Despite revolutions, ongoing student protests, and long-standing transformational efforts, African higher education remains steeped in a colonial model, with current structures, approaches, and purposes paralleling Western universities. The doctorate, the highest level of formal education one can attain, reflects this commitment to Western domination, relying upon European conceptions of knowledge to shape the entire research process. Thus, knowledge construction in higher education, and particularly in the African doctorate, has remained fixed to Eurocentrism. This conceptual article presents a critical race theory model to transform the African doctorate towards a social justice orientation, arguing for investments in race-conscious, Black affirming approaches that recognise doctoral researcher positionalities and African languages as ways to disrupt socio-political and racialised contexts. This transformation requires re-alignment of the entire research endeavour through an Ubuntu lens, with doctoral recipients engaging in training and support that embody antiracist, decolonial, and African Indigenous-affirming approaches.

尽管发生了革命、持续的学生抗议和长期的转型努力，非洲高等教育仍然沉浸在殖民模式中，其当前的结构、方法和宗旨与西方大学相似。博士学位是一个人可以获得的最高水平的正规教育，反映了这种对西方统治的承诺，依靠欧洲的知识观念来塑造整个研究过程。因此，高等教育的知识建构，特别是非洲博士学位的知识建构，仍然固定于欧洲中心主义。这篇概念性文章提出了一个批判性的种族理论模型，旨在将非洲博士学位转变为社会正义导向，主张投资于具有种族意识、黑人肯定的方法，承认博士研究员的立场和非洲语言是破坏社会政治和种族化背景的方法。这种转变需要通过 Ubuntu 视角重新调整整个研究工作，让博士获得者参与体现反种族主义、非殖民主义和非洲原住民肯定方法的培训和支持。