Bridging Knowledge and Transforming Practice

Abstract

The Scholarship of Engagement (SoE) is increasingly understood as a decolonial and justiceoriented project with significant implications for higher education in Africa.It extends beyond improving engagement practices to rethinking what counts as knowledge, whose knowledge is recognised, and how universities relate to the societies they serve (Hall & Tandon, 2014).In this regard, SoE challenges historically entrenched and often hierarchical models of knowledge production, calling for a shift from unidirectional knowledge transfer toward the co-construction of knowledge through reciprocal and contextually grounded partnerships between universities and communities (Boyer, 1996;Hall & Tandon, 2014).Drawing on critical and decolonial perspectives, SoE foregrounds epistemic justice by questioning dominant knowledge hierarchies and recognising the value of diverse, locally situated, and Indigenous knowledge systems (Fricker, 2007; de Sousa Santos, 2014;Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018).It is further informed by traditions of critical pedagogy, which position engagement as a dialogical and reflective practice that links knowledge production with social responsibility and transformation (Freire, 1970).Within the African context, this relational orientation resonates with the philosophy of Ubuntu, emphasising interdependence, reciprocity, and collective knowledge-making (Ramose, 2002;Metz, 2011).In this framing, engagement is not positioned as a peripheral or instrumental activity, but as an integral, socially responsive, and ethically grounded dimension of academic work.It calls for the continued integration of teaching, learning, and research in ways that are responsive to context, attentive to issues of power and inclusion, and oriented toward the broader transformation of higher education in Africa.