A decolonial study of indigenous teaching and learning methods of knowledge transfer in Gabon’s rural communities

Abstract

Gabon is a country with an important ancestral cultural heritage that constitutes a set of epistemological and ontological systems that can be traced back to the 15th century. Europeans, with their colonising mission, wrongly presumed that African indigenous people were ignorant and uneducated. Thus, Gabon remains one of the sub-Saharan countries where access to education and forms of knowledge is exclusively established on the Western hegemonic knowledge system. This study demonstrates how indigenous knowledge contributes to education in Gabon via the implementation of indigenous teaching and learning methods of knowledge transfer. The theoretical framework underpinning the present study is based on decolonial theory as conceptualised for research in the humanities, social sciences, and education.