An Anticolonial and African Feminist Approach to Education in Ghana: Perspectives of Indigenous Ghanaian Women

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Decolonial and Anticolonial Perspectives on Education Reform

Abstract

Following independence, Ghana, like many African countries, has retained colonial educational structures and curriculum, which malign indigenous knowledge and practices as valid ways of knowing. One of the consequences has been the marginalization of Indigenous Ghanaian women’s epistemologies. This qualitative paper draws on anti-colonial and African feminist theories, and situated methodology to engage six (6) Indigenous Ghanaian women on how they conceptualize and use indigenous knowledge in their work; and how those knowledges can be centralized in educational and knowledge making spaces. Initial findings are that the women recommend that the formal education should evolve naturally out of indigenous knowledge and local practices, and that such knowledge should also be preserved in formal structures to ensure indigenous control and agency.

Author

• Phyllis Kyei Mensah, Miami University