The idea that developing all sectors of the educational palette is influential for socio-economic development was adopted later in Sub-Saharan Africa than in other world regions. Most efforts went primarily into developing the first stages of education, and rightly so, for many children could not access education at all. Today, all African governments recognize the importance of higher education and increasingly invest in it. They are facing two major, interlinked challenges: rapid population growth and decline in the quality of education. Indeed, despite fertility decline, the region has been confronted with substantial population growth, which will continue for many decades; as such, there is a necessity to increase investment in education. This, in a situation of limited resources, has been at the expense of the quality and the burgeoning of private institutions of higher education. The contributions here discuss the development, quality, and outcomes of higher education in Africa, with a specific focus on relations between Africa and Europe. Issues related to the mobility of African students and scholars are discussed in several national and international case studies.

This open access edited volume offers an analysis of the entangled histories of education and development in twentieth-century Africa. It deals with the plurality of actors that competed and collaborated to formulate educational and developmental paradigms and projects: debating their utility and purpose, pondering their necessity and risk, and evaluating their intended and unintended consequences in colonial and postcolonial moments. Since the late nineteenth century, the “educability” of the native was the subject of several debates and experiments: numerous voices, arguments, and agendas emerged, involving multiple institutions and experts, governmental and non-governmental, religious and laic, operating from the corridors of international organizations to the towns and rural villages of Africa. This plurality of expressions of political, social, cultural, and economic imagination of education and development is at the core of this collective work.

This publication offers a clear perspective on how to improve learning in basic education in Sub-Saharan Africa, based on extremely rigorous and exhaustive analysis of a large volume of data. The authors shine a light on the low levels of learning and on the contributory factors. They have not hesitated to raise difficult issues, such as the need to implement a consistent policy on the language of instruction, which is essential to ensuring the foundations of learning for all children. Using the framework of "From Science to Service Delivery" the book urges policy makers to look at the entire chain from policy design, informed by knowledge adapted to the local context, to implementation.

This open access book presents a strong philosophical, theoretical and practical argument for the mainstreaming of indigenous knowledge in curricula development, and in teaching and learning across the African continent. Since the dawn of political independence in Africa, there has been an ongoing search for the kind of education that will create a class of principled and innovative citizens who are sensitive to and committed to the needs of the continent. When indigenous or environment-generated knowledge forms the basis of learning in classrooms, learners are able to immediately connect their education with their lived reality. The result is much introspection, creativity and innovation across fields, sectors and disciplines, leading to societal transformation. Drawing on several theoretical assertions, examples from a wide range of disciplines, and experiences gathered from different continents at different points in history, the book establishes that for education to trigger the necessary transformation in Africa, it should be constructed on a strong foundation of learners’ indigenous knowledge. The book presents a distinct and uncharted pathway for Africa to advance sustainably through home-grown and grassroots based ideas, leading to advances in science and technology, growth of indigenous African business and the transformation of Africans into conscious and active participants in the continent’s progress. Indigenous Knowledge and Education in Africa is of interest to educators, entrepreneurs, policymakers, researchers and individuals engaged in finding sustainable and strategic solutions to regional and global advancement.

Why has Africa remained persistently poor over its recorded history? Has Africa always been poor? What has been the nature of Africa's poverty and how do we explain its origins? This volume takes a necessary interdisciplinary approach to these questions by bringing together perspectives from archaeology, linguistics, history, anthropology, political science, and economics. Several contributors note that Africa's development was at par with many areas of Europe in the first millennium of the Common Era. Why Africa fell behind is a key theme in this volume, with insights that should inform Africa's developmental strategies.

This book explores the plethora of social-justice issues facing teacher education and development in Africa. Using both theoretical and empirical perspectives, it considers the need for teacher education to be transformational and address conventional pedagogy as well as the rights and duties of all citizens. The edited volume focuses on a wide range of relevant aspects, such as decolonisation, economic models, environmental concerns, as well as multilingual and multicultural aspects of education. Evidence-based chapters cover strategies used to support preservice and in-service teachers on how best to tackle issues of social justice through induction activities, pedagogy and discipline content, involving local communities, and the role of technology, including the use of open educational resources. The principles underlying these strategies are being used in the COVID-19 pandemic and will be equally relevant in the post-COVID-19 world. This book will be of great interest for academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of teacher education, African education, educational policy, international education and comparative education.

This volume delineates the critical link among security, education and development in Africa and provides a multidisciplinary framework of analyses and possible solutions. Africa has had a long history that embodies layers of mass-scale criminality and exploitation not merely from neocolonial and apartheid policies but also from political greed. This has impacted adversely on security, education and development in a way that deprivation of education and underdevelopment, in turn, re-creates security issues. The volume aims firstly to help augment scholarly inquiry into the nexus among in/security, education and development through the multidisciplinary framework of analyses; secondly to provide policymakers and educators with tools and a framework to comprehend the complexity and magnitude of the issues to which they ought to be sensitive and respond; and finally to provide caregivers and childcare agencies of the state a comprehensible framework of underlying, multifaceted sources of trauma experienced by children in extraordinary circumstances. It is organized in four sections: theoretical conceptualization on security and development; country cases on security and development; security and educational development; and country cases on security and education. Serving as a significant compass to understand and respond to the complex interplay and impact of security, education and development in Africa, it is of great use to graduates and scholars interested in Africa Politics, IPE, security studies and development studies.