African
Education and Sustainable Development
Ghelawdewos
Araia
This paper will examine
theories and practical engagements in African
educational developments and the nexus between the
latter and sustainable development. The paper will
further explore the complexities of contemporary
African education and macroeconomic development in
light of globalization. Therefore, the focus of
this paper will be on education, sustainable
development, and globalization.
In �Africa: Education, Development,
and the Third Millennium,� while thoroughly
discussing African education from comparative
perspective, I have argued, �in an increasingly
globalized world and the enormous impact of the
latter on the entire planet, Africans cannot
afford to pursue an isolationist, inward-looking
policy, nor must they simply emulate Europe,
America or other developed countries in designing
and implementing curriculum for schools and
strategies for development for their specific
nations.�1
In the foregoing argument, I implied that
African educational systems should exhibit
independence and reflect rather endogenous growth
whereby indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) are
also systematically and deliberately enhanced. I
will touch upon the significance of IKS in African
education later; now, I like to introduce the
reader with a general idea that I have entertained
in one of my articles entitled Reflections on
the Development of Higher Education in Ethiopia, and
here is what I contended then:
�Nations
are successful when they exhibit an appreciable
degree of educational development, and schools are
successful when students are able to develop
skills and knowledge (with critical inquiry) that,
in turn, enable them to be successful learners in
multivariate, multidisciplinary, and diverse
content areas of education.� (Read entire
article on www.africanidea.org/reflections.html)
There is no doubt that some African
countries like Nigeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Mauritius,
South Africa, and Botswana have gone beyond an
�appreciable degree� of educational
development and have attained a commendable status
in the development of higher education although
dozens of African nations were unable to fall on
the same track as the above mentioned countries.2
In order for those African countries
lagging behind to catch up and for those that are
relatively successful to accomplish their mission
in educational development, they, as a matter of
course, must pursue a policy of sustainable development
reinforced by sustained educational strategies
(e.g. sound and comprehensive curricula). It is
thus important to define sustainable development,
and I will put verbatim what I communicated to
Brandeis on February 2002 with respect to
sustainable international development (SID):
�The Report of the World Commission on
Environment and Development (Brundtland Report or
�Our Common Future: From One Earth to One
World�) put out by the Oxford University Press
(1987) is perhaps the most comprehensive document
on the problems of sustainability.
The World Commission defined sustainable
development as paths of human progress, which meet
the needs, and aspirations of the present
generation without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their needs.
This rather simple definition of
sustainability has deep philosophical connotation
and a practical policy implication, and as such
sustainable development cannot be realized without
a multidisciplinary approach and a multivariate
analysis of the various attributes such as
ecological process, biological diversity, human
population and their needs, renewable and
non-renewable resources, global re-distributive
justice etc.
More than any other discipline,
sustainability or SID require practical
constructive engagement and the above mentioned
attributes cannot be meaningfully addressed and
dealt with unless 1) political systems exhibit
commitment to enhance citizen participation in
decision-making (this also entails accountability
and transparency); 2) economic systems generate
surpluses and technical know-how on a sustained
basis (by extension, this must foster human
development index�HDI); 3) social systems
provide mechanisms to resolve conflicts that may
arise as a result of development plans or
projects; 4) production systems preserve the
environment or the ecological base for
development; 5) technological systems keep up new
devices that are environmentally friendly; 6)
international systems promote sustainable patterns
of trade, finance, and development that are
deliberately geared toward reducing, if not
eliminating hunger and poverty.
Items 1 through 6 have equal weight, and
the sum total of these attributes must enable the
fruition of a sustainable development. But item 6,
in particular, is more relevant to SID, and as Gro
Harlem Brudntland aptly puts it, �to achieve a
sustainable development and a better management of
global change, we need a recommitment to
multilateralism.
We need stronger international institutions
with more decisions making authority than we have
at the moment; also at the global
level�collective management of global
interdependence is now empty slogan. It is, very
simply, the only acceptable formula
for enlightened statecraft as we move into
the last decade of this century.�
I am in full accord with Mr. Brudntland,
but as he also indicates in his Report, the mere
existence of strong international institutions,
collective management and interdependence cannot,
as such, solve the problems of sustainability
unless we realize that the current patterns of
development are not sustainable and unless we have
institutions and structures in place to sustain SID.
This is not to argue, however, that there is no
such thing as successful sustainable project to
date. It is only to suggest that we can do more by
addressing the real problems of sustainability. In
this regard, the role of the International Fund
for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in enabling
small farmers� projects to succeed can be seen
as exemplary. Some other success stories of
sustainability that can be mentioned are: 1)
Indian villages at the foot of the Himalayas which
managed to divert the erosion of watershed by
building dams, terracing, and planting grass
(assisted by the Forest Department and the Ford
Foundation); 2) the rural development programme
(livestock, irrigation, terracing, and the
planting of trees) in Nepal; 3) agro-forestry
designed to combat land degradation in Haiti (USAID
project); 4) the replacement of cash crops by food
crops in the Talamanca region of Costa Rica
(supported by the Netherlands Development
Assistance Programme).
And because I am an educator by profession,
I strongly believe that education and training are
central to sustainable development. In fact,
education should be an indispensable requirement
for a SID program. Put simply, most of the above
mentioned attributes (e.g. technological input and
agro-industrial development) cannot take place
without a professional skilled manpower, and no
ecological insights (environmental consciousness)
can be instilled into the population (e.g.
farmers) that are directly engaged in sustainable
projects unless there is mass education such as
adult and literacy programs. In the long run, we
may seriously consider the Schumacher legacy were
�an international center for studies informed by
ecological and spiritual values� is pigeonholed
into the curriculum of SID. In this context, the
best example of a success story is Japan, a
country that managed to eliminate hunger through
sustainable food security that is the direct
result of economic development and environmental
protection.
Ultimately the SID agenda and education for
sustainability must seriously consider the various
international agreements and directives initiated
either by the United Nations or its respective
specialized agencies such as FAO. The United
Nations Sustainable Development, Agenda 21 or the
Rio Declaration on Environment and Development,
and the Statement Principles for the Sustainable
Management of Forests should be binding to all
nations.
Above all, a SID program must uphold the
NGO Sustainable Agriculture Treaty of 1992:
�Agriculture is sustainable when it is
ecologically sound, economically viable, socially
just, culturally appropriate and based on a
holistic approach.� SID must reiterate the 94th
Session of the FAO Council of November 1988:
�Sustainable development is the management and
conservation of the natural resource base, and the
orientation of technological and institutional
change in such a manner as to ensure the
attainment and continued satisfaction of human
needs for present and future generations. Such
sustainable development (in the agriculture,
forestry and fishery sectors) conserves land,
water, plant, and animal genetic resources, is
environmentally non-degrading, technically
appropriate, economically viable and socially
acceptable.�3
It is with the above themes of SID in mind
that we must now fashion curricula for schools and
syllabi for classrooms. The curricula, of course,
must be comprehensive and a broad-ranging
multivariate package, and above all it should be
inclusive and multicultural. Incidentally, the
UNESCO �education for sustainable development�
(ESD) clearly stipulates interdisciplinary and
multidisciplinary methodologies in education, and
as Patrick Hanley argues �the challenge then is
to agree on an epistemology that is inclusive of
all domain of knowledge while being practical for
education initiatives in the field.�4
African educators designing multicultural
curricula must at least employ the following four
approaches:
1.
Approach: all organizations led and
presided over by professional educational leaders had
to undergo reform in light of the spirit of
multiculturalism.
2.
Description: additional inputs and
change pertinent to ethnicity, racism and
multiculturalism must be incorporated into the
content of the guidelines and policies of
respective organizations.
3.
Goals: contents about cultural
groups, especially minorities, should be
consciously included into the corpus of
educational policies.
4.
Practical engagement: celebration of
cultural heroes and holidays of all ethnic/racial
groups must be observed annually by a pan-African
group and/or organization.
By
celebration of cultures I don�t mean the
superficial annual festivals that are largely
commercialized and have become more or less
profit-making tools for business people. On the
contrary, celebration of cultures should entail
the dignity and worth of the members of respective
racial and ethnic groups, and in order to
meaningfully address the latter, African educators
must employ a comparative and international
education perspective. I personally have
entertained in most of my writings the comparative
method and as a result of my educational background
and training in interdisciplinary and
multicultural approaches, my research interest has
been broad range. Over the years, I have
intentionally designed my research and teaching
methodologies in such a way to enable me explore
the subtle nuances and complexities of the social
sciences and humanities with respect to Africa.
I
am particularly interested to further explore the
cultural history of Africa including its cosmogony
and philosophy, its spirituality, and its
literature, which are inextricably interwoven to
reflect, in the final analysis, the collectivity
and communality of African societies.
Africa
is expansive (11.6 million sq. miles) and highly
diverse (with at least eight hundred languages)
and relatively disconnected in terms of
infrastructure, but African peoples� conceptual
and metaphysical as well as cosmogenic
superstructures are incredibly similar and rest on
relatively similar mode of productions. This is to
suggest, as we shall see below, that cultural
bridges can easily be constructed across national
boundaries.
Between
the Azande of Sudan and northern Congo, for
instance, a witchcraft known as Mangu allows
them to act supernaturally over other humans. A
similar phenomenon called Tebib or Buda
in Ethiopia can bring misfortune or even death to
a foe or an opponent. By contrast, the Shilluk of
Sudan have neither Mangu nor Tebib to
use against their adversaries, but they may
�kill� (this is a myth rather than a reality)
their senile king in order to avoid a more
catastrophic calamity of national proportions.
Unlike
the Shilluk, the Habesha of Ethiopia and the Itero
of Kenya like to keep death at bay not by
resorting to killing but by employing elusive
techniques. The Itero give special names for
children born to a mother after an infant has
died. Thus they come up with such names as etyang
(animal) emoto (hyena) or emodo (striga
weed). By the same token, the Habesha give names
such as Godofai (garbage) so that the bad
omen can no longer intrude into their health.
Among the Tellensi of Ghana, the ancestors, rather
than witches, are considered as the agents of
misfortune. But, among the Gsu of Uganda the elder
is most often thought to be a witch. Similarly, the Tiv of Nigeria upholds that elders
possess witch qualities.
On
top of the spiritual dimension of African culture
that we have touched upon above, the African
educator must incorporate into the corpus of the
curricula African art, oral and literate tradition
that in turn reflect aspects of social, spiritual,
and political organizations of African societies. The ultimate objective is to recapture African heritage via
indigenous knowledge systems (IKS).
What
I called indigenous knowledge (IK) in 1990 is now
popularized as IKS by scholars, including by one
of our colleagues in the academia Catherine A.
Odora Hoppers. Professor Hoppers and I have
contributed respective chapters to Globalizing
Africa (Malinda Smith, editor)5
and she defines indigenous knowledge
systems as �the combination of knowledge systems
encompassing technology, social, economic,
philosophic, educational, legal, and governance
systems.�6 Hoppers
further contends that �IKS is characterized by
its embeddedness
in the cultural web and history of a people,
including their civilization. It forms the
backbone of the social, economic, scientific, and
technological identity of such a people, and it is
these sources that are referred to as indigenous knowledge.�7
According
to Hoppers, �the scope of these knowledge are
rich and varied, ranging from soil and plant
taxonomy, cultural and genetic information, animal
husbandry, medicine and pharmacology, ecology,
climatology, zoology, music, art, architecture,
and many others. Their intrinsic efficiency and
efficacy as tools for personal, societal, and
global development must, therefore, be identified
and accredited as necessary. It is this recovery
of indigenous knowledge, and the systems
intricately woven around them, that will
facilitate the move towards a critical but
resolute re-appropriation of the practical and
cognitive heritage of millions of people across
the African continent and elsewhere in the
world.�8
Designing
meaningful curricula, formulating educational
policies, and entertaining theoretical analyses on
African education, development, and sustainability
is one thing. But countering the reality on the
ground vis-�-vis globalization is altogether
different. For instance, the international
conference (�Academic Partnership with South
Africans for Mutual Capacity Building�)
organized by Michigan State University (October
18-21 1998) was aimed at evaluating, defining and
exploring various issues including academic and
staff development, curriculum and program reform,
research, student services, and financial support
for linkages.�9 However, the Michigan
State type panel discussion, to begin with, is a
clich�, and unless it reflects the realities of
the local and global politico-economic relations
it will remain mere intellectual exercise.
In
anticipation of the difficult position Africa is
in, I have forwarded the following line of
argument in one of my articles: �one major
problem Africa encountered in the last four
decades is the inability of its leaders to
translate the many blue prints and development
agendas into action. Admittedly, the countless OAU
(now AU) and ECA meetings were more of talk shows
than workshops. This problem is partly caused by
lack of committed and visionary leadership
(corruption being its main manifestation) and
partly by the unwillingness of the North
(particularly the G8) to support Africa�s
initiative, however meager, and to overhaul the
respective economies of African nations.�10
And
despite the UN Decade of Education for
Sustainable Development (DESD) and UNESCO�s
World Declaration and Framework for Priority
Action for Change and Development in Higher
Education, Africa is not doing well in terms of
educational development. In fact, as per BBC�s
report, �in sub-Saharan Africa, it is estimated
that 40 million children are receiving no
education at all � nearly half of all those of
school age.�11 Ironically, by the
time the Millennium Development Goals or the MDG
is realized in 2015, �it is predicted that this
figure [the 40 million above] could rise to 60
million�as enrolment rates are falling.�12
African
leaders must seriously study the nature of
globalization and strategize development agendas
accordingly. The promises of globalization to
integrate the world economy may altogether pose
unanswered questions of trade partnership, the
role of World Trade Organization (WTO), the role
of the Bretton Woods organizations, the role of
the Commonwealth and the Francophone
organizations, Africa�s debt problem etc. One,
of course, cannot visualize the current trend of
globalization without the unfettered world
capitalist system. Can African nations really
develop their own independent development
strategies and educational policies in spite of
the major hurdles in the global economic
parameters? In Africa in the Global Economy,
I have sorted out Africa�s predicament as in the
following:
�Despite
over four centuries of exchange relations
initially with the Middle East, Europe, and Asia,
including the intercontinental European slave
trade and subsequent colonization, Africa was
never fully integrated into the global economy. On
the one hand, if we see it in the context of
European imperialism and colonial hegemony, Africa
was probably the most globally penetrated
continent. No other continent was brought under
global capital or imperialism, as Africa was. And,
yet, on the other hand, Africa remains the
world�s least developed continent. It was, and
remains, on the periphery of the global economy.
Despite enormous cultural coalescence�with more
Anglophone and Francophone countries in Africa
than any other continent�the former colonial
powers developed negligible educational
institutions, healthcare systems and
infrastructure to facilitate their interests on
the continent. Moreover, they took pains to
destroy Africa�s indigenous institutions and
traditions, leaving post-independence leaders
ill-equipped to address the enormous challenges or
governing modern national states.�13
Of
course, all Africa�s ills and drawbacks cannot
be attributed to its former colonizers and
detractors. The continent�s brutal and corrupt
leaders are responsible for Africa�s
backwardness. Therefore,
African scholars have a special historical task to
carefully diagnose the world economy, understand
the intricacy and complexity of globalization,
research on and regenerate IKS and other
Africa�s conceptual systems, and formulate
educational and development policies accordingly.
Then and only then can we implement sustainable
development programs and guarantee the
independence and integration of Africa into the
global economy.
Notes:
- African Link, volume 8, no. 1, 1999; see also www.africanidea.org
and click on �African Education.�
- African Link, Ibid
- This was written under the title of �My Philosophy
on Sustainable International Development�
and communicated to Brandeis University�s
Sustainable International Development (SID),
February 2002
- Patrick Hanley, �holistic yet tangible�:
�Embracing the Challenge of Complexity for
Education for Sustainable Development,� Current
Issues in Comparative Education, Teachers
College, Columbia University, vol. 7, no. 2,
April 21, 2005
- Catherine A. Odora Hoppers, �Indigenous Knowledge,
the African Renaissance, and the Integration
of Knowledge Systems,� in Globalizing
Africa, Africa World Press, 203, p. 412
- Hoppers, Ibid
- Hoppers, Ibid
- Hoppers, Ibid
- International Conference presented by Michigan State
University, October 18-21, 1998
- Ghelawdewos Araia, �Critical Appraisal of Africa�s
Place in the Global Economy,� www.africanidea.org/critical.html
November 20, 2004
- BBC, �African Education in Decline,� 6 December,
1999
- BBC, Ibid
- Ghelawdewos Araia, �Africa in the Global Economy:
Aid, Debt, and Development,� in Globalizing
Africa, p. 199
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