Education In Africa; Whose Education, Anyway

January 10, 2008

A well articulated article from our fellow African lady. Phew!!!!

By Chika A. Ezeanya

Chika A. Ezeanya is a Ph.D. student of African (Development and

Policy) Studies at University in Washington DC. She holds an

M.A. in International Relations from the University of Warwick in

Coventry England, with specialization in International Trade. Prior

to taking up temporal residence in the United States for graduate

studies, Chika worked at the Oil & Gas Desk of one of Nigeria's

foremost commercial banks. As part of a larger group concerned with

portfolio management and business development, Chika was in charge of

the financial transactions of the major upstream and downstream oil

companies operating in Nigeria. She was able to garner invaluable

firsthand experience of the Nigerian economic and business climate

and the operations of multinational companies in developing

countries. Her one year stint with the Foreign Operations Desk also

exposed her to global import and export regulations, and the dynamics

of international trade between sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, Latin

America and Western Europe. She believes that the future of Africa

lies with Africans and not with the morsels offered by Europe and

America directly, or through their agents.

Education In Africa; Whose Education, Anyway

" Why do some of our people sometimes talk and behave as if they are

not educated, " queried the man from the podium, as he addressed his

largely West African audience; " Illiteracy, the Bane of Africa's

Underdevelopment, " the international magazine headline recently

declared; and according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, as at

2007, only 3 out of 10 adults in sub-Saharan Africa are literate. The

above, represent the widespread belief held within and outside Africa

that the leadership crisis and the development dilemma, which plague

the continent is a direct correlation of low literacy levels. In

effect, the fact that few Africans have been opportune to sit under

structured tutelage, to imbibe the basics of arithmetic, geography,

history or the sciences, account for the decadence that prevail in

the continent's social, political and economic clime. A fact that

goes unnoticed by Africans is that pointing to low literacy levels as

the root of Africa's predicament, shuns the innate abilities and

shrewdness of the African. According to the same UNESCO statistics,

much more than sub-Saharan Africa, East-Asia accounts for the highest

level of illiteracy globally, but the Asians are able to manage their

economies despite being so academically challenged. In the case of

Africa, their ability to manage or structure their society and

develop their environment is hinged on the extent to which they are

able to assimilate western education.

Education ought to empower an individual to master the peculiarities

of his surroundings and afford him the tools to improve on it

qualitatively. In essence, what might be considered knowledge in a

certain part of the world could amount to useless information in

another. Take for instance a teacher in faraway northern Nigerian

teaching his elementary school pupil under the perpetual year round

heat that the four seasons of the year are; fall, winter, spring and

summer. The confusion the pupil will encounter is such that will take

him a very long time, if at all, to decipher what the word `season'

implies, owing to the lack of correlation with his environmental

reality. While the example given may seem implausible, such, form the

bulk of what is widely disseminated as knowledge in the continent of

Africa today.

Western incursion into Africa brought with it a repudiation of

everything original to the continent. The African way of doing things

were classified as backward, unscientific and barbaric. To the point

of death from malaria, the westerners that first set foot on Africa

refused to drink the herbal remedies offered by the kind natives to

alleviate their suffering. Indigenous knowledge was regarded as

baseless and summarily dismissed as superstition. Intuition,

metaphysics, sixth sense and other sources of knowledge generation

long depended on, tried and tested by Africans were de-emphasized and

western " scientific " method was upheld as the ultimate. The outdoor

learning culture of Africans was scoffed at and African children were

made to seat in classrooms just like in Europe, to learn the history

of the Europeans, the Geography of Europe and the language of the

colonialists. Education became an enigma for the young and

impressionable African child, who looked on with confused eyes as his

blue eyed teacher explained that Mungo Park discovered the source of

the Niger River in 1796. Unable to comprehend, the young child

ponders over the fact that the source of the Niger River is just a

stone throw away from his home, and yet his forefathers, who lived,

fished and farmed on the edge of the river, could not " discover " it.

Ashamed of his lineage, the African boy considers the Europeans

heroic to have traveled thousands of miles to `discover' a river just

by the nose of his own people. He dreams of being like the Europeans,

the great discoverers, and understandably looses any regard for

his 'ignorant' people. The deep rotted inferiority complex leads him

to dismiss whatever is African; cloth, food, culture, values, speech,

technology and medicine as inadequate and in that same mind-set, he

rears his children.

Many generations later, inferiority complex and a passionate

disregard for everything African reigns in the subconscious of the

average African. Acquisition of western education is equated with the

acquisition of common sense and values. People who were unfortunate

not to have tarried within the four walls of a school are seen to be

of no value to society. African herbal remedies are viewed with

suspicion in several quarters, and the younger generations speak only

the colonial language and cannot be caught speaking their mother

tongue. An African, no matter how brilliant and of good character,

who lacks a good command of either English or French as the case

maybe or whose fairly acceptable grammar is accented with his local

dialect has a much higher chance of finding a decent job in Europe

and America than in his own country. But for the wise step taken by

Mzee Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and to some extent Mwalimu Julius Nyerere

of Tanzania in elevating Swahili to the level of a national language,

Africa would not have had any language with global appeal in the 21st

century.

Worse still, are the courses offered within the African higher

academic system; Euro-centered disciplines that lack applicability to

the compelling needs of the continent and its people. Nothing

prepares the African student for the reality he would face upon

graduating with a degree in French, English, Business Management,

Engineering, Food and Nutrition, Agricultural Econo

mics or Pharmacy, to discover that he is still ill equipped to

contribute meaningfully to his society. The fields mentioned are not

inherently of no value to Africa, but the approach and curriculum

they employ is bereft of originality and does not take cognizance of

the environment in which the students are situate. Education remains

an abstract and unfathomable concept, neither easily nor conveniently

appreciated nor applicable - a wasteful endeavor that should never

have been embarked upon in the first place. Take for instance, the

Pharmacy department of African universities, where students are

forced to memorize the chemical components of the drugs already

discovered by Europe and America. On the contrary, pharmaceutical

companies of Europe and America - with the co-operation of ignorant

natives – are claiming to " discover " and patent the many herbs in the

rich forests of Africa long used to cure ailments. The drugs so

manufactured are sold back to Africa at exorbitant prices, while the

student of Pharmacy from Africa graduates, clueless about what to do

with his degree.

The high drop out rate of pupils in Africa is a symptom of the

underlying problem of boredom. The curriculum is not tied to reality

and is neither adequately intellectually stimulating nor engaging for

the very brilliant children of Africa; African children on their own,

assemble radios and mini cars from scrap metals, carve beautiful

artifacts and even repair broken down cars and motorcycles. The

unproductive nature of the African educational system goes beyond

paucity of funds to a deeply entrenched apathy on the sides of

teachers, researchers, students and educational administrators, who

deep down, do not feel connected to an alien knowledge system that is

elusive of their reality. The problem of food scarcity in Africa is

not just caused by drought, but the fact that long ago, ever before

famine became heard of in Africa, youths were discouraged from farm

work and forced to sit for long hours within brick walls to learn,

just like their European counterparts. Farm work became unfashionable

and as the African proverb says, only the hands dirty with farm work

get greased with cooking oil; hunger became the reward for self

denial. In Europe, classroom learning is prioritized because of the

harsh and extreme weather conditions that constrain people to stay

indoors for most of the time. Ostensibly, African youth would have

excelled more with a greater combination of outdoors or practical

learning with the theoretical, as the culture and environment

dictated. Unfortunately, they were forced to sit indoors to learn

only to go home to bed confused and hungry. As Agriculture is not

part of Europe's curriculum at the foundational level, a fundamental

part of African culture – food production- was discouraged.

The vicious cycle of hunger and underdevelopment can only cease when

Africans realize that indigenous knowledge, native intelligence, and

values are what makes a society grow and not any super-imposed,

parasitic and dependent knowledge. Any knowledge that lacks

foundation or is completely alien to the culture of a people would

hardly engender growth, but rather, it would create some sort of bi-

polar mentality, fostering confusion rather than progress. Until the

chemical engineering departments of African universities start using

local resources as the raw materials for research, the Food and

Nutrition department take pride in researching the calorific,

nutritional and therapeutic values of African foods, and invest

efforts in developing healthy, tasty and endurable snacks that a

foreigner can enjoy, and make enquiries as to how to import such into

his own country, development and growth would remain elusive to the

continent.

The problem is not in the acquisition of western education; the

problem lies in the fact that Africans have lost their identity. Like

a man in a borrowed suit a size or more too big or too small,

Africans continue to struggle in the ill-fitting apparel, pointing

accusing fingers, first to the tailor for not being magnanimous

enough to make the suit fit a second person; or maybe to themselves

for being be too fat and needing to go on a diet, or too thin and

needing to gain a pound or two; or could it be the fault of the

fabric, but how come it fits the original owner so perfectly well,

then? The answer, which Africans have never come to accept, is that

the suit does not fit because it does not belong to them. Western

education was made to measure for the individualistic culture, the

environmental dynamics and the extreme weather conditions of the

west. The educational system should be overhauled in a simple and

inexpensive re-evaluation of curriculum, process and system carried

out by Africans who understand the nature of the issues at stake. A

practical combination of African values should be merged with

international standards, in order that the continent would not loose

out in the era of globalization.

Further, Africans must realize that the acquisition of western

education alone, as it were, does not amount to common sense or the

ability to be innovative and positively impact society. The emphasis

should cease to be on the ability of an individual to express himself

in English or French as the case maybe, as that does not remotely

attest to one's brilliance. The fact that an individual cannot handle

fork and knife or sit properly to eat at the dining table has no

direct correlation to his IQ; enough of the self-hatred and denial.

Education is good when it is a product of the immediate environment

and ought not to be validated by western culture and educational

system. The solution does not lie in looking up to the west but in

searching inwards to emerge with something original and authentic

that can be explored, developed through R & D and used to foster

development at home and ultimately exported. The list is endless;

herbal medicine, artifacts, iron and steel products, traditional

clothes, folklores, proverbs, cassava, yam, solar energy, dance,

music, agricultural practices or movies, to mention but few.

Consciously, diamonds, gold, oil and cash crops such as cocoa and

coffee have been omitted as those have been manipulatively procured

by the west and can only be reclaimed after Africa has found a voice

in global discourse by being true to its authentic self.

--- End forwarded message ---

January 10, 2008