This course critically examines the decolonization of African epistemology in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Artificial Intelligence (AI). It interrogates how colonial legacies continue to shape knowledge systems and explores strategies for reclaiming African intellectual sovereignty in an era dominated by algorithmic governance, data colonialism, and techno-capitalism. Students will engage with African philosophical categories such as Ubuntu, communalism, and holistic rationality while analyzing how AI technologies reproduce or challenge epistemic hierarchies. They will work to unlearn and deconstruct epistemic injustices, dismantling unjust practices, assumptions, and institutions while actively creating new ways of knowing and being. The course adopts a doubly critical lens: Critiquing Eurocentric epistemologies embedded in AI systems and global knowledge infrastructures, and Re-centering Indigenous African knowledge systems as valid, dynamic, and future-oriented frameworks for innovation and ethical AI development. Through dialogue with thinkers like Kwame Nkrumah, Frantz Fanon, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Achille Mbembe, and Sylvia Wynter, students will explore the intersections of technology, power, and epistemic justice, asking: How can Africa avoid becoming a passive consumer of AI and instead shape AI through African values, philosophies, and worldviews?
4 units · Letter or Credit/No Credit · GER: WAY-SI
This course critically examines the decolonization of African epistemology in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Artificial Intelligence (AI). It interrogates how colonial legacies continue to shape knowledge systems and explores strategies for reclaiming African intellectual sovereignty in an era dominated by algorithmic governance, data colonialism, and techno-capitalism. Students will engage with African philosophical categories such as Ubuntu, communalism, and holistic rationality while analyzing how AI technologies reproduce or challenge epistemic hierarchies. They will work to unlearn and deconstruct epistemic injustices, dismantling unjust practices, assumptions, and institutions while actively creating new ways of knowing and being. The course adopts a doubly critical lens: Critiquing Eurocentric epistemologies embedded in AI systems and global knowledge infrastructures, and Re-centering Indigenous African knowledge systems as valid, dynamic, and future-oriented frameworks for innovation and ethical AI development. Through dialogue with thinkers like Kwame Nkrumah, Frantz Fanon, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Achille Mbembe, and Sylvia Wynter, students will explore the intersections of technology, power, and epistemic justice, asking: How can Africa avoid becoming a passive consumer of AI and instead shape AI through African values, philosophies, and worldviews?
Offered in Spring 2027 at Stanford University.