Indigenising Africa's Environmental Education through a Development Education Discourse for Combating Climate Change

• Main Author: Simon Eten
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre for Global Education 2015-10-01
• Series: Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review
• Subjects: Development Education; Indigenous Knowledge; Environmental Education; Education for Sustainable Development
• Online Access: https://www.developmenteducationreview.com/issue/issue-21/indigenising-africas-environmental-education-through-development-education-discourse

Africa is one of the regions that bear the harshest effects of climate change, yet its efforts to combat climate change through environmental education are not strongly linked to its ecological conditions. The encounter of Africa with colonialism in the past and the current impacts of globalisation and neoliberalism have kept African indigenous knowledge in the margins of its educational systems, thereby impeding its environmental education efforts for effective climate change adaptation. This paper presents the argument that, a development education discourse on indigenous knowledge in the lens of critical theories of education such as critical pedagogy and postcolonial theory can create spaces for the revitalisation and inclusion of indigenous knowledge in African educational systems for combating climate change. Based on a literature analysis of papers by some African postcolonial scholars, the author weaves the usefulness of African indigenous knowledge into a development education discourse, not only for combating climate change, but also for challenging hegemonic knowledge forms.