Psychobiography as a Practical Decolonial Tool: Retelling African Stories in Service of Post-Colonial Identity Development—A Narrative Literature Review

This narrative literature review examines whether psychobiography, an established methodology within contemporary psychology, can be reconceived as a genuinely decolonial tool for supporting post-colonial identity development among African peoples. Moving beyond the simple inclusion of African subjects within existing biographical frameworks, the review argues that effective decolonisation requires transformation at the level of theory, method, and interpretive authority, not merely at the level of subject selection. Drawing on a systematically documented search of academic databases and a thematic synthesis of the resulting literature, the review traces the epistemological foundations of African psychology, the unresolved debate over what African psychology should be the psychology of, and the relevance of Ubuntu, relationality, and community-centred knowing to biographical inquiry. It then examines psychobiography’s historical development, its capacity to support narrative sovereignty and Black Consciousness-informed identity work, and its restorative potential for peoples whose histories have been systematically fragmented and distorted. Particular attention is given to the practical operationalisation of decolonial method, including a worked illustration contrasting conventional and Ubuntu-informed interpretive approaches, concrete proposals for embedding decolonised psychobiography within clinical and counselling training, and the ethical friction between communal knowledge systems and individualistic institutional research governance. The review concludes that psychobiography, when rigorously decolonised, offers African psychology something rare: a tangible, teachable, and replicable methodological pipeline capable of translating decolonial critique into sustained professional and community practice, while identifying concrete directions for future empirical, comparative, and pedagogical research.