The Reconstruction of Schooling in Africa

Abstract

Often regarded primarily as a lending institution, the World Bank has increasingly emphasized its role as a development adviser. Few, if any, other international institutions have a comparable concentration of development expertise and experience. Its investment in research surely exceeds that of most African countries and perhaps all of them combined. In some domains-education is a prime example-the World Bank's development advice may have as much influence on programs and policies as its loans. As it plays this role, the World Bank becomes more than a broker of relevant information. Directly and indirectly, it seeks to guide and manage the creation of knowledge and, in doing so, to set the standards for what has come to be called knowledge production. Implicit in the provision of foreign assistance to African education are several broad propositions about the relationships among research, knowledge, and public policy. Generally accepted uncritically, these propositions seem unexceptional, so obvious that they hardly require systematic presentation and supporting evidence. Embedded in these propositions is an increasingly influential conjunction of funding and research that has far-reaching consequences for African education and for African development in general. The understanding implicit in the assistance relationship begins with two related assumptions: education is essential for development, and education in Africa is currently in such disarray that it cannot fulfill its developmental role. From that starting point comes a third widely accepted proposition: foreign assistance is required to support new initiatives in education, to rehabilitate African education systems that have deteriorated in recent years, and to meet recurrent expenditures. A second set of propositions informs the determination of what sort of assistance is to be provided. Although foreign assistance is of course negotiated and thus subject to the exigencies and vagaries of politics, priorities and targets for foreign aid should be determined, it is generally assumed, on the basis of careful research on education and development. That is, reliable knowledge about education, both in general and in its role in African development,