A Critical Analysis of the Representation of Western and African Education Systems in Mongo Beti’s Mission to Kala (1960)

Mongo Beti has been referred to as one of the fathers of African Literature. His widely read novel is Mission to Kala (1960). This paper interrogates how the author depicts Western and African modes of education systems. This thrust is important because previous scholars tended to underestimate the impact of hybrid education systems on future African readers and leaders. Accordingly, they tended to accord value to the Western form of education. On one hand, they crowned all aspects of Western education as valuable. On the other hand, they dismissed all African schooling aspects as barbaric, outdated, and primitive. This gap prompts an important question about what an educational value ought to be. Accordingly, Mission to Kala, a popular novel in African universities, has remained relevant to the digital generation. This paper, therefore, bridges the existing lacuna by redefining an educational value as well as differentiating educational values from educational aspects. Accordingly, the paper pinpoints where African leaders and scholars seem to have missed the mark by clowning the mask of the paddy and clothing borrowed educational aspects. The leaders have continually embraced the dissatisfying Western education systems, which appear insufficient to the immediate needs of an African child. The paper argues that it is crucial to sieve only values from the two education systems and embrace them. However, the paper does not encourage integration of the two forms. The paper explicitly stipulates that the full concepts of Western and African forms of education are not fit for a progressive globe. African leaders and scholars ought to design a befitting education system for an African child based on critical, creative thinking and problem-solving. A textual analysis of Mission to Kala can yield multiple perspectives on how Western and African educational systems are depicted in the novel, interlock, affirm, and contest each other for authority, validation, and hegemony. The paper argues that Beti’s works of imagination remain pertinent to present-day Cameroon and Africa by extension, where various forms of consciousness embedded in education influence or can undermine African people’s quest to control their political, economic, and intellectual destiny.