The only way to de-imperialize is to prioritize anti-imperialist scholarship, while actively rejecting Western theories that emphasize economic exceptionalism.

At the political level, there is a need to achieve what Ndlovu-Gatsheni terms de-imperialisation, a position where no one country dictates to another what to do or not to do. Countries like the USA still dictate how other countries should be governed. Such a situation is not healthy but simply entrenches global coloniality. Epistemologically, we cannot succeed in breaking away from knowledge dependency on the West if we do not come up with new epistemologies whose centres are in Africa. Ndlov-Gatsheni believes that we have an opportune moment now for Africa to produce knowledge. He perceives that an epistemological break in the West has been induced by crisis after crisis, which has seen the waning of confidence in the current theoretical frameworks. The world is still Euro-North American centric despite the rise of the Asian tigers, and this status quo must change.

Ndlovu-Gatsheni also comments on the concept of delinking as a solution proposed by some dependency theorists, particularly Samir Amin. For him, the concept of delinking must not be taken literally. Delinking must be interpreted as a proposal to emphasise the development and expansion of internal economic capacities, as opposed to emphasising economic ties with the West. Expansion and emphasis on internal capacities would enable Africa to engage on equal footing with the rest of the world. The process of internal capacitation should include allowing economies within Africa to connect to the African people and not necessarily the outside world. This is the context within which delinking must be appreciated.

For Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, the solutions to the plight of the Global South lie in its ability to succeed in de-imperialising and decolonising the modern world system and its shifting world orders. Epistemologically, there is a need for scholarship from the Global South to shift geographically from dependence on the Global North and rise from the asymmetrical division of intellectual labour in which those in the Global South are reduced to hunter-gathering mode of raw data and the West arrogates itself the power of processing this data into theories that are then consumed in Africa. Home-grown critical thinking is urgently needed if the Global South is to begin contributing meaningfully to the challenges it faces. Ndlovu-Gatsheni bemoans what he calls an epistemological drought found in the African nations particularly in institutions of richer learning, which should be churning out knowledge on and about the region. A consumer culture has also hit Africa, and people think more about the stomach and less about the mind.