They Colonized the Land. Then They Colonized the Mind || Masterminds Podcast EP87

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Some conversations are uncomfortable because they are untrue. This one is uncomfortable because it is true.

In this solo episode of the Masterminds Podcast, Richie Mensah takes on one of the most sensitive and important subjects he has ever addressed: the real story of how education came to Africa, and why a 2026 MoU between Ghana and Cambridge left him deeply unsettled. Drawing on documented history, from Thomas Thompson and the Cape Coast Castle, to the Royal African Company and its ties to the founding of Cambridge, to the Prussian origins of the modern school system, to Walter Rodney's landmark work on mental colonization, Richie builds a careful case that the school system was never designed to develop the African mind. It was designed to make it obey. This one comes from a place of love for Ghana, for Africa, and for the truth.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why the 2026 Ghana and Cambridge MoU raised red flags for anyone who knows the history
• The story of Thomas Thompson, who ran a church, a school, and the chaplaincy of a slave-trading castle at the same time
• How the founders and funders of Cambridge were tied to the Royal African Company
• Why the modern school system was originally built in Prussia to create obedient soldiers
• How the Industrial Revolution turned that same system into a machine for producing compliant workers
• What Walter Rodney meant by mental colonization, and why it outlived the chains
• Why African history is so often taught as though it only began with colonization
• The real question: why African leaders still hand educational direction back to former colonial powers, and what we must do about it

Chapters

00:00 – A Conversation That Might Get Me Canceled
 00:50 – The 2026 Ghana and Cambridge MoU
 02:23 – Thomas Thompson: Slavery, Church and School in One Hand
 06:07 – Cambridge and the Royal African Company
 08:05 – Where the Modern School System Really Came From
 09:57 – The Industrial Revolution and the Making of Obedient Workers
 11:29 – Colonial Education: Slavery and Prussia Combined
 11:53 – Walter Rodney and Mental Colonization
 13:52 – Why Our History Is Taught to Start at Colonization
 14:23 – Why Do We Still Run Back to Our Colonial Masters?
 15:35 – This Comes From Love, Not Hate
 16:45 – When Does It End?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Let me start by being honest. The conversation we're about to have might get me canceled. It might upset some people who are more powerful than me. It may upset some institutions that have a lot of power. It may even upset some people because you may have gone to some of the schools I'm going to be talking about. Or maybe you are proud of the certificates from some of the schools that I'm about to talk about. But the truth is, I would rather be canceled for speaking the truth than be celebrated for staying quiet. Because the truth about education, especially in Africa, is not what you've been told. How education came to us is not the story that you have been fed. So it's time we have this conversation. In May 2026, I saw exciting news, headlines all over that the government of Ghana had signed an MOU with Cambridge for them to help shape the future of Ghanaian education, for them to train our teachers, for them to, you know, shape the curriculum, decide what students are going to learn. And of course, to the layman, this is great news. But for someone like me who's done a lot of reading on what African education really is, this was unsettling for me. So I decided that before I talk about this, let me do some real research. So that I'm not just putting out my opinion, but I'm telling you the facts about what such an MOU means 70 years after we got our independence and what has been built up in the history of Africa concerning education. Now, why this was even more unsettling for me was not just the fact that 70 years after we're still running back to our colonial masters to help reshape our educational system. But even the choice of Cambridge, because of the history that Cambridge has with slavery and Ghana, and our education, is something that should raise red flags everywhere. So if you're not aware of the history, let me start to enlighten you. Let's start with a man called Thomas Thompson. A man who came to Ghana in the 1750s, yes, then called the Gold Coast. So Thomas Thomson was trained at Christ's College in Cambridge. He was a clergyman, an intelligent, respected man of God who came to Ghana and set up a church and a school at the Cape Coast Castle. I'm sure everybody knows their history to know what the Cape Coast Castle was used for, which is where he ran his church and a school. He was also the chaplain for the headquarters of the transatlantic slave trade. So this is a man who worked on enslaving West Africans consistently and was also running a school and a church. The slaves were being imprisoned. He was a big part of starting the missionary work in West Africa. He was a part of even sending some Ghanaians, like a man called Philip Kwaku, one of the first Africans to be ordained as a priest in the Church of England. He would have them educated in the way that they saw fit, so that they could come back to Ghana and act as missionaries to train us the way that they saw fit. So this man, Thomas Thompson, held three cards in his hand. He held slavery, he held the church, and then he held education. Now, one thing that he's popularly known for, that he's well documented for, is he wrote a pamphlet. The pamphlet is called, let me get the name exactly right. The pamphlet is called The African Trade for Negro Slaves, shown to be consistent with principle. The African Trade for Negro Slaves shown to be consistent with principles of humanity and with the laws of revealed religion. So this pamphlet he wrote was the first ever defense of the European slave trade, where they enslaved Africans. And he defended this that slave trade was not a crime against humanity or against the church. He actually quoted it from the Bible. He quoted the book of Leviticus, that buying and selling slaves is not contrary to the law of nature. And he actually argued that Africans were already enslaved. Sorry, he argued that Africans were already enslaved before they were sold. So we might have ended up somewhere worse. He argued that slavery was the best possible vehicle for converting the African. So, from his point of view, which he defended and pushed to the whole world, he made it clear that slavery came to save Africa from ourselves. So he's one of the people who started to propagate the benefits of slavery to Africans. This is the man who was starting education in Ghana. This is the man who was teaching Ghanaians at Cape Coast Castle. Okay, now I know what you're thinking. So one man from Cambridge does not mean that all of Cambridge itself was a party to this. So let's talk about Cambridge itself and its contribution to slavery. So the founders of Cambridge were also the founders and the funders of a company called, let me get the name right, Royal African Company. So the Royal African Company is the single institution that sold the most Africans in the entire transatlantic slave trade. It's so bad that between 1673 and 1688 alone, they sold about a hundred thousand human beings and they branded them like cows. They branded them with their logo, their initials on it, RAC for Royal African Company. The people who funded Royal African Company are the same people who funded Cambridge. There's a man called Tobias Rustadt. He funded the buying of books for the first Cambridge University Library. He's a celebrated man. And this man also funded the Royal African Company for over three decades from 1662 to 1694. He put his money into trafficking of Africans. And then he used the same money to buy books for Cambridge. So are you telling me that 70 years after independence, we believe that these same people are the people who can help shape our education and help educate the Ghanaian properly? But let's zoom out a bit. Let's zoom out from just education in Africa or education in Ghana. Let's look at what education and school, what modern education itself is and how it came about. So somewhere in the 18th century, the Prussian rulers had a problem. So at this time, the soldiers in their army were not being obedient. They had a problem where when the soldiers go to war and bullets start flying at them and they start being attacked, they would run from the war front and sometimes even go home to their families because they did not see why they should give up their lives for the war. So they realized that they needed to come up with a system that was going to train people to take orders before anything else. They had a problem where they needed to make their soldiers obedient. This is how the modern school structure was invented. So the Prussian rulers created a school system with the bells, the rows of desks, the rigid timetable, the teacher being unquestionable, you know, you sit down when the bell rings, you stand when you're told, you don't speak unless you're being given permission to like they created a system to turn these soldiers into robots. And that is where the concept of the modern school system came from. So this system wasn't made to educate, it was made to train obedient soldiers to go to war. Then what happened is we reached the industrial revolution and there came a problem. They needed workers, they needed people who would be okay with waking up and going to a boring job, doing exactly what they are told for a small amount of money so that they can grow the industrial revolution. And they were finding it tough to convince people to leave their tradeswork and leave what they were doing for themselves to enter into these types of jobs. So some American reformers like Horace Mann traveled to Prussia and then they admired the way their school system was training these soldiers. So they adopted this and started to train their people and their citizens with this modern school system so that people will be obedient, they would be silent, they will respect authority, and will be okay with following without questioning. So this is how our modern school system was spread across the world. Everything I'm saying, well documented. All the references are here, you can check it out for yourself. So now let's put this together. So now we have Europeans who have started an African transatlantic slave trade. And then we have the Prusia method of school, and they put this together and it creates something perfect for them: a colonial style of education where they can get to make Africans feel that we are less than and we need to follow instructions. Now, this is well documented by a great scholar called Walter Rodney. He has a book which is How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. It was published in 1972 and is one of the most important books ever written about our continent. So Rodney's findings were very, very direct. He said that the colonial school system was not designed to develop the African. It was designed to do two things: to train Africans to fill the lowest ranks of the colonial administration and to instill in Africans a sense of racial inferiority and subordination. Do you get that? The school system was made to make us feel that we are less off because of our race. And this is why in school we are told that everything coming from Africa is backward, it's primitive, it's ancient, it doesn't work. This is why in school, our history starts from when Europe started to colonize Africa. Our history is always 300-400 years old. Our history never goes further back than that. We are always told that slavery saved Africans because we were just some primitive people waiting to be saved with no real knowledge in our heads, which prevents us from questioning and looking back to see who we actually were or what powers we actually had, how intelligent we were, the great inventions that we had, the amazing things that we did, we were systematically taught that we are less than. So Rodney calls this mental colonization. And this leads to why they realize they may no longer need to keep us with chains and whips and weapons, because if they could colonize our minds, then they can still get everything they needed from us. And that's exactly what happened then, and that's exactly what is happening now. Yet, even in Rodney's book, he details how we were well educated before, because please bear in mind, education and learning has always been part of human nature. So Africans have always had great universities those days. We're always learning. But this modern type of education, which was forced on us and instilled to make sure that in 2026 we feel we still need to sign MOUs with Cambridge to further our education, shows that it was made for us to always feel less than and never look for anything bigger than what we've been given. So, really, what I'm asking is why is it that we still feel the need to sign such an MOU? Why do we still feel the need to run back to our colonial masters to help shape our children, help shape the country? When are our leaders going to understand that we need to build our own? We need to carve our own path for what benefits us. When you remember the fact that leaders like Kwame Kroma tried to do this, tried to build an independent Ghana and an independent Africa that didn't allow our educational system to be infused with any colonial master's agenda. But of course, in trying to do so, he was removed. So the question we have to ask is are our leaders afraid of being removed, or is there another reason? Because I cannot understand why we would continue to allow ourselves to be miseducated. Now, before anybody watches this episode and says maybe Richie needs to be removed as well, like why I'm in Chromeboys, or calls me an anti-Westernist or anything like that, please understand that when I say these things, it doesn't come from hate, it comes from love, it comes from love of Ghana, it comes from love of Africa, it comes from loving humanity, that we need to do what is good for us. Everybody takes decisions that benefit them in life. So when somebody is taking a decision that doesn't benefit you, the question is what are you doing about it? What are you the African doing about it? What are you the black man doing about it? What are you, the Ghanaian, doing about it? When do you wake up and say we need to change things and do better for ourselves? Because until we do that, we will continue to be miseducated. We will continue to ask ourselves why there's so much unemployment in Ghana. We'll ask ourselves why is it that the children and the new generation don't know what to do? They don't know what to do because they've not been taught what to do. Why is it that education and information is all around us? It is so available. We live in a time where it is so easy to get information, but people don't even look for information because they've been taught how to obey, they've been taught how to follow, they've been taught not to think for themselves. When does it end? When do we start saying that enough is enough? And it's time to educate ourselves properly. I hope I'm not canceled, and I hope I can keep coming back so that day after day I will help you become the mastermind I know you are meant to be.