Eurocentric-African higher education, students’ academic freedom constraints and coloniality of youth
- Paul K. Michael , University of the Free State
Due to the link between culture and development, educating higher education students through and integrating them into their culture are ideals for fostering endogenous development. But Eurocentrism, which emerges from and was solidified through colonialism and its long-term effects, plagues Africa’s higher education, fracturing its students’ cultural identity and limiting their capacity to engender development. In this talk, Paul will discuss Africa’s higher education students’ academic freedom constraints in relation to culture and education from a decolonial perspective. Drawing on what academic freedom might mean in relation to an education that fails to transmit knowledge through and integrate students into their culture, Paul argues that by being overwhelmingly Eurocentric, higher education in contemporary Africa constitutes academic freedom constraints that amount to coloniality of youth.
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Paul K. Michael is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow (PDRF) at the Higher Education and Human Development (HEHD) Research Group, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. He is also a lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Benin and member of the Conversational Society of Philosophy, Calabar, Nigeria. His areas of specialization and research interest include African philosophical studies of the youth and its intersections with migration studies, decolonial studies, and race studies, and education. Paul is pioneering youth research in African philosophy. He is a co-editor of a forthcoming Routledge book on Ubuntu and Youth Studies in Africa (2026).