebayo Olukoshi from the University of Witwatersrand’s School of Governance, stated that Unisa is living up to its calling as the centre of knowledge in many facets, including facilitating this discourse on reimagining Africa’s knowledge systems. The former Executive Secretary of the Council for Social Science Research in Africa stated that the idea given currency is the notion that Africa did not have knowledge systems. "This," he said, "stems from utter ignorance and irrelevance."

Keynote speaker Prof Adebayo Olukoshi from the University of Witwatersrand’s School of Governance

In addition, Olukoshi, who was the director of the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP), dismissed the notion which purports that African history began when the colonisers arrived, arguing instead that Africa boasts a rich tapestry of stories, traditions, oral sources and other achievements stretching far back. He affirmed that colonial records, to some degree, offer only a narrow window into a wider narrative about Africans. Olukoshi further emphasised the importance of reclaiming and celebrating the vast knowledge systems that existed on the continent long before European intervention.

Concluding his message, Olukoshi posed the question: "Is it better to quote someone in Australia than to quote an African, because the more global the name, the better?", leaving the audience to ponder the factors that influence who gets heard and who is prioritised in the global knowledge arena.

*By Godfrey Madibane, Acting Journalist, Department of Institutional Advancement, with additional reporting by Dr Nicky Tjano, Office of the Vice-Principal of Teaching, Learning, Community Engagement and Student Support (TLCESS)