Purpose of education in former British African colonies: From contestation to bureaucratization

This paper examines how colonial policies, and the contestation of those policies, shaped African education provision in the late 19th century and first half of the 20th century, with an emphasis on British colonies. As a case in point, it examines policy borrowing via a process that might more properly be called policy imposition—though with considerable contestation. The paper examines the complex evolution of African education policies spanning those two half-centuries, highlighting indigenous Africans' early demands for inclusive, context-specific education during the colonial era. Much of the contestation was around differences in the vision of the purpose of education—the vision of colonial officials and colonial policy, on the one hand, contrasting with the vision of indigenous Africans, on the other. The paper then traces how stated purposes of education underwent a transformation in the years following independence, a transformation from a driver of national unity as part of a nation-project to a narrowly instrumentalist tool for development. To a significant degree, this transformation occurred under the influence of international agencies, in a process that was far less imposed but was also not quite a creative contestation of metropolitan ideas. In particular the paper analyzes how the influence of international donors played a pivotal role in reshaping education, in a manner that often diverged from the visionary statements of independence leaders, their visions being more centered on nation building than on the technocratic or instrumentalist purposes international agencies tended to assume and, to a significant degree and in a “soft” manner, impose, in a process that could be characterized as technocratic acquiescence. The paper critiques these approaches and advocates instead for adaptive, iterative system design, emphasizing the importance of shared, deeply felt purpose in fostering genuine educational progress.