1 Context Centered Decolonial Pedagogy for Human Rights Education in Africa 1 Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes Introduction: Context-Centred Pedagogy of Human Rights Understanding what lies behind the human rights discourse in Africa is a challenging task. Every year, when I teach a topic on human rights from African perspectives, I ask students to describe what they know about Africa. There is a prevailing assumption that Africa has major problems such as violence, poverty, and ignorance, which can be simply addressed by the implementation of human rights. It is frequently assumed that violence can be ended by enforcing civil and political rights, poverty mitigated by implementing economic, social and cultural rights, and ignorance reduced by realising the right to education. In this approach, the relevance of the international human rights framework cannot be questioned, making the right to life, education, and development essential remedies for much of the human tragedy in Africa. Based on this assumption, the pedagogy of human rights education often focuses on teaching the state-centric international rights system in Africa (An-Na’im 1990), teaching Africans to understand their human rights, and making the state accountable to enforce them. Although this approach may have some importance in creating awareness of ongoing violations, it cannot allow Africans to transform their lives or address the problems they are facing. This is because the existing human rights concepts and frameworks are based on a misguided and superficial understanding of African contexts. How context is understood defines what African human rights should look like and what type of human rights pedagogy we should follow. For example, those who define the African context in terms of ‘lack’ (poverty, illiteracy and powerlessness) suggest the primacy of economic development. From this, they suggest the primacy of the right to economic development over civic and political rights (Agbakwa 2002; Howard 1983). Others define the African context in terms of the people’s unique cultures and histories. Based on this, they propose traditional communalist values such as Ubuntu, and related concepts of duty and justice as an alternative basis for African human rights (Cobbah 1987; Murithi 2007). These perspectives are important in broadening the scope of reimagining human rights (An-Na’im and Deng 1990; Mutua 1995). However, there is less emphasis in a deeper examination of how colonial violence impacts African local realities and human rights meanings. My argument here is that between criticising the universality or Eurocentric aspect of human rights and presenting local alternatives, there is a missing link where a possible human rights pedagogy could be centred. This missing link could be approached through a Context- Centred Decolonial Pedagogy (CCDP), which starts with the question: ‘What produces the context in which Africans live today?’ I regard context as the prevailing state of reality produced through dynamic power relationships. In other words, CCDP examines how the African context is (re)produced rather than what the African context is. How can we learn not just the context (African poverty, African culture, African development), but the ways in which these realities are (re)produced historically and in the present? 1 Woldeyes, Yirga Gelaw. “Context-Centred Decolonial Pedagogy for Human Rights Education in Africa.” In Activating Cultural and Social Change: The Pedagogies of Human Rights. Offord, Baden; Fleay, Caroline; Hartley, Lisa; Woldeyes, Yirga Gelaw; and Chan, Dean (eds). 15-31. London: Routledge.