Global knowledge economy in the post-colony: public universities and scholarship in Nigeria

Abstract

Contemporary global knowledge economy is dominantly Euro-American. This paper takes a backward glance at the evolution of University education in Nigeria and how the globalization of this western form of knowledge through language, teaching and learning curricula and scholarship in Nigerian universities has tended to produce malformed clones of western notions of ‘market-place’ education system and values in a post-colony like Nigeria. These trends from the global knowledge economy have noticeable reverberations in Nigeria in many dimensions like widening digital divide and increasing exclusion from the global knowledge economy, devaluation of indigenous knowledge systems, increased ‘white slavery’ and perpetuation of the culture of dependency, as well as lack of self-confidence in local intellectual values and practice. The contradiction in this scenario is that the scholar evolves from the local culture but functions within the global; and, where the global culture becomes a predominant influence as is the case in Nigeria, the future of indigenous knowledge and scholarship in the post-colony becomes just another endangered spoil of global knowledge capitalism. A postmodern approach of localizing knowledge, respecting and encouraging scientific difference and plurality is suggested as a negotiation of this imminent global capitalist vice-grip.

Key Words: Globalization, Knowledge Economy, Higher Education, Nigeria