There is overwhelming and accumulating evidence globally that the Second Millennium is the millennium of new and different knowledge production by different knowledge cultures and strategies, which are being weaved to produce relevant knowledge for development in its diverse dimensions to enhance critical thinking, genuine interaction, sustainability and future-ready professionalism. This, however, remains largely alien to African universities.

By their structure, function and governance, focus in the absolute majority of African universities – old and new – is still on individual academic growth, achievement and recognition. For them the first decades of the Second Millennium have been for renewed emphasis on knowledge fragmentation, knowledge acquisition and knowledge transmission in the old way – the disciplinary way.

This rather long article is based on the background information to an unannotated bibliography by Oweyegha-Afunaduula, Isaac Afunaduula and Mahir Balunywa (2023) on integration and reintegration of knowledge under the title “The Struggle for Critical Thinking, Genuine Interaction, Sustainability and Future-Ready Professionals.”

The thesis statement of the article is: Advancing science in African universities this millennium can only be achieved through integration experience.

There has been diminished emphasis on creativity and innovation and more on theoretical knowledge. Our academies for advancement of science, the peer systems, the recognition and reward systems, the teaching and learning as well the educational, science and social development policies are geared towards fragmentation of knowledge and the structure, function and governance of the universities.

In Uganda, newer academic policies are for greater knowledge fragmentation and individual academic growth, while government is inadvertently promoting segregation between the sciences (humanities, social science and natural science), with greater emphasis on natural sciences and natural science-based professions. There is total ignorance in the echelons of power of the truth that all science is one with interconnected dimensions of the humanities, social science and natural science, which are mutually inclusive and inter-, cross- and trans- fertilising in modern times and therefore, demanding appropriate science policy to promote greater interaction.

We talk of tribes in human society, especially in Africa, but there are also academic tribes in universities. We talk of ethnocentrisms in human society, but there are also ethnocentrisms in the academic world. Academic tribes are the disciplines. Academic ethnocentrisms and academic tribalism are responsible for the predominancy of academic hegemony in our universities. Academic hegemony is the reason why it is not easy to penetrate a certain academic tribe and rise in it if you were not nurtured in it from the beginning.

Academic conflict is common in the academic hegemony and arrogance of some academics in the disciplines that may entertain the feeling of superiority. It is not rare to see professors antagonistic to one another because of superiority complexes of some of them. Such antagonisms occlude respect between scholars.

In the history of knowledge, local knowledge everywhere on the globe was one and integrated. It still is one, with just dimensions. The knowledge of ancient philosophers was similarly shaped as one. However, as time went on, creation of knowledge empires (academic empires) led to the emergence of both broad categories of knowledge (natural science, arts or humanities and social science) which constituted one science and academic disciplines within the broad sciences.

In the history of knowledge, local knowledge everywhere on the globe was one and integrated. It still is one, with just dimensions. The knowledge of ancient philosophers was similarly shaped as one. However, as time went on, creation of knowledge empires (academic empires) led to the emergence of both broad categories of knowledge (natural sciences, arts or humanities and social science) which constituted one science and academic disciplines within the broad sciences.

In the history of knowledge, local knowledge everywhere on the globe was one and integrated. It still is one, with just dimensions. The knowledge of ancient philosophers was similarly shaped as one. However, as time went on, creation of knowledge empires (academic empires) led to the emergence of both broad categories of knowledge (natural sciences, arts or humanities and social science) which constituted one science and academic disciplines within the broad sciences.

A movement for the reintegration of knowledge is sweeping across the globe. Many university campuses have accepted that it is too artificial to have to sustain separate knowledges in one academic environment. Apparently, there is gender imbalance in the knowledge reintegration movement, women, such as Bammer, Klein and Lyall, dominating it. It seems, without being active in the knowledge reintegration movement we would be making little progress.

Most resistance to the knowledge reintegration movement is by men who have reached the level of professor in their disciplines. These days they are referred to as the slow professors because they are not open to knowledge reintegration and prefer to continue with disciplinary education and research in the century of knowledge reintegration. They are mis-training their students for an employment market that requires graduates at all levels of education that are broad enough to fit in and benefit in newer career paths.

Such graduates are the new agents for reintegration of knowledge, skills and practices for the 21^st century through the new knowledge cultures of interdisciplinarity, crossdisciplinarity, trans-disciplinarity and non-disciplinarity.

These days they are referred to as the knowledge reintegration sciences or team sciences. We thus have interdisciplinary science, cross-disciplinary science, transdisciplinary science and non-disciplinary science. Together they are the liberal knowledge cultures and when we talk of liberal education or liberal sciences these are the ones each is a liberal movement committed to liberalising education and research. They can coexist in a university setting. Each liberal science now has its own academics at all levels of education producing knowledge and transmitting knowledge beyond the walls of the disciplines. The most liberal movement is that of non-disciplinary science, which does not presuppose existence of disciplines. This is the stance of local knowledge and of the ancient philosophers.

We can define interdisciplinarity as a knowledge production strategy, culture or discourse that involves integrating knowledge and methods from different disciplines using a real synthesis of approaches; crossdisciplinarity as a knowledge production strategy, culture or discourse that involves viewing one discipline from the perspective of another; trans-disciplinarity as a knowledge production strategy culture or discourse that involves creating a unity of intellectual frameworks beyond one discipline;  and non-disciplinarity as a knowledge production strategy, culture or discourse, which does not evoke or involve recourse to disciplines of knowledge.

We can as well refer to non-disciplinarity as the most advanced extra-disciplinary knowledge production and integration culture in the sense that it is free from disciplinary limitations. Cultures and traditions throughout the world remain non-disciplinary. Local indigenous knowledge on most of the globe is non-disciplinary. Even during the times of the great ancient thinkers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, knowledge production was non-disciplinary because, until Aristotle introduced them, disciplines did not exist. Non-disciplinary education, such as environmental education, continues to be influenced by disciplinary products and their ways through a process of imposition. Or else it is despised and marginalised yet it is the most integrative of all the sciences.

Multi-disciplinarity is a knowledge production strategy, culture and discourse that thrived especially during the early 1980s, in response to the emergence of the other knowledge production cultures at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s. It is glorified disciplinarity. It allows knowledge workers to work together without mixing of the disciplines or meeting of minds from the different disciplines. It only reduces the gap between the disciplines. It allows a multiplicity of disciplines to coexist but remain independent of each other in the strongly and rigidly disciplinary academic milieu.

People from different disciplines work together but do not influence each other in any significant way. Even when they write a book together, the themes are not integrated but stand out as different entities (chapters) reflecting different disciplinary orientations of the writers. The graduates in the different disciplines may never meet in practice or have their different lines of thought and research criss-cross, even when working on the same problem. They provide separate suggestions as a result of their work towards a solution but the solution will consist of separate mini-solutions.

Although the assumption is that if the mini-solutions are put together they constitute a mega solution as the whole solution, it is not true. They collectively become the new problem. With their narrow bases of origin, they will be completely helpless towards tackling the so-called wicked problems of the world. According to Wikipedia, a wicked problem is a problem difficult or impossible to solve.

The culture of integration and reintegration of knowledge is indeed sweeping the academia globally, although most universities in Africa are still resisting integrated knowledge and the processes of knowledge reintegration in the 21^st century. They are continuing with the outmoded culture of disciplinarity, producing “narrow knowledge” and passing it onto their students who are now largely unemployable.

For God and my country – Uganda!                                             

• A Tell report / By Prof Oweyegha-Afunaduula, a former professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences of the Makerere University, Uganda