Across the Sub-Saharan African region, Christian private universities are increasing in number following two main developments: the continuous spreading of Christianity due to population growth and the liberalisation of higher education systems by many governments. Most African Christian private universities with a Catholic, Evangelical, Reformed or Seventh-day Adventist affiliation have a distinctive approach as they aim to provide education from a holistic perspective.
This is an interesting trend in light of longstanding debates around the decolonisation of African higher education institutes in university departments in Europe and South Africa. Scholars have called for a reconsideration of the centrality of Eurocentric epistemologies undergirding the curricula of African universities as they lead to irrelevant educational provision to the local context. The debate about decolonising African universities revolves essentially around the question: what is the nature, role, and essence of African universities?
In this proposal I suggest a study which examines the perspectives of students and senior faculty members of Christian higher education institutes with a Catholic, Evangelical, Reformed or Seventh-day Adventist background in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia about the nature and objectives of their institutions. Their perspectives might shed an interesting light on the potential role religion, and then specifically Christianity, could play in providing education to students which takes into account the needs of students and society. These institutes are incorporating religious concepts within their curricula which are relevant to the daily lives of many Africans.
The study will involve two studies: an in-depth case study of a Christian university in Zambia and semi-structured interviews with senior faculty members of Christian universities in Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia. This study may widen our perspective about what a university might look like in a post-independent African context. Thereby, the findings of these research might be beneficial to CPHEIs in Sub-Saharan Africa to improve their programmes or to draw lessons for their own contexts as fellow educationalists have reflected elaborately on what it means to be a Christian university in an African context.