The Academic and the Crisis of Knowledge Production and Dissemination in Africa

Abstract

In this piece, it is argued that knowledge production and dissemination in Africa in the twenty-first century is facing a fundamental crisis that has become the bane of development in the continent. Interrogating Africa’s epistemological traditions has become critical in explaining the major challenges confronting African realities. How knowledge is produced, disseminated and consumed in Africa and for what purposes and reason(s) are central to the interrogation and explication of the state of hopelessness and loss of faith that pervade the African continent—a critical crisis that is best epitomised in the desperateness with which her youths journey through the Sahara Desert to engage in a more pernicious round of slavery in Europe in an erroneous belief of searching for greener pastures. The chapter further contends that these apparent manifestations are direct consequences of the failure of the academe in Africa—a group that has, as a consequence of the colonial experience, become the think tank of the post-colonial states in Africa. Domiciled mainly in the universities, these eggheads have failed to provide the necessary ideas that will unshackle their peoples and societies from the persistent development crisis in the continent. It concludes that African academics, in their epistemological engagements, must look inwards, seek to be relevant to the immediate society and recreate a more serene environment for knowledge production and dissemination.