Education In Colonial Africa Research Articles

The Foundation: Design, Time, and Possibility in 1960s Nairobi

AbstractThis article explores the history of an experiment in architectural education that took place at what is today the University of Nairobi, between 1965 and 1967. Organized by Selby Mvusi, a South African industrial designer, and Derek Morgan, a British expatriate architect, what was known as the “Foundation Course” was both an experiment in architectural education in postcolonial Africa and a serious attempt to think through the African experience of time and equip students with the tools to recognize and respond to the unique conditions of the postcolonial African present. Based on archival sources, including those in private collections, and oral interviews, the article situates the Foundation Course within African intellectual history as an exercise in social theory and phenomenology. I examine the content of Mvusi and Morgan's intellectual partnership and project by tracing their individual trajectories, and especially the pedagogical scheme they developed at Nairobi, which came to focus more on humanity in dialogue with the material environment than on material objects themselves. I trace the intellectual lineages of their concepts and explore their articulation within the postcolonial university until the course was cancelled in 1967. I conclude by considering how Mvusi imagined the Foundation Course as a laboratory for both being and building in postcolonial Africa, drawing from a conference paper he delivered just weeks before he died in 1967.

Higher Education in postcolonial Africa: paradigms of development, decline and dilemmas

Higher Education in postcolonial Africa: paradigms of development, decline and dilemmas

Education and Morality in Africa

This paper examines briefly the major concepts in education and morality in Africa, focusing on the moral education of the African child. This is with particular reference to the child’s obligations and duties to self, family, local community and the nation. It is argued that education today has been reduced to no more than schooling, which focuses mainly on literacy and numeracy. The politicization of institutionalized education in post-colonial Africa has led to an explosion in the schooling process, a high turnout of unemployed youths, and a questionable abandonment of the major values of indigenous education. It is recommended that in the new millennium, what is good in African indigenous education should be synthesized with the valuable aspects of Western culture. This would ensure that we move closer to the standard of morality and life in the traditional African education system.

Peace education in postcolonial Africa

This article tries to illuminate the following central questions: Are the efforts of donor agencies and Third World governments toward achieving basic education for all likely to lead to a further development of peace education programs in Africa? Are the outcomes of the Education for All (EFA) conference in Jomtien, Thailand, March 5 to 9, 1990, likely to lead to positive peace'-that is, a situation where violence is not built into the structures, where equality of opportunity is strived for and self-fulfillment and self-worth enhanced? Is the new EFA strat-

DENOMINATIONAL SECONDARY SCHOOLING IN POST-INDEPENDENCE ZAMBIA: A CASE STUDY

Introduction FORMAL EDUCATION in colonial Africa resulted principally from missionary efforts. After independence, however, missionary domination came to an end. Primary schools, once almost the total preserve of the missionaries, are now largely state controlled. Denominational secondary schools and teachers' colleges today constitute only a small part of the total educational system in many countries. Although the shift from preponderantly denominational to state control met with various reactions from missionary groups, the overall impact has been that, even when missionaries retained their institutions, they have had to redefine their religious goals. Historically, missionaries established schools mainly for the purpose of conversion. With substantial control over intake, curriculum, and staff, missionaries pursued their objectives fairly efficiently. As the state control of schooling increased, however, specifically missionary aims were subjected to state directives. As Edward Berman asserts:

Missionary education in colonial Africa: the critique of Mary Kingsley

(1988). Missionary education in colonial Africa: the critique of Mary Kingsley. History of Education: Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 283-294.

National Development Policy and Outcomes at the University of Dar es Salaam

Education in post-colonial African nations has served as the apparatus for sustaining and accelerating overall development, for increasing political and social awareness, and for providing a cadre of highly trained indigenous manpower to implement, manage, and administer ambitious national development strategies. To understand the process and impact of an educational system, however, one must be cognizant of exogenous forces. From a structuralist frame of reference, Apple (1975) asserts that researchers must examine the power and control external to the educational system, thus making political and economic decisions an integral part of an educational investigation. Scribner (1970) argues that researchers cannot avoid the effects of political demands on the changes in the educational system. The relationship among educational systems and variables in the social, economic, and political systems in which education exists have been well studied in the comparative education literature (Apple, 1975; Arrighi and Saul, 1973; Dasgupta, 1974; Jolly, 1969; Mazrui, 1978; Morrison, 1976; Simmons, 1974; Simmons and Alexander, 1975). However, the outcomes of the relationship between politics and higher education in post-colonial Africa have not been documented extensively. This paper helps to remedy this deficiency by examining the functional relationship between the national level of leadership in Tanzania and the nation's only university, the University of Dar es Salaam. Julius K. Nyerere, the President of Tanzania since its inception, and the ruling party have attempted to accomplish decolonization, restructure the educational system, and promote rural development. Specifically, this paper examines national policy decisions and their outcomes at the University of Dar es Salaam to determine how the policy goals of Nyerere and the ruling Party have altered university programs and procedures, and if the outcomes of the reform efforts have been consistent with stated national goals during the post-Arusha Declaration decade (1967-1977).' The paper reviews the educational conditions at the time of independence in Tanzania, and examines the salient goals of specific policies of Tanzania's indigenous democratic socialist development strategy. This analysis is used as the basis for devising development indicators to determine if the reform efforts at the

Education in Colonial Africa: The German Experience

THIS PAPER examines the introduction and growth of state-supported schools in two German colonies in Africa, Kamerun and Deutsch Ostafrika;2 describes African reaction to and utilization of them; assesses, from the colonial perspective, why such schools were introduced and what they were intended to accomplish; and examines the reasons for their differential development. It demonstrates that these schools were, for their time and in contrast to those of the major colonial powers, surprisingly effective. This success is explained, it is argued, by the German insistence on schooling's allocative function: the German colonial administrator was less interested in making the African into a quasi-German than in having at hand Africans capable of German definitions of work.