UNESCO: A New Role in Africa?

Abstract

When UNESCO1 was established in 1945 only one African state — Egypt — participated in its creation, and by 1958, UNESCO still had only eight member states from this region: Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Libya, Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia. However, following decolonisation, the African states joined UNESCO in large numbers, mainly in 1960/1, and at the time of writing number fifty in total. This chapter traces the history of UNESCO’s involvement in Africa’s development in response to African member states’ needs and expectations, and UN initiatives. It argues that UNESCO’s approach to peace and development is particularly appropriate for Africa as it stresses the development of endogenous capacities and the cultural dimension of development2 rather than neoliberal models of development often imposed on African countries by international financial institutions, which have not brought peace and prosperity to Africa. UNESCO believes that peace and development are ‘indissolubly linked’ and are ‘two sides of the same coin’.3 Peace, in the longer term, is not dependent on successful peacekeeping, as Malcolm Harper pointed out in Chapter 11 of this volume, but on ‘constructing the defences of peace in the minds of men’ as the preamble to UNESCO’s constitution asserts.4 Since the late 1980s UNESCO has considered Africa to be a priority and this trend is likely to continue well into the twenty-first century.