Skip to main content
The Morning Star Shop
Undermining the African agency
MARJORIE MAYO praises a book that raises significant questions challenging the limitations of extreme forms of decolonisation
ID AFFIRMATION: WikiAfrica Education initiative teaches South African students to decolonise the internet with Wikipedia [Siphosihle Mkhwanazi/CC]

Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously
by Olufemi Taiwo
Hurst £14.99


DECOLONISATION has become highly topical as an issue, along with the challenges that Black Lives Matter poses to racism more generally.

In so many different contexts students have been demanding the decolonisation of their programmes of study, challenging the continuing legacy of colonial assumptions, especially colonial assumptions about the superiority of Western cultures, devaluing the histories of non-Western cultures in the process. There are so many issues here for the left to consider.

Against decolonisation: Taking African agency seriously offers a controversial contribution to these debates.  

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
culpable
Book Review / 7 September 2025
7 September 2025

MARJORIE MAYO is moved by the clarity with which the FBU call out the true causes of this preventable tragedy

fink
Books / 29 June 2025
29 June 2025

MARJORIE MAYO welcomes challenging insights and thought-provoking criticisms of a number of widely accepted assumptions on the left

palestine monuments
Books / 29 May 2025
29 May 2025

MARJORIE MAYO recommends a disturbing book that seeks to recover traces of the past that have been erased by Israeli colonialism

small boat
Books / 13 May 2025
13 May 2025

MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility

Similar stories
OPPORTUNITY BECKONS: BRICS member states family photograph - In the shadow of the Sugarloaf Mountain - during the 17th BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on July 6 2025. (L to R) Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov, Crown Prince of UAE Khaled bin Mohamed Al Nahyan, President of Indonesia Prabowo Subianto, President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa, President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, Premier of China Li Qiang, Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed, P
The Future / 11 July 2025
11 July 2025

ROGER McKENZIE expounds on the motivation that drove him to write a book that anticipates a dawn of a new, fully liberated Africa – the land of his ancestors

fanon
Opinion / 24 June 2025
24 June 2025

On the centenary of the birth of the anti-colonial thinker and activist Frantz Fanon, JENNY FARRELL assesses his enduring influence

palestine monuments
Books / 29 May 2025
29 May 2025

MARJORIE MAYO recommends a disturbing book that seeks to recover traces of the past that have been erased by Israeli colonialism

ARROGANCE AND IGNORANCE: Group of six European men sitting,
Book Review / 24 September 2024
24 September 2024
FRANCOISE VERGES introduces a powerful new book that explores the damage done by colonial theft