The postcolonial development project in Sub-Saharan Africa not only encompassed large-scale modernization schemes but also micro-economic intervention. International organizations like the ILO and large funding bodies like the Ford Foundation embarked on the project of bringing ‘modern’ management knowledge to the postcolonial world. In the 1960s, numerous training institutes were established on the continent. They were meant to provide ‘Western’ managerial practices that would help local businessmen to develop industrial enterprise. They also attempted to train African cadres that would be able to work on middle management positions in international corporations. ‘Africanization’ policies in many postcolonial countries required more and more local personnel. These endeavors were partly embraced by African elites. However, there was also a countermovement. Since the 1970s Nigerian authors developed the concept of ‘African’ management as an explicitly anti-colonial and locally specific concept of the organization of economic life. Focusing on Nigeria from the 1960s through the 1980s the paper will discuss the emergence of ‘African’ management in opposition to ‘Western’ management as a process of contested translation. The example proves to be particularly fruitful because the translation of knowledge from one cultural context to another was explicitly discussed by the actors involved. It will thus allow to not only analyze practices of local adaptation of managerial knowledge. Rather, the paper will show how Nigerian economists, managers and businessmen and -women self-consciously rejected ‘Western’ knowledge and called for epistemic freedom as part of their postcolonial struggle. When Nigerian authors translated concepts like efficiency or productivity into the cultural context of ‘Africa’ (a category they proposed) this was also a political project. And the politics of decoloniality codetermined what was to be translated and what not.