Education in Africa: Past and Present – Mental Colonization and the Loss of Identity
Across Africa, education, like many other sectors, still carries the imprints of the colonial period. The systems in place today were built on Western models, shaped by imported ideologies, cultures, organizational structures, and curricula.
During colonial rule, languages of instruction were changed alongside official
state languages. An African student learned not their own history and culture,
but that of the colonizer. They were trained to interpret knowledge through the
lens of the West.
The gravest danger was never only economic colonization—it was mental. The goal
was to alienate the colonized from their own identity, ways of thinking,
methods of learning, and native languages, forcing them into a mental
transformation through the colonizer’s language and education system.
Education before Colonialism
Today, we complain that modern schooling leaves children
with little practical knowledge, weakens the family’s role in shaping a child’s
character, and lets screens take over education.
But in precolonial Africa, education began where it mattered most—in the
family. The old African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child,”
perfectly captures the collective, communal nature of learning.
Traditional African education emphasized both physical growth and moral
development. Stories, songs, theatre, proverbs, and riddles were central tools
of learning. On moonlit nights, children would sit at the feet of elders for
hours, listening to stories and poems rich with wisdom and life lessons.
Handicrafts were another vital form of education. In a continent where oral
transmission took precedence over writing, philosophy and spiritual teachings
were embodied in traditional arts and preserved for future generations.
According to Toyin Falola, a renowned Nigerian historian, African societies had
already developed functional systems of education where children learned local
knowledge, crafts, and skills. Guyanese scholar Walter Rodney echoed this view,
arguing that education was not “introduced” by colonizers—rather, existing
African systems were replaced with new formal institutions.
In Muslim-majority regions, Islamic schools had flourished since the Middle
Ages, teaching not only religion but also languages. Timbuktu, for instance,
was a distinguished center of learning. In 19th-century West Africa, during the
Sokoto Caliphate, Nana Asma’u—the daughter of Sultan Usman dan Fodio—created a
network of women educators known as Yan Taru, who traveled from village
to village teaching women. Her model is still celebrated today.
Thus, the notion that Africa had no concept of education before colonialism—or
that its forms of learning were primitive—is nothing but a colonial fabrication
meant to justify mental domination.
Education under Colonialism
By the late 15th century, missionary schools had outnumbered
state schools. Colonizers deliberately targeted local elites first, using
education to advance Christianity and colonial rule. Teachers, often foreigners
unfamiliar with African societies, imposed Western-centered curricula.
Education lost its functionality for local communities.
The real objective was not to educate Africans, but to produce a labor force
suited for the colonial machine. Schools became tools to sustain colonial
administrations, not to serve African societies.
As Ludwig Wittgenstein famously wrote, “The limits of my language mean the
limits of my world.” Over time, African societies began to think and behave
like the nations whose languages they had been forced to adopt. A Nigerian who
thought like an Englishman, a Senegalese who spoke like a Frenchman, an Angolan
who acted like a Portuguese… Outwardly African, but inwardly colonized. They
were taught to dismiss their own history, to see their culture as primitive,
and to aspire to Westernization.
This inner conflict is powerfully captured in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous
Conditions, which portrays the psychological turmoil and alienation
experienced by Africans subjected to Western education.
Post-Independence Education and the Present Day
After independence, African countries sought to democratize
education, making it a right for all rather than a privilege for elites. With
the support of international aid and local efforts, access to schooling
expanded significantly. Yet, the core of the system remained colonial—Western
curricula persisted. Economic constraints prevented large-scale reforms, and
there was no local intellectual class equipped to design a wholly new
curriculum.
African thinkers such as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka, and Frantz Fanon
consistently stressed the need for decolonization not only in politics and
economics, but also in culture, language, and education.
Today, some African states are striving to re-center education around local
languages, histories, and cultures.
In Zambia, for instance, school textbooks are not even printed locally.
Although they may appear to be authored by local writers, they largely
reproduce Western paradigms. The negative legacies of colonialism are
downplayed, while supposed “benefits” are glorified, creating a subtle positive
bias toward the West. History is often not a mandatory subject, leaving many
students to graduate from high school without any knowledge of their own
heritage.
At present, it is unrealistic to expect African societies to
completely rebuild their education systems overnight. Such a transformation
requires time, deliberate effort, and innovation adapted to the realities of a
digital age.
The first crucial step is revising curricula with a critical, African-centered
lens—incorporating courses on history, local languages, and indigenous
cultures. Equally important is reclaiming traditional modes of knowledge:
functional skills, crafts, and wisdom that precolonial societies once passed on
to younger generations must find a place within modern education.
Finally, education must move beyond rote learning to foster inquiry and
critical thinking. Students should not simply absorb what they are told, but
develop the skills to analyze, question, and research for themselves. Only then
can Africa move toward an education system that is truly its own, one that
restores identity and serves its people.
Sources:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-13-6635-2_3
This article
was originally published in Turkish in Independent Türkçe on July 5, 2023
An interestingly profound piece. I'm a very proud African and also a proud Nigerian despite our challenges. I believe no place is heaven but as Africans, we must relearn all that we have been taught by those who came to sever our ties to our roots. We must, like Bob Marley says in one of his songs, emancipate ourselves from mental slavery. We must remember the powerful words of Obierika in Achebe's Things Fall Apart, that the white man is very clever. We absorbed too much of the white man's narrative that our customs and religion are bad. We allowed people who do not understand our culture and religion to dictate to us, to put a knife on the things that held us together. We take their language, religion and even allowed them to give us their names. It is well.
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