Afro-Anglophone Education

Abstract

In the postcolonial period, several Anglophone African countries have undertaken numerous educational reforms to address their social, political, and economic demands. Many of these reforms have been shaped by varied educational historical forces both within and outside these countries. Drawing on various educational reforms and experiments that have taken place in different Anglophone African countries in the last five decades, this chapter examines how their postcolonial educational undertakings have been largely been influenced and shaped by their historical colonial educational legacies, and their other Western postcolonial economic and political ties. The chapter interrogates in-depth the impact of these colonial and postcolonial historical influences over the years on these countries’ national educational system, and it provides a comprehensive critique of their contemporary and current educational trends and challenges and several remedies and approaches that can be utilized to address them and what the future holds. Given the varied colonial and postcolonial educational historical contextual experiences and reforms that have taken place in various Anglophone African countries in the last fifty years, this chapter focuses on a few selected countries. In this regard, ideas advanced in this chapter must be regarded as broad generalizations and tentative hypotheses that attempt to discuss the state of Afro-Anglophone education in Africa in the postcolonial period. Having said, this however, it is vital to note that there are indeed several educational characteristics which are common to most Anglophone African countries, sufficient to justify the larger general approach this chapter takes and the conclusions it makes.