Does Africa Have a NON-Colonial Existential Reference? Contesting PRE-Post/Colonial Categorization of African Higher Education, Science and Technology?

Is it possible to conceive African higher education, science and technology outside of the historical and sociological categories pre/post/colonial existence? This paper grapples with the epistemic and methodological questions about the possibility of apprehending Africa as a social reality and knowledge object transcending its existential reference to colonialism. The paper attempts to address the following questions (a) is there any evidence of higher education, science and technology, which historical and sociological existence can be described without the markers of the colonial space and temporality? (b) What knowledge and empirical categories can be used to present the realities of African higher education, science and technology in its own existential right? We argue that although significant segments of African modernity is negotiated in the encounter with colonialism, considerable features of the ancient and contemporary African society are not necessarily moulded by historical reference to colonialism. While acknowledging, in line with Derek Gregory argument (2004), the colonial present, it is simplistic to establish breaks between historical periods, and that colonial constellations of power, knowledge and geography are powerfully at work in the present, there are accounts of the current society that can be made without the historical demarcation of colonialism. Drawing on examples from higher education, science and technology, the paper presents alternative ways to account for African "post-coolonial" realities.