In this chapter, George Sefa Dei explores how oral traditions, such as storytelling, proverbs, chants, and rituals,serve as valid and dynamic educational methods in African contexts. He critiques the dominance of Eurocentric knowledge systems in African schooling and development theory, and offers a compelling argument for “reclaiming development” through the reintegration of Indigenous frameworks.

The book encourages educators and policymakers to engage Indigenous ways of knowing not as supplemental, but as foundational to pedagogical transformation. Dei’s work is particularly powerful in repositioning communal, spiritual, and land-based epistemologies as tools of resistance against colonial education systems.

This reference was recommended by the Bartlett Pan-African Indigenist Collective.

The Collective is a space for critical dialogue, activism, and scholarship that foregrounds Pan-African Indigenist ways of knowing, being, and creating. Formed by members of the Bartlett community dedicated to uplifting the voices, knowledge, and cultural legacies of people of African heritage and their respective Indigenous communities and lands, it aims to challenge colonial legacies and inspire transformation within institutional structures, research and curricula. By integrating creative and scholarly practices, the Collective works to restore narratives that have been silenced or misrepresented. Their work advances decolonial efforts in higher education by creating inclusive spaces and centring diverse African knowledge systems. Bartlett Alternative recognises the Collective’s vital contribution to broadening intellectual and cultural horizons through radical inclusivity and exclusivity, and thanks them for sharing resources that foreground lived experience, land-based knowledge systems, and epistemic justice.

Department Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment