A Decolonial Approach to Community Engagement at the University of Zimbabwe: Towards Transforming the Developing World University Education Practices

Abstract

In the past century, community engagement has been part of a stand-alone forced assimilation plan, where autochthonous knowledge and heritage has been suppressed in higher and tertiary institutions of education, leading to colonization of knowledge. Using the University of Zimbabwe as a case study, this paper utilizes key informant electronic-in-depth-interviews and desk research methods to investigate the unexplored understanding of community engagement as an integral part of teaching and learning in developing world institutions. Findings suggest that psychological contours of ‘localized’ colonialism continue to be engraved saliently in the spheres of self-determination, cultural knowledge acquisition, sharing and application. The paper argues that the problem is not so much of governance and politics but a lack of psychological and cultural understanding of the African epistemology as the philosophy-in-place. This paper recommends a redefinition of what effective, meaningful and transformative community engagement for developing-world-universities entails by providing a best practice model.