Mainstreaming African Indigenous Epistemologies into Student Development in Higher Education: A Case of Zimbabwe

Abstract

Framed in the context of decoloniality, this study advocates for the embedding of African indigenous epistemologies into student development in university education in order to emancipate it from the pervasive Eurocentric hegemony. The thesis of this paper contends that student development in higher education has remained firmly anchored on Eurocentric ways of knowing at the expense of other epistemologies especially those from the Global South. Indigenous epistemologies are interiorized and marginalized. Efforts to Africanize the curriculum have largely been piecemeal and student development theory has continued to be underpinned by Eurocentric epistemology with a devastating impact on student identity and character development. This study employed the qualitative research paradigm in which three state universities in Zimbabwe were purposively selected as research sites. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with student affairs practitioners and were analysed qualitatively through coding of emerging themes and this was complimented by the use of the NVivo qualitative data analysis software. Results revealed that Eurocentrism is largely the dominant epistemology in student development while African indigenous epistemologies are marginalized, invisibilized and interiorized. The findings also exposed several challenges that are faced by student affairs practitioners with the major ones being; inadequate institutional funding, unavailability of Afrocentric literature on Student Development as well as well as lack of space on the timetable. The study recommended the inclusion of African indigenous epistemologies into student development through the adoption models that imbue cultural values and ways of knowing of indigenous people.