Chapter One
Decolonisation and Geography in Africa

Introduction

Decolonising Geography? focuses on the experiences and contributions of academic geographers to decolonisation in the former British empire in Africa. Whilst geography's engagements with the imperial project have been well documented, accounts have tended to end in the early twentieth century rather than continuing to examine the period of constitutional decolonisation itself (Craggs 2014). However, geographers, and geography, were entangled with the end of empire in a number of ways, even if, as Power and Sidaway argue, 'this connection was not always acknowledged' (2004, p. 588). The book focuses on both how the professional lives of academic geographers in this era were shaped through decolonisation and how their work shaped that same process. It sheds new light on the influence of late colonial development, decolonisation, and post-colonial geopolitics on geography, and demonstrates how the discipline contributed - positively and negatively - to the broader politics of decolonisation and national development.

Examining the period 1948-1998, and with a final chapter that addresses debates about the decolonisation of the discipline (and university) today, the book explores the careers of geographers working in colonial and post-colonial universities in Africa during and after constitutional decolonisation. It examines the practice of geography within the universities of the (former) British empire, as well as considering the impact of decolonisation on geography in the UK as British geographers returning from posts in the colonies joined UK departments. It draws on case studies from Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda, as well as the UK. The first universities in these African countries were almost all university colleges associated with the University of London, set up in the mid-twentieth century. They made up part of an expanded British academic world which connected the UK and British colonies in Africa (Pietsch 2013).

Whilst Ghana became independent in 1957, followed shortly after by Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda, the 1980s and 1990s saw liberation for Zimbabwe, and the end of apartheid in South Africa. Much of the historiography of British decolonisation focuses on the 1940s to 1960s, yet the formal constitutional process was ongoing into the 1980s. The book charts geography's engagements with decolonisation in the fifty years following the opening of the first University Colleges in Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda in the late 1940s. It extends the chronology of these histories into the late twentieth century as anti-colonial struggles continued across the continent and academics, students, politicians, and publics continued to ask questions about the extent to which decolonisation had meant a complete break from colonialism. The struggle for democratic rule in South Africa was understood by many as part of the broader process of decolonisation and the demand for racial justice across Africa, so whilst the issues in South Africa were somewhat different to those in other decolonising states, it is revealing to explore these alongside one another.

Questions about colonialism and decolonisation reverberated around universities in Africa in the mid twentieth century and continue to shape the discipline of geography to the present day. Our book makes three key contributions to debates about decolonisation. First, whilst Decolonising geography? is a historical study, it contributes to the rich and diverse debates which see decolonisation as an incomplete and increasingly urgent project in the twenty-first century. It does so by bringing the meanings, strategies, and lived experiences of a group of primarily African academics working to decolonise the discipline of geography and the university in the mid twentieth century, into conversation with those attempting the same thing today. Second, the book contributes to the decolonisation of geography's histories, by highlighting the contributions of scholars from Africa, as well as the ongoing legacies of colonialism in the discipline. Third, we contribute to the interdisciplinary study of decolonisation by demonstrating the value of biographical approaches for understanding the end of empire as a transformation experienced and produced through individuals' careers worked across continents, linking postcolonial states and former colonial powers, colleagues and institutions, in complex ways.

Following the professional lives of a cohort of geographers over many years the book utilises biographical methods as well as institutional histories to explore a wide range of academic labour. Whilst the published research of geographers forms one element of the analysis, the book also explores teaching, curriculum design, and student work; academic exchanges, grants, scholarships, and funding; and the often-hidden academic labour of departmental administration including aspects such as reference writing, mentoring, and promotion decisions. We examine a set of individual professional lives, from undergraduate studies through often-lengthy academic careers, alongside the institutions, networks, and disciplinary knowledges through which they were worked. Through this approach we are able to explore not only how geographers conceptualised decolonisation in their research, but also how they practised it through their broader academic labour. Disciplinary histories tend to focus on publications, and, in the context of empire and decolonisation, on contributions to either the pursuit, or the radical critique, of these processes (Livingstone 1992; Clayton 2013). Yet, decolonisation was (and is) not only about publications, but also about everyday academic practices. How departments were managed and people treated were as much part of the practice of decolonisation as geographical work like border commissions or anti-colonial critique. The book demonstrates that we must take seriously the everyday work of geographers, as well as their publications, in assessing the interconnections between geography and decolonisation. The biographical approach taken allows the book to bridge a critical gap in historical understanding, by uncovering the praxis of geography in all its messiness.

The rest of this chapter sets out the contours of our arguments, contexts, methods, and case studies. The next section first describes the periodisation of the book before moving on to contextualise the place of African universities within debates from this period about decolonisation and post-colonial state-building. The third section sets out our three substantive contributions to the lively and wide-ranging debate about decolonisation unfolding today. Following this we set out our methods and then establish our case study institutions. Finally we introduce the chapters and set out the structure of the rest of the book.

African Decolonisation

Periodisation

In this book we engage with decolonisation in multiple registers, but our empirical discussion is anchored in the historical period leading up to and following formal processes of political decolonisation. Clayton (2020, p.2) has provided a useful description that captures the different overlapping phases of this process which are explored in the book:

Postwar decolonisation encompasses three phenomena: first, attempts by Western powers to defend and reform their colonial empires and deal with a rising tide of anticolonial sentiment (dubbed late colonialism); second, the sometimes peaceful and quick but often violent and protracted means by which independence was obtained (and with nationalist and independence struggles often stretching much further back in time); and, third, the ensuing affairs of postcolonial nations and question of whether independence heralded a complete break with the colonial past.(Clayton 2020, p. 2)

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1993, p. 60) was more succinct in his account, personalising this history into the experiences of African writers like him, who, in the 30 years from the middle of the twentieth century, had gone through 'the age of anti-colonial struggle, the age of independence, and the age of neo-colonialism'. He grew up in colonial Kenya, becoming one of the first generation of African students at Makerere University College, Uganda, around the time of independence. Ngugi is not only a key theorist of decolonisation, but a counterpart, colleague and contemporary of many of the geographers whose contributions are explored in this book. His academic life reflects the broad trajectories of higher education in East Africa, as well as in Ghana and Nigeria. He studied as an undergraduate in a University College in Africa (affiliated to the University of London) that was a British late colonial development project. Ngugi provides an evocative description of the campus and status of the institution in the colonial and early post-colonial period, which captures the optimism and excitement of decolonisation:

Kampala is a city of high hills. Makerere, after which the college was named, is one of the nine hills on which the city stands. But the name Makerere had come to symbolise higher learning in East Africa for those who ascended the hill it meant a passage into the membership of the band of the very elect. But the college was more than that. In the fifties and early sixties Makerere was the intellectual capital of East and Central Africa . What a time it was those days at Makerere, in East Africa! It was a replica of the Wordsworthian bliss at being alive at the birth of a revolution and the possibilities of a new future....