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.

In The State and the University Experience in East Africa, Professor Kithinji explores the critical yet unacknowledged role that universities have played in the politics of statehood and nation building. He demonstrate how successive colonial and postcolonial governments have sought to use university education as a means to advance political and economic interests. He seeks to unravel the connection between universities and the state in East Africa, particularly in Kenya. Thorough narrative and analytical history of the policies and politics of university education in the past half-century and more explore the forces that have influenced the development of universities. This study identifies three major policy trends that have shaped university education. Beginning from 1949, when the British colonial government founded Makerere University College in Uganda as the first degree granting institution for East Africa, until 2002, when the second President of Kenya, Daniel arap Moi, retired from office and his Kenya African National Union (KANU) that had ruled since independence in 1963 lost power. By investigating the dynamics that have influenced higher-education policies in Kenya and the wider East African region, this study links the higher education discourse with the state-building narrative and conceives university policies as a product of the forces informing the historical trajectory of Kenya in particular and the wider East African region in general. The State and the University Experience in East Africa will be of great interest to scholars of the African continent, some of whom may be inspired to rewrite the story of tertiary education and state formation in other parts of Africa by an equally meticulous examination of primary sources as demonstrated in this work

Muslim Institutions of Higher Education in Postcolonial Africa examines the colonial discriminatory practices against Muslim education through control and dismissal and discusses the education reform movement of the post-colonial experience.

This book discusses the status and importance of decolonisation and indigenous knowledge in academic research, teaching, and learning programmes and beyond. Taking practical lessons from a range of institutions in Africa, the book argues that that local and global sciences are culturally equal and capable of synergistic complementarity and then integrates the concept of hybrid science into discourses on decolonisation. The chapters argue for a cross-cultural dialogue between different epistemic traditions and the accommodation 'Indigenous' knowledge systems in higher education. Bringing together critical scholars, teaching and administrating academics from different disciplines, the chapters provide alternative conceptual outlooks and practical case-based perspectives towards decolonised study environments. This book will be of interest to researchers of decolonisation, postcolonial studies, higher education studies, political studies, African studies, and philosophy.

A collection of essays which critically examines education in the African context and presents possible courses of action to reinvent its future.

This research handbook provides meaningful coverage on current trends in the dynamic education systems of Africa. It presents the main findings on current issues in the education systems from different African countries. Specifically, it examines education policies and what can be done differently by African nations to strengthen these policies. The objective is to highlight African nations’ capacity to address issues of social justice to generate ideas that can help translate the increasing strengths of the continent into achieving sustainable development.