Pathways for pragmatic decolonisation in research

For too long, research on African peoples, histories, and ideas has been shaped by institutions and frameworks rooted in former colonial metropoles. This has sustained epistemic hierarchies that privilege Western paradigms while marginalising African knowledge systems. While there is increasing consensus on the need to decolonise research, less attention has been paid to how this can be achieved in practical terms. This paper argues that decentralisation-a concept familiar in governance-offers a useful metaphor and framework for rethinking how power over knowledge production can be redistributed to African scholars, institutions, and communities.

With this paper, the author adopts a conceptual-empirical approach grounded in personal research experiences within Cameroonian higher education and supported by a review of scholarly efforts by African researchers engaging with decolonial paradigms. Reflexive narrative inquiry is used to interrogate how decision-making, methodological choices, and epistemic validation processes unfold in research spaces. The paper reinterprets decentralisation to develop a framework for epistemic redistribution in knowledge production.

Building on the idea that decolonisation entails decentralising epistemic power, the paper identifies one foundational starting point and three interconnected pathways for action. Theoretical pathways reclaim African epistemologies as valid and generative, disrupting Eurocentric dominance. Methodological pathways advance participatory, Afrocentric approaches grounded in lived experience and relational ethics. Administrative pathways call for institutional reforms that empower African scholars and communities in shaping research agendas, resource flows, and dissemination. Collectively, these pathways outline intentional shifts in authority over theory, method, and governance that operationalise decolonisation in knowledge production.

By re-framing decolonisation as decentralisation, this paper provides an accessible and actionable model for transforming knowledge production in African contexts. It contributes to bridging the theory-practice gap in decolonial discourse, offering concrete strategies to recentre African thought, amplify historically marginalised voices, and cultivate epistemic justice within and beyond the academy.