This past week, Nairobi became the intellectual capital of the Global South. Scholars, writers, and students from across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific gathered at the University of Nairobi for the 20th ACLALS Conference (Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies), under the theme: Transcultural Englishes in a Multipolar World.
At the heart of this gathering was a bold, urgent question: Can English be decolonised? Can we transform English Studies from a colonial relic into a discipline that truly serves the cultural realities and intellectual ambitions of our societies?
For most Kenyans, English is both familiar and foreign. It’s the language of education, governance, and aspiration – but also the language of colonisation, imposed to displace indigenous languages and ways of knowing. This tension runs deep: we have mastered English, but do we own it?
The answer lies not in rejecting English, but in reclaiming it. English has long been used to dominate. But it has also been used to resist. Think of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Chimamanda Adichie, Wangari Maathai, or Kwame Nkrumah – African thinkers who used English to speak truth to power. What matters is how we use English, and what we pair it with.
As keynote speaker Yvonne Adhiambo-Owuor reminded us, stories are not just entertainment. They are “infrastructures of thought”—they shape how communities remember the past, imagine the future, and define themselves. When classrooms privilege Shakespeare over Shaban Robert, or teach Achebe as “an African who wrote in English” rather than as an African intellectual in his own right, we reinforce the myth that knowledge and value lie elsewhere.
That myth must be broken.
Decolonising English studies means we stop treating British and American literature as the gold standard, while relegating African, Asian, or Caribbean literatures to the margins. It means recognising that Kiswahili, Dholuo, Luhya, Giriama, Pokot, Gikuyu, or Sheng, are not inferior languages – they are vibrant, expressive, and worthy of academic and artistic investment.
This is not a new conversation. Back in 1968, just five years after independence, a group of University of Nairobi lecturers – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Henry Owuor-Anyumba and Taban Lo Liyong – questioned why African students were still studying British literature as if London were the centre of the world. Their demand was clear: let our curricula reflect our cultures, our stories, our languages.
Over 50 years later, the call remains urgent. Today’s world is multipolar. Cultural influence no longer flows from a single Western centre. From Nairobi to Delhi, Port of Spain to Lagos, new Englishes are emerging—not as broken versions of the “standard,” but as full expressions of local identity. Whether it’s Sheng in Nairobi or Camfranglais in Yaoundé, these are not corruptions. They are innovations.
Our classrooms must catch up. A Kenyan student should not only read Chaucer and Orwell, but also explore Nairobi street poetry, Dholuo proverbs, or Swahili oral epics. These aren’t “extra” or “optional”—they are central to how we see ourselves and the world.
But curriculum reform is only part of the solution. The real transformation must happen at the institutional level. Who gets hired to teach literature? Whose languages get translated, funded, and archived? How much is invested in indigenous-language research compared to English-medium scholarship? Without institutional change, “decolonisation” becomes an empty buzzword – attractive in theory, but hollow in practice.
The ACLALS conference did not shy away from these hard questions. Panels tackled curriculum design, multilingual creative writing, South–South collaboration, and racism in global publishing. These are real-world issues, not just academic debates.
But change won’t come from conferences alone. It must come from policymakers, publishers, educators, and parents. The Ministry of Education must rethink the literature syllabus. Publishers must take risks on multilingual works. Universities must hire scholars of indigenous languages and literatures, not just experts in Western classics.
Let’s also be cautious of trendy terms like “Global Englishes” or “Transcultural English.” While they sound progressive, they can easily become a cover for elite cosmopolitanism, celebrating diversity without disrupting existing hierarchies. If English is truly global, it must make room for everyone’s English, not just the polished versions acceptable to Western gatekeepers.
English is not neutral. It never has been. But it can be transformed. It can become a tool for inclusion, not exclusion – for connection, not erasure.
That transformation begins with ownership. We must make English serve us – not the ghosts of empire. That means grounding it in our languages, our histories, our realities.
English is ours too. But only if we claim it.
Sachida Nand Jha is an Assistant Professor at the University of Delhi, India, where he teaches English. He participated in this Conference and presented a research paper on 'Decolonising English Studies in India'. He can be contacted by email, sachidanand.jha@gmail.
