Curriculum development

My understanding of curriculum and my experience in developing it centre around the courses I have taught in South Africa, Nigeria, Italy, and Germany over the past thirteen years. They are as follows:

Postgraduate [LLM]

2022 – Ongoing: Law and Society in Africa [Convenor at the University of Turin, Italy].

2019 – Ongoing: Legal and Cultural Pluralism [Convenor at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa].

2019 – Ongoing: Gender Equality and Women’s Rights [Co-convenor at the University of the Western Cape].

2014 – 2017: African Law and Common Law, core modules in the LLM in Comparative Law in Africa, University of Cape Town [Co-convenor].

Undergraduate [LLB]

2023 – 2023: Human Rights in Africa, a cross-faculty module [Co-convenor at University of Bayreuth, Germany].

2021 – Ongoing: Comparative Law, a final year elective module [Convenor at University of the Western Cape].

2020 – 2020: Muslim Personal Law, final year elective module [Co-convenor at UWC].

2019 –: Legal and Cultural Pluralism, fourth year elective [Convenor at UWC].

2018 – Ongoing: African Customary Law, a compulsory third year module [Co-convenor at UWC].

2010 – 2013: Introduction to Human Rights, third year elective in Madonna University, Nigeria [Convenor].

2010 – 2013: Legal Systems, first  year elective, Madonna University [Convenor]. 

2010 – 2013: International Law, final year elective in Madonna University [Co-convenor]

Recent curriculum activities

Soon after I arrived at UWC in 2018, I began to design a master’s degree programme, which was eventually named Legal Pluralism and Family Law. This programme recognises the new identity of African laws as a product of interactions with European laws imposed through colonialism and its accompanying technological, religious and cultural milieu. In the light of globalisation and legal history, the LLM aims to help students appreciate the difficulties associated with applying African customary law in a changing world. As evident in conflict of law problems and family law reforms, African customary laws stand at the centre of an intense cultural struggle between indigenous norms that emerged in agrarian settings and imposed colonial laws known as state laws. By highlighting how customary laws emerge from people’s adaptation of indigenous norms to socioeconomic changes, this programme offers a critical, comparative contribution to conversations on the operation of legal pluralism in contemporary modernity. It thus speaks to UWC’s graduate attributes of critical, relevant and inquiry-focused collaborative learning. Its core module is Legal and Cultural Pluralism (CLL816), whose contents I upgraded to meet the demands of UWC’s graduate attributes. The programme is awaiting final approval from the Council for Higher Education. 

            As part of my contribution to curriculum renewal, I revised the Legal and Cultural Pluralism postgraduate module. I had also revised the curriculum of its undergraduate elective to conform with UWC's graduate attributes and the demands of the national Bachelor of Law review. In the course of these revisions, I began to see learning assessment in a whole new light. This is the subject of the next section ...