# Pathways for pragmatic decolonisation in research

## TL;DR

This paper proposes decentralisation as a practical way to shift power in research, giving African scholars and communities more control over knowledge production.

## Contribution

It introduces a framework for decolonising research through decentralisation, offering actionable pathways for epistemic redistribution.

## Key findings

- Decentralisation can redistribute epistemic power to African scholars and communities.
- Three interconnected pathways—epistemological, methodological, and administrative—support practical decolonisation.
- Reflexive narrative inquiry reveals how power dynamics shape research in African contexts.

## Abstract

For too long, research on African peoples, histories, and ideas has been shaped by institutions and frameworks rooted in former colonial metropoles. This has sustained epistemic hierarchies that privilege Western paradigms while marginalising African knowledge systems. While there is increasing consensus on the need to decolonise research, less attention has been paid to how this can be achieved in practical terms. This paper argues that decentralisation—a concept familiar in governance—offers a useful metaphor and framework for rethinking how power over knowledge production can be redistributed to African scholars, institutions, and communities.

With this paper, the author adopts a conceptual-empirical approach grounded in personal research experiences within Cameroonian higher education and supported by a review of scholarly efforts by African researchers engaging with decolonial paradigms. Reflexive narrative inquiry is used to interrogate how decision-making, methodological choices, and epistemic validation processes unfold in research spaces. The paper reinterprets decentralisation to develop a framework for epistemic redistribution in knowledge production.

Building on the idea that decolonisation entails decentralising epistemic power, the paper identifies one foundational starting point and three interconnected pathways for action. Theoretical pathways reclaim African epistemologies as valid and generative, disrupting Eurocentric dominance. Methodological pathways advance participatory, Afrocentric approaches grounded in lived experience and relational ethics. Administrative pathways call for institutional reforms that empower African scholars and communities in shaping research agendas, resource flows, and dissemination. Collectively, these pathways outline intentional shifts in authority over theory, method, and governance that operationalise decolonisation in knowledge production.

By re-framing decolonisation as decentralisation, this paper provides an accessible and actionable model for transforming knowledge production in African contexts. It contributes to bridging the theory-practice gap in decolonial discourse, offering concrete strategies to recentre African thought, amplify historically marginalised voices, and cultivate epistemic justice within and beyond the academy.

For long, research about African people, history, and ideas has been controlled by institutions of former colonial metropoles that now make up the historically privileged Global North. This has led to a situation where Western thinking is seen as the "right" way to do research, while African knowledge systems and perspectives are often ignored or undervalued. Many scholars have called for change, arguing that knowledge production worldwide should be more inclusive and reflect the voices of African (and other indigenous) communities. However, while there is a lot of discussion on why research should be decolonised, there is less clarity on how to actually make it happen practically.

This paper suggests that one way to understand decolonising research is through the idea of decentralisation—a concept already familiar to many people globally, as so many governments use it. Decentralisation means shifting decision-making power from a central authority to local communities, giving them more control. Here, the author argues that we can apply the same idea to knowledge production to make decolonisation easier to understand and implement.

Just as decentralisation shifts decision-making from central authorities to local communities, decolonising research involves re-distributing power over knowledge production to ensure African scholars, institutions, and their communities have greater influence in determining research priorities, methodologies, and dissemination practices.

The author then states that when we see decolonising as the decentralisation of power over knowledge production, it reveals that there are three broad ways- following a starting point- by which those who want to decolonise research can go about it. The paper presents details on the identified starting point and the pathways using examples from empirical research by the author and other scholars.