Decolonising Media and Communication Studies Education in Sub-Saharan Africa

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.

PART I: BIG PICTURE CONSIDERATIONS: DECOLONISING MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES EDUCATION IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 1: Connecting the dots: decolonising communication and media studies teaching and learning in sub-Saharan Africa 2: Towards centring African languages in media and communication courses in postsecondary institutions in Africa PART II: RETHINKING CLASSROOMS: IMPLICATIONS FOR STUDENTS, INSTRUCTORS, AND INSTRUCTION 3: Decolonising and reimagining instructor-student relationships in a communication and media studies fourth-level seminar 4: De-Westernisation and de-sacralisation as imperatives for the decolonisation of cinema teaching in sub-Saharan Africa 5: Decolonising from the margins to the centre: Ghanaian communication classrooms in perspective PART III: REFLECTIONS ON CURRICULA AND SYLLABI: POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 6: Reflections on a decolonised communication and media studies curriculum 7: Towards a decolonised human, university, and curriculum: Some critical notes 8: “An-Other” centred film curricula: decolonising film studies in Africa 9: Decolonising the curricula and the space in Africa: an interdisciplinary approach 10: Should curricula be the same? Toward media studies curriculum reforms in Kenya 11: Decolonisation deferred? An analysis of the Education 5.0 Doctrine, the Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education approved media and communication curriculum and selected writings by Zimbabwean media academics 12: Proposals for a decolonised course outline for a theories and methods course in communication and media studies 13: Reformatting and decolonising postsecondary educational priorities in South Africa in view of COVID-19 PART IV: BEYOND CLASSROOMS 14: African journalists at crossroads: examining the impact of China, US, and the UK’s short-journalism training programme offered to African journalists 15: Ekoaɗo: an African approach to decolonising communication research and practice