Decolonization, Development and Knowledge in Africa

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is Professor/Chair of Epistemologies of the Global South with Emphasis in Africa at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. He formerly worked as Research Professor and Director of Scholarship in the Department of Leadership and Transformation (DLT) in the Principal and Vice-Chancellor’s Office at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and was 2019 Visiting Professor at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) at the University of Johannesburg. He is a leading decolonial theorist and historian with over 100 publications including eight sole-authored and nine edited books. His most recently published book is Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization (Routledge, 2018).

• 1. Introduction: Beyond the European Game 2. The Decolonial Turn 3. The Bandung Spirit 4. The Problem of Blackness 5. African Political Economy 6. African Renaissance 7. African Humanities 8. Conclusion: Turning Over a New Leaf

"Frequently, discussions about decoloniality are delinked from discussions on development studies and questions of political-economy. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni bridges these literatures to produce an original intervention in African Studies and Postcolonial/Decolonial Studies with important implications to Latin America and Asia. The many contributions this book offers are of interest to many fields of scholarship. This is a must to read from the most important decolonial thinker in Africa today!" — Ramon Grosfoguel, University of California at Berkeley, USA"This is a thoughtful agenda-setting contribution by a leading, passionate, committed voice, to the resilient issue of unequal encounters and dogmatic propensities in the production and circulation of meaning and value, which has received far less emancipatory scholarly attention beyond proliferating spurious rhetoric and prescriptive lip service." — Francis B. Nyamnjoh, University of Cape Town, South Africa ‘‘Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s is an important contribution to the current struggles for decolonization. At the forefront of his endeavor lies epistemology; to rethink thinking itself and make way for a new humanity. The book is a radical rupture with the mediocrity of Eurocentric knowledge institutionalized in the westernized universities across our world, and with the internal colonialism and cultural schizophrenia it produces in the global south. Solidly rooted in Africa, the book engages in a truly global decolonizing endeavor: that of working towards humanization, re-memberment, unity and action.’’ — Julia Suárez-Krabbe, Roskilde University, Denmark