Globalisation and coloniality: Implications for collaborative research and knowledge production in Africa

Abstract

As global forms inhabit local spaces and draw the local into the global, previous deliberate mechanisms of system transform into fluid processes that require constant investigation. The globalisation of knowledge raises an old challenge: the standardisation of knowledge. What and who determines knowledge system as a universal model? This research analytically interrogates the nature and outcomes of the divide between the production of knowledge about globalisation and its manifestation as a process. It also interrogates the relationship between Western academia as a global centre of knowledge production and indigenous scholarship on globalisation in sub-Saharan Africa. Educational systems in sub-Saharan Africa currently witness the expanding impact of ideas from global centres in ways that challenge existing norms, originality and cultural relevance. This calls for the re-interrogation of area studies in core comparative international research in response to coloniality. Hence, the need to identify common profiles and map onto globalisation, demand for a stronger cross-national collaborative scholarship devoid of knowledge subordination.