Africa Between the Baobab Tree and the Owl of Minerva: A Post-Colonial Narrative of Memory and Learning

We argue in this article that the African continent has so far achieved less than it might have done because of three phases of technological constraint: a phase of Ecological Impediment, a phase of imperial impediment, and a phase of attitudinal impediment. Just as formal education (both colonial and post-colonial) has played a role in this process, it can be part of the solution, starting with educational policies seeking to overcome technological amnesia. Indeed, Africa needs to recover those aspects of its creativity (in medicine, technologies, etc.) which had flourished before, but were destroyed by the colonial regimes. The solution to the impediments includes also reconsidering the interrupted symphony of the Federal University of East Africa and mobilizing pan Africanism in pursuit of greater intellectual and academic cooperation.