THIS opinion piece will generate more heat than light within the academic community because of its wonderment about the accordance of professorship.
Professorship should go beyond the measuring scoop that is provided by academic peers, it should relate to the production of services and products.
Having professors that are detached from their villages or communities is like the attribution of intelligence to an African’s capacity to speak English out and out.
It is the object of this opinion piece to challenge the basis for the accordance of professorship.
Professorship is usually earned on the basis of a production of articles and/or books that are peer reviewed.
By extension, it becomes a function of a crop of academicians in a particular domain endorsing the intellectual prowess of their colleagues and to that effect, it becomes exclusive.
There are professors who are purely metaphysically idealists, whose contributions are just for the four walls of the lecture room.
Professorship should be associated with growing and preserving, where necessary, the local cosmologies of a people.
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For example, in an African setting, professors should be seen developing epistemological frameworks that capture the essence of Africanness in its diversity.
African professors should influence and shape what is taught in African universities with a focus towards preserving the axiological values of Africans.
Having professors that imbibe the epistemologies of the West that pooh-pooh African normative practices shows that our professors cannot think as if there is no box.
Professorship should be earned on the basis of one’s effort in the development of African villages or communities.
Knowledge production and dissemination in this liquid modernity is highly coloured by the polemic of enlightenment reason at the expense of metaphysical realities of a given people.
Why is it not knowledge that witchcraft exists? It is not knowledge because those who dance with docility to the school of enlightenment reason hold that it is not objective.
Most African States have criminalised witchcraft on the basis that it cannot be proven. Where are our African professors to argue for witchcraft and to further develop it for prosperity?
They are not there to stand with this idealism of witchcraft because most of them are products of the West, where the laboratory is a key site for learning.
Professorship should be offered on the basis of productions that have a sense of solidity, especially in a community.
Professors should have works that have a sense of presence in a community.
The awarding of professorship should go beyond peer reviews or scholarly reviews to embrace other people like local leadership and everyday people endorsing the status.
Africa today is struggling amid a sea of professors in different domains.
These professors have not made any difference to social, political and economic circumstances of Africa.
Professors should be torch-bearers, thought leaders and game changers in their communities.
Africa is failing to benefit from its crop of learned people because the so-called learned people are elitists in their approach to life and far removed from their communities.
If professors, who have done well, have moved out of their communities, for whom are they professors?
I will call them the “how many legs does a locust have professors” because the how many legs does a locust have question amounts to dead knowledge.
Real professors should not only have books and articles to boast of, but services and products to talk about.
If you are a professor reading this opinion piece, please ask yourself: “What have I done for my village or community? What services have I given to my village or community?”
Please don’t talk about articles or books that you have written; rather talk about the interactions you have had with the non-academic community where you added value.
Scholarship is not just about reading and writing; it is also about humanising society.
Our professors should have an intellectual infrastructure which should be key to the development of Africa; the basis for the development of Africa does not lie in attending conferences at some cosy place in London or New York.
It lies with a consciousness of one’s ecological environment and its diverse needs.
Charity begins at home. African professors should go beyond the pages of their articles and books and have look-and-learn visits in their communities and villages in order to respond to the existential threats and needs of their communities.
Some African countries continue to import toothpicks from China, amid a sea of their learned citizens. What then is the use of university education?
University education is as good as its professors, but what then would you expect from professors who received their professorship from institutions of the Global North, where universities, by and large, are focused on producing conflicted graduates who can neither think nor see beyond their noses.
In Africa, the essence of professorship is associated with tangibility.
Some individuals in the community who have not been to an institution of higher learning have earned the status of professorship because of how they have served their communities.
African professors should add value to their continent by ensuring that Africa does not lose its identity to the liquid modernity.
If at all there is a need to embrace Western axiological values, then hybridisation has to be considered.
There are certain timeless values that Africa cannot afford to discard because of globalisation and these values border on the moral economy, the communal-self and co-production.
Let professors be known within their villages or communities more than they are known within the pages of journals and books read by their academic peers.
- Nicholas Aribino writes here in his personal capacity
