Decolonising the historical curriculum: Pedagogical theory and practice in Sub-Saharan African universities

Background: The decolonisation of university curricula has emerged as one of the most contested debates in contemporary African higher education. For history departments in Sub-Saharan Africa, decolonisation involves confronting the Eurocentric periodisation, source hierarchies, and theoretical frameworks inherited from colonial and early postcolonial curriculum design, and replacing them with epistemologically pluralist, Afrocentric, and community-engaged alternatives that more adequately reflect the diversity and complexity of African historical experience.

Aim: This study examined the theoretical frameworks and practical curriculum reform approaches employed by history departments in Nigerian, Ethiopian, and South African universities to decolonise historical education, and assessed the institutional, pedagogical, and political challenges encountered in implementation.

Methodology: A mixed qualitative methodology combining document analysis of curriculum reform frameworks, semi-structured interviews with 36 history academics across six universities, and case study analysis of three decolonisation reform initiatives was employed. Data were collected in 2025 and analysed using thematic analysis guided by epistemic justice theory.

Findings: Curriculum reform efforts vary significantly in theoretical depth and institutional scope. South African universities show the most institutionally structured reform processes, informed by the RhodesMustFall movement's intellectual legacy. Nigerian and Ethiopian contexts exhibit more fragmented reform efforts constrained by resource limitations, institutional conservatism, and contested definitions of what decolonisation requires. Shared challenges include faculty resistance, assessment framework inflexibility, and the absence of adequate Africanist pedagogical resources.

Contributions: The study contributes to decolonial education theory and African higher education research by providing comparative empirical evidence of curriculum decolonisation processes in three national contexts and identifying the structural conditions that enable or constrain substantive curriculum transformation.