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The motto of my secondary school located in a small town in southern Nigeria read: 鈥淜nowledge is Power.鈥� This statement has often played in my mind as I journeyed through higher education and an academic career in both Nigeria and England. I noticed many moments in the past two and half decades where the knowledge I encountered did make me feel empowered. As a teacher and firm believer in the transformative power of knowledge for social change, I consider my classroom a site of encounter, activism and transformation.

Like bell hooks (), I believe the classroom 鈥渞emains the most radical space of possibility in the academy鈥�. A site where students encounter postcolonial and decolonial scholarship to unveil and interrogate the coloniality of development, especially through the works of Claude Ake, Oyeronke Oyewunmi, Chandra Mohanty, Maria Lugones, Rosalba Icaza and Robbie Shilliam. Coloniality is a reference to long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism and continues to define culture, labour, intersubjective relations and knowledge production, well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations鈥� (). Therefore, decoloniality 鈥溾�� seeks to make visible, open up, and advance radically distinct perspectives and positionalities that displace western rationality as the only framework and possibility of existence, analysis and thought鈥� ().

I have observed a significant distinction between the power of knowledge and the power of education. 鈥淐olonial rule left a profound legacy on whose knowledge counts by (re-)producing unfair hierarchies of knowledge creation and dissemination鈥� (). Trained as a Sociologist, I learnt that Education is one of the key building blocks of society. The value of education has been emphasised in both and . Education is measured by access, attainment, achievement (getting a job), and productivity. According to 鈥渋nvesting in education is also an economic imperative for individual prosperity and overall economic growth.鈥� This education referred to in global development goals is about knowledge transmission within formal schooling systems. It is buildings, teaching and learning infrastructure, curriculums, assessment regimes, regulatory bodies, the learners and teachers whose histories and their present are steeped in post-colonial experiences.

Ideas about development continue to build on a synchronic or present-focused understanding of education and its links to development, without accounting for the histories of dehumanisation, dispossession, colonialism and ultimately the continuity of epistemic subjugation and material exploitation. Whose knowledge counts within the curriculum? what counts as 鈥榚ducation鈥�? in what language does instruction happen? whose assessment regime and certification is recognised globally? Development as 鈥�, 鈥樷�� and its focus on economic prospects for states and individuals entrench and sustain, rather than challenge these historically produced epistemic inequalities. Pursuing education as an economic imperative for individual prosperity and economic growth further disciplines poor and marginalised people into unequal global markets.

Digital education involves the use of digital tools (virtual, software and hardware) to facilitate teaching and learning. Technology has historically been considered a game changer for development. Innovation has enabled progress across different spheres of life, from health to travel to production lines, but also time saving on the everyday chores, e.g., cleaning and cooking. Technology is seen to offer hope for children without education that they need to thrive ().

Which brings me to the question of what is the purpose of the digital in education and who does it benefit? Any attempt to make education an indicator of development must be underpinned by an intentional and equitable approach to what knowledge is curated in curriculums and transmitted through educational institutions. Secondly, it must recognise significant disparities in access and benefits of digital tools to majority populations across the world. Finally, it must endeavour to use digital tools to bridge rather than reinforce epistemic subjugation that reproduce .

Even here gaps show up through the inequalities and inequities in access to digital tools and resources. identified multiple digital divides impacting on inclusive and equitable opportunities for digital education: connectivity and infrastructure, digital skills, and social divide. When crisis hit, and we are living within a today, these gaps widen. During COVID-19 when classroom learning was interrupted for at least 9 out of 10 students worldwide, we found that almost half of all students faced barriers to online learning during school closures: in Sub-Saharan Africa 89% of learners (216 million) did not have a household computer; 82% of learners (199 million) did not have household internet ().

Looking at digital education through a decolonial lens 鈥渉elps to understand the, often tacit, patterns of power in the social and technological fabric鈥�; it becomes important then to ask: 鈥渨ho is defining technology, and who has the knowledge, the assets, and the decision-making power?鈥� (). Digital tools for education offer opportunities, yet only if the underlying material and epistemic inequities are foregrounded by innovators, educators and all involved in teaching. Otherwise, digital education becomes another arena where people from certain parts of the world, socio-economic and marginalised groups are excluded from the knowledge production and required to play catch up; it becomes another indicator of exclusion, deprivation and disadvantage.

My final word to educators is a call to critical pedagogy rooted in decoloniality. Digital education can be a tool for epistemic justice that underpins material transformation. First through intentional dismantling of dominant knowledge regimes in curriculums, assessments and access to resources. A reorientation of how we know and what counts as knowledge in academia. Then, technological innovation must seek to embrace epistemic diversity as a given, rather than merely reproduce and redistribute the current dominant ways of knowing, doing and being.

Author Bio

Mouzayian Khalil is Assistant Professor in International Development and Global South Politics, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of 糖心TV, and current Co-Director of the 糖心TV Interdisciplinary Research Institute for International Development (WICID). This blog was originally written as part of my learning on the PGA in Digital EducationLink opens in a new window run by the Academic Development Centre, University of 糖心TV.