Reimagining Global Citizenship Education Through the Transformative Lens of Sankofa

Abstract

This chapter advances Sankofa as a transformative framework for reimagining Global Citizenship Education (GCE). While GCE aspires to develop ethically engaged global citizens, its dominant frameworks remain entrenched in Western-centric, market-driven logics that depoliticize systemic inequities. Critical scholars have called for a paradigm shift that centres decolonial and anti-colonial knowledge systems to address persistent global inequalities and injustices. Drawing on Sankofa, an African philosophy that embodies the ethos of looking back to move forward, this chapter reorients GCE to foreground historical consciousness, critical remembering, and reflexive learning. Sankofa challenges coloniality by reclaiming Indigenous worldviews, emphasizing intergenerational accountability, and positioning education as a tool for justice-oriented transformation. Through its triadic principles of learning, unlearning, and relearning, Sankofa resists individualistic and neoliberal paradigms in favour of collective well-being and relational responsibility. The chapter explores how drawing upon the principles of Sankofa in GCE can transform pedagogy, curriculum, and policy. The chapter also demonstrates how education can empower students as co-creators of knowledge, critically conscious agents of change, and active subjects in shaping equitable global futures.