ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a historical perspective on the debates of decolonisation, starting with a brief history of African higher education, the early discourses on Africanisation, and then the foundations for the emergence of the decolonisation debates. Debates on decolonisation of African higher education have evolved over time framed by various socio-economic and political imperatives. The origin of African higher education is still a debatable subject as scholars are yet to agree on the point of departure for the history itself. The early debates in the 1960s and 70s were contextualized within the notion of 'Pan-Africanism,' 'Africanisation,' or 'African Renaissance'. Emerging out of colonial experience in the 1960s and 70s, many African intellectuals needed to deal with and debate about issues of Africanisation and decolonisation within African institutions. Thus, the decolonisation discourse gradually declined in most African countries in the post 1990s, as internationalization started to dominate the higher education policy discourses.
