ABSTRACT
Academic fields in Africa, including the relatively new communication and media studies, are undergoing major changes, in parallel with global trends. However, the study of media, as of other academic fields, has been undermined by the colonial legacy as well as economic difficulties and political instability (Chimutengwende, 1988; Ronning, 1991; Bourgault, 1995). This chapter explores ways in which the teaching and study of media in Africa, as seen by those teaching and researching it, could be re-conceptualized to make it more responsive to local and international demands. While the notion of ‘African’ is not unproblematic, it is fair to suggest that
beyond differences in the histories of the continent’s 54 countries there is a shared concern about former colonial powers continuing to dominate the education sector. As recently as the 1990s, this consensus was manifest in what was seen as a new awakening in Africa, born out of disillusionment and resentment of Western domination in intellectual, political and economic terms (Mafeje, 1992). African scholarship has engaged critically with Eurocentric approaches, and in the area of media this has meant rejecting the universalizing pretensions of Western theorizing and evidence, and paying more attention to neglected ‘indigenous’ forms of communication and languages (Salawu, 2006). The growing body of literature on endogenous forms of communication and how they can be used for human development can be seen as a specific response to continued Eurocentricism in African education1 (Ugboajah, 1985; Ansu-Kyeremeh, 2005; Banda et al., 2007). Africans have long been misrepresented, both in history and in the academy
(Mudimbe, 1988). Colonial domination in education matters because it makes Africa more ‘amenable to control by Western social and cultural influences’ (Mukasa and Becker, 1992: 36). Debates among African scholars have focused on the meaning and relevance of existing media education in Africa (Chimutengwende, 1988; M’Bayo and Nwanko, 1989). A review of mass communication research in west Africa by Edeani (1988), covering the period from the 1930s to 1980s, noted that much of the excitement that attended the emergence of communication and media research activities in the 1960s appeared, as early as the 1970s, to have given way to sober reflection on what African research was offering social science and Africa:
A number of searching questions began to be asked: Was that research advancing scientific knowledge as it was supposed to be doing? Was the research capable of serving the social, economic, political, cultural, and other developmental needs of Africa? And were foreign Africanists really genuinely committed to the study of Africa as an intellectual pursuit or were they involved for certain ulterior motives?
