Decolonising African legal education: the role of comparative law and research

African legal education is experiencing a period of profound transformation. Reforms were initiated to transform universities curricula, introducing new subjects and teaching methodologies. Among the general call for reforms, may called for the “decolonisation” and “Africanisation” of the law programmes. Both law curricula and teaching methodology are still based on Western conceptions of law and legal professions, at the expenses of African legal traditions and they display ethnocentric methodological biases towards the study of African law. Against this background, the importance of comparative law and methodology in African legal education is debated by both Western and African scholars. After providing an introduction on the role of law and legal education in colonial and post-independence Africa, this article deals with comparative law and research in contemporary African university by mainly focusing on anglophone sub-Saharan and southern countries. Particular attention is devoted to the debate on the “Africanisation” of curricula and comparative law as a tool to disengage African legal education from the enduring colonial legacy.