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Introduction

Global higher education is currently dominated by elite Anglo-American institutions whose influence rides largely on the expansiveness and legacies of British colonialism and the marketisation of universities. Anglo-American domination has shaped what it means to be globally relevant in the academe. Moreover, academics in the so-called Global South and Global North increasingly need to reckon with neoliberal market forces commodifying knowledge production and universities. The pressures that academics increasingly face are widespread, albeit experienced differently and with varied material implications. These pressures are experienced not least, and perhaps most notably, in the context of academic publishing, where leading academic journals and publishers, more generally, are English-language outlets based at well-endowed Anglo-American institutions. Academics are all too familiar with the imperative to publish to avoid perishing. But around the world, as Sari Hanafi (2011) discusses in the context of Lebanese higher education and the wider Middle Eastern regions, the modalities of publishing or perishing vary.

 

More recently, the #RhodesMustFall protests at the University of Cape Town (re)kindled long-standing debates about the need for and meanings of decolonising universities and knowledge production in Africa (e.g. Wa Thiong’o, 1986). Those protests spread beyond the South African borders through echoed calls to decolonise universities, curricula, academic knowledge production, publishing, and hiring practices. These largely student-led protests have helped fuel a re-engagement with the intellectual work of South American theorists of coloniality and the rise of (South) African scholarship on epistemic (in)justice and decoloniality (e.g. Grosfoguel, 2002; Mama, 2007; Mignolo, 2010; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2015; Nyamnjoh, 2024; Quijano, 2007). These interventions are crucial, among other things, for a richer understanding of how academics and their scholarship are variously positioned within global higher education and vis-à-vis its structuring inequalities, power asymmetries and the dire employment conditions in academe.

 

Less widely recognised is that the decoloniality debate opens space for discussion about the multiplicity of European colonialisms that inform the workings of coloniality in global higher education. While Britain had the vastest empire among European powers and contemporary Anglo-American domination rides very much on British colonial legacies, the colonial projects of other European powers have had lasting implications for knowledge production and higher education in various parts of the world. In the African region, these enduring legacies are especially palpable yet under-examined and under-discussed in critical scholarship on decolonising knowledge production, higher education and universities in the region. Under prevailing Anglo-American domination, discussions about decolonising higher education and knowledge production easily remain at the level of a focused discussion of British colonialism and colonial legacies. Focusing on colonialism and imperialism in the academe construed primarily as British and American fails to adequately appreciate the ways that while the British empire was the most expansive and while English has become the globally dominant language, other European imperialisms produced their own idiosyncratic, albeit comparable, colonial legacies. It is imperative to account for the implications of other European colonialisms and how these shape the contemporary world particularly in the African region. Furthermore, focusing on British colonialism as a proxy for all European imperialism makes it difficult to appreciate the interactions between non-British-European imperial and colonial histories and legacies in (higher education) in the  African region  and within the broader context of an Anglo-American-dominated world.

 

Failing to appreciate the unique challenges faced by scholars operating in higher education systems in parts of the world colonised by European powers other than Britain – especially France –  obscures the challenges which have their roots in their countries’ particular colonial histories. Examining these varied colonial legacies in a contemporary academic world under Anglo-American domination is crucial to nuance the multiple layers of inequalities faced by scholars outside of Anglo-American-dominated global higher education. Furthermore, there is a lack of engagement with the ways that Anglo-American domination in global higher education can overshadow underlying colonial higher education structures and practices and hide and buttress them. Black Francophone African scholars face a double challenge – they need to negotiate the neocolonial realities of Francophone higher education and those of an Anglo-American-dominated global higher education.

 

Perhaps counter-intuitively, there is also limited engagement with the ways that Anglo-American dominance can, at times, and within measure, open possibilities for resistance by some scholars operating under duress in oppressive national or regional higher education structures facing the legacies of other European non-British colonialism. This is something that French-Ivorian scholar Maboula Soumahoro, for instance, discusses through her ambivalence towards France, on the one hand, and, on the other, the tensions and contradictions through which she found an intellectual home with, and through the scholarly reckonings of Black intellectuals with the violent histories of slavery, genocidal dispossession, and imperialism in New York, the Americas, and the Black Atlantic (Soumahoro, 2020, 2022).

 

In the African region, the politics of these other European colonial legacies have a bearing on the rise and trajectories of universities. Examining them can help make sense of the rise of other intellectual spaces known for (often far more) radical politics. Paying attention to these other experiences of colonialism nuances what it means to reckon with colonialism(s) under Anglo-American domination in global politics and global higher education. My paper addresses this challenge through a discussion of higher education in Black African Francophone Africa and its structures, which remain largely under-discussed in critical reflections on colonialism, decolonisation, and universities in Africa. I am especially interested in shedding light on what these structures reveal about the enduring legacies of French colonialism in the region under contemporary Anglo-American domination.

 

Layered and Intersecting Challenges: Anglo-American Domination and European Colonialism in Global Higher Education

 

It is important that these varied European colonialisms and the implications of their legacies be examined closely in critical work concerned with decolonising higher education and universities in Africa. At present, in what might be termed the post-#RhodesMustFall decolonial turn, much of the academic work that reckons with the coloniality of knowledge production in and about Africa tends to operate primarily in English and tends to focus primarily on the epistemic violence of British colonialism (in former British colonies). Even where other countries are mentioned or included, the overarching frame remains informed primarily and almost exclusively by British colonialism. Reckonings with other European colonialisms seldom go beyond acknowledging that other colonialisms had implications for higher education and what it means to deal with the (non-British European) coloniality of higher education in a contemporary world under Anglo-American domination.

 

Examining these is as important as paying attention to the ways that epistemicide and linguicide undermined non-Europhone intellectual traditions and non-European African languages (Kane, 2012). This is at the very least because often, the language in, and academic venues through which academics working on these colonial challenges call attention to epistemicide and linguicide of non-Europhone epistemologies often are English-language and Anglo-American academic outlets. Furthermore, paying attention to the ways that non-British other European colonialisms have shaped higher education systems on the continent is crucial to engaging with the particular colonialities undergirding knowledge production and driving epistemicides, linguicides and genocidal responsibility denied, variously experienced across the African region (e.g. Depelchin, 2005; B. B. Diop & Traoré, 2014; C. A. Diop, 1989; Mudimbe, 1989; Odile, 2007; Verschave, 2000; Verschave, 1998; Wai, 2012). To better understand the challenges that arise with an Anglo-American-dominated world of higher education, the experiences of academics navigating just that world, as well as academics navigating this and other worlds of higher education, are needed. In particular, the experience of academics working through the coloniality of other worlds of higher education, together with that of the Anglo-American hegemonic world, deserves greater attention. In terms of global higher education and the African region, the experience of Black Francophone Africans needs to be taken more seriously (see the works of Syliane Larcher, 2023 and Lionel Zevounou, 2020).

 

From French Coloniality in Black Francophone African Higher Education to Anglo-American Domination

 

Meaningful critical decolonial reckonings on the continent require a serious engagement with higher education in countries which are a part of the Conseil Africain et Malgache pour l’Enseignement Supérieur[i] (CAMES). This is needed not least because the Council includes a wide array of public institutions of higher education in former French, Belgian, Portuguese, and Spanish African colonies. The CAMES is a regulatory body founded in 1968 and is headquartered in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. It regulates higher education, standardises degrees and governs professional academic progress across member institutions in member states. The organisation oversees academic progression from l’agrégation (the equivalent of tenure) to becoming maître de conference (equivalent of associate professor) and then professeur titulaire de chaire (full professor). It infuses higher education with the very close presence of states, and it ties national universities to a francophone political and cultural world tied to the Organisation de la Francophonie and a francophone world of higher education through a network of Francophone universities globally. From the outset, CAMES’ first secretary general Ki-Zerbo expressed concerns about universities in Madagascar and Black Francophone Africa crafting their own agenda and not just engaging in mere mimicry of French Higher Education (Cissé, 2018).[ii]

 

There is surprisingly little published work on CAMES despite its significance in higher education in Francophone West and Central Africa. While the Council would be known and understood in the wider African Francophone world, CAMES does not seem to be particularly legible to academics working primarily in English and from African countries formerly colonised by Britain. Furthermore, most universities in CAMES member states are not quite legible in global university rankings which have arisen and gained traction in the context of an Anglo-American-dominated global higher education. While the CAMES might create a regional academic context within which the prevailing academic rules might somewhat shield academics from the dire situation in global higher education resulting from the imperative to publish or perish, the organisation is marked by internal political asymmetries. Furthermore, it is under pressure to conform to the academic publishing and professional advancement standards in an Anglo-American-dominated global higher education. This pressure to conform has historically been vis-à-vis French higher education. Increasingly, academic promotion in CAMES institutions is no longer just tethered to standards in French higher education but also to an Anglo-American-dominated global higher education. The way higher education is organised and governed in African states formerly colonised by France in the regions formerly designated as Afrique Occidentale Française and Afrique Equatoriale Française (which comprise those countries that I refer to as Black Francophone African states) seems to be seldom examined closely or even legible to academics based in other (sub)regions even in Africa.

 

In colonial Black French Africa, the University of Dakar was the only university founded colonially. In Black Belgian African colonies, two universities were established before independence, namely the University of Kinshasa founded in 1954 and Lubumbashi established in 1955 (Nyamba, 2007). Besides these, it was after independence that the other former Black French-speaking colonies founded their first (Europhone[iii]) national universities in their political or economic capitals, modelled after higher education in France and Belgium. The budding systems of higher education in these newly independent, but also very much neocolonial, countries were structurally similar to the former metropole in terms of the types of degrees awarded, curricular design and what it meant to progress through and build an academic career. In many instances across former French colonies in Africa, French academics staffed these universities for over a decade after independence.

 

These enduring colonial links continued to be maintained such that when higher education in France underwent reforms to be on par with the increasingly dominant Anglo-American degree system (of Bachelor’s Masters’ and PhDs), universities in its former colonies and part of CAMES underwent similar reforms. It was following these reforms that the LMD system was deployed across CAMES institutions (Goudiaby, 2009). The LMD system retains elements of the older French higher education pathway and hybridises it with elements from what is more common in universities operating broadly with structures more common in Anglo-American universities. In this way, the LMD system shortened what used to be a long-winded academic journey to a pathway that resembles what happens in Anglo-American universities. Thus now, in French and Black African Francophone states, the degrees awarded range  from the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree, la Licence, all the way to the PhD, le Doctorat[iv].

 

The very establishment of CAMES was a significant intervention that shaped higher education in Black Francophone Africa. Significantly, its first general secretary was Burkinabé scholar Joseph Ki-Zerbo, chosen because the Ivorian president refused to appoint an Ivorian academic as general secretary for concerns about his communist leanings (Cissé, 2018). This state of affairs from the outset reveals the ways that the organisation gives governments, in particular the presidents of member states and national ministries of higher education and research, levels of power and oversight that makes it difficult for the organisation to operate as an independent academic entity. Furthermore, the context that CAMES creates in and across its member states causes significant challenges in the form of states that can interfere with its running and in the face of gerontocratic and gendered politics. These pressures are well-known among Francophone scholars, especially junior academics, who often must negotiate these politics by pacifying more established scholars to build their academic careers.

 

To be legible beyond these CAMES academic worlds usually means being sufficiently fluent in English and familiar enough with Anglo-American academic institutions and practices or having globally legible academic partners in Anglo-American academic spaces. In this way then, and more so now, to have a meaningful academic career beyond Black Francophone Africa requires, in addition to French and having successfully navigated the CAMES system to a meaningful extent, English language skills and some form of legibility in well-endowed Anglo-American academic institutions. By such means, becoming globally legible in global higher education also tells of the production of social classes within (sub)regional and national academic spaces and social mobilities across these classes. Breaking into the Anglo-American academic sphere, especially into elite, well-endowed academic spheres, can enable one’s relatively increased proximity to power, making it possible to be taken seriously in ways that might not be possible within Francophone circles.

 

To exist within an Anglo-American-dominated world as scholars hailing from African states formerly colonised by France and more broadly CAMES countries entails navigating at least two colonial layers. Some of the material implications of this include working across various systems of legibility in two different languages, with different publishing practices, standards and different experiences of gatekeeping access to published material, conceptualisations of funding in higher education (including how under-represented Black Francophone African students are represented at the level of scholarship awards[v]) and pathways for career progression. This also means different forms of academic prestige, social mobility and class production mediated by access to elite French and Francophone institutions of higher learning and elite Anglo-American ones. Access to Anglo-American elite universities can translate into social capital and significantly fast-track academic social mobility for Black Francophone scholars in Francophone academic spaces. In these ways, access to elite Anglo-American spaces can represent a classist shift.

 

Conclusion

 

The need to decolonise universities and higher education in Francophone Africa proceeds from similar challenges faced by universities in African countries colonised by Britain, and by universities based elsewhere in the world. However, higher education in Black Francophone Africa has a different history, is organised and governed differently, and has need, therefore, of a discourse around decolonisation that takes these histories and particularities into account. Furthermore, the discourse around decolonising universities in the African region, for instance, needs to be more cognisant of these particular histories for more productive and meaningful regional engagement. These things point to the importance of further study of these patterns and histories. We need to continually excavate them to continue to better understand how colonialism operated and what their legacies are, reckon with the challenging legacies that can be setbacks for various people, and let this inform what funding is deployed, where, and how.

 

The limited engagement with higher education in African states colonised by European states other than Britian runs the risk of a myopic view of higher education on the continent and a limited understanding of the specific ways that universities, students and academics navigate knowledge production and exist as academics under Anglo-American global domination. Indeed, paying due attention to these very different histories is critical to understanding how it is, for instance, that renewed calls to decolonise the university reverberate down the halls of primarily English-language institutions on the African continent and beyond. Further still, this engagement is critical to appreciate how it is that calls for #RhodesMustFall reverberated strongest in the streets and hallways of elite Anglo-American institutions and not as strongly in Black Francophone Africa. But in like manner, calls to decolonise in Black Francophone intellectual spaces are seldom echoed in English-language institutions. The language question is key, of course, and continues to be hotly debated, as should be the case. However, I suggest that a wider engagement with these broader structures is needed for a better grasp of higher education on the continent and what this means for decolonial work in its various academic contexts.

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