In March 2007 the world joined Africa in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the independence of Ghana, the fi rst sub-Saharan African country to gain independence from colonial rule. Recognizing this seminal event in modern African history along with the subsequent ushering in of the postcolonial era across Africa that began in earnest in the early 1960s, it is an opportune time for a critical retrospective on the place and role of schooling (formal education) in postcolonial African nation-states. This critical review will be undertaken without adopting either an Afro-pessimism or an Afro-optimism perspective that dominates contemporary discourse on Africa (Ayittey, 2002; Bayart, 1993; Chabal & Daloz, 1999; Hyden, 2006); Rather an attempt will be made to couch this critical review in a broadly Afro-realism perspective.
In the early 1960s at the beginning of the postcolonial era in Africa there was consensus regarding the role of formal education in Africa's political, economic, and social development and the achievement of human “progress.” Importantly, this consensus was shared by external actors such as the former European colonial powers, and the US through their bilateral aid programs, and the UN (UNDP, UNESCO, and UNICEF), the World Bank, and Western academic “experts,” on the one hand, and leaders of the nascent (postcolonial) nation-states, on the other hand. This consensus asserted that formal education was an essential, and to some policy actors the most powerful/effective instrument in the struggle for economic and social development, political unity and the capacitation of the nascent postcolonial states, generating modernity, creating the “new man,” broken of his primordial, traditional, worldview, interpreting the world and acting in the postcolonial era as modern men (a recognition of the importance of women and gender was delayed until the 1990s). (Almond & Powell, 1966) This perspective, albeit from a utilitarian as opposed to a theoretical perspective, was not a monopoly of the international and governing elite, but was fully embraced by the vast majority of postcolonial citizens who aspired for formal education for themselves and their progeny, perceiving schooling functionally, as the most important instrument in their struggle for economic advancement, prosperity, and socioeconomic security.
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Metzler, J. (2009). The Developing States and Education: Africa. In: Cowen, R., Kazamias, A.M. (eds) International Handbook of Comparative Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6403-6_18
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