Decolonising Media and Communication Studies Education in Sub-saharan Africa

The book provides insights on decolonising media and communication studies education from diverse African scholars at different stages of their careers. These academics, located on the continent and in the diaspora, share an interest in decolonising higher education broadly and media and communication studies teaching and learning in particular.

Although many African countries gained flag independence from different European colonial powers between the 1950s and the 1970s, this book argues that former colonies remain ensnared in a colonial power matrix. Many African universities did not jettison ways of teaching and learning established during colonialism, and even those journalism, communication, and media studies training programmes which were established after the attainment of flag independence did not place decolonial agendas at the front and centre when setting them up. Starting with big picture thematic questions around decolonisation, the book goes on to consider what the implications of change would be for students and instructors, before reflecting on how far it is possible to decolonise curricula and syllabi and what this might look like in practice across a range of subject areas and country contexts. Overall, this book presents a nuanced picture of what a decolonised media and communication studies education could look like in sub-Saharan Africa.

This book is essential for researchers in Africa in disciplines such as media and communication studies, journalism, film studies, cultural studies, and higher education studies. More broadly, the concepts and ideas on decolonising teaching and learning discussed in the book are relevant to instructors in any discipline who are interested in doing the decolonial work of contesting coloniality.

Selina Linda Mudavanhu is Assistant Professor in the Communication Studies and Media Arts Department in the Humanities faculty at McMaster University in Canada. She is also Senior Research Associate with the Department of Communication and Media (University of Johannesburg, South Africa). Selina holds a PhD in Media Studies from South Africa. She also has degrees from the University of Zimbabwe. Her research interests include critical media studies, critical race studies, coloniality, and decoloniality as well as digital storytelling. Selina has received grants and awards to convene qualitative projects using digital storytelling with partners in Canada and South Africa. She has received funding from the Ontario Council on Articulation and Transfer, the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program, the Petro-Canada-McMaster University Young Innovator Award, the McMaster Arts Research Board, McMaster University’s International Office, and the MacPherson Institute’s Student Partners Program (SPP). Selina has published in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals and is on the editorial boards of African Journalism Studies and Communicare: Journal for Communication Studies in Africa.

Shepherd Mpofu is Associate Professor of Media and Communication at the University of South Africa. He has published several articles on communication, media, and journalism in Africa. His body of work covers social media and politics, social media and identity, and social media and protests. He is the editor of The Politics of Laughter in the Social Media Age: Perspectives From the Global South (Palgrave Macmillan 2021) and Digital Humour in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Perspectives From the Global South (Palgrave Macmillan 2021) and co-editor of Mediating Xenophobia in Africa (Palgrave 2020).

Kezia Batisai is Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg who holds a PhD in Gender Studies from the University of Cape Town. Kezia has written several journal articles, book chapters, technical reports, and opinion pieces that expand her theory of marginality. The published work questions notions of marginality and the meaning of being different that expose the politics of nation-building in Africa. Kezia’s work articulates these notions of marginality through an interdisciplinary approach to gender, sexuality, health, and migration studies, and interrogates how people marked by society as “the minority” (based on intersecting positionalities) negotiate being different within various hierarchised zones of the everyday. Kezia is an active member of the International Sociological Association; South African Association for Gender Studies; South African Sociological Association; and the Research Network Law, Gender, and Sexuality (LEX) International Steering Committee.