Africa faces various educational challenges such as teachings in universal languages versus the local languages, educational reforms initiated by the global actors and by people at the grassroots level, and access to higher education. All these phenomena need to be observed and analyzed within the context of globalization processes.
This panel discusses different educational issues and challenges from the primary to higher education levels in Africa. Although globalization does not benefit all people on the globe, increasingly large numbers of people are affected by globalization processes. Such processes imply both convergence and divergence, which are observed in the field of education. Education reforms have been partly implemented with the goal of strengthening local identities and cultures. However, they have not been without outside influence. While institutions of higher education are eager to connect with the rest of the world through information and communications technology (ICT), local people’s demands for education are diverse. At the primary and secondary levels of education, politicization of culture and religion has been observed. This phenomenon includes different demands for languages of instruction and for religious components at state-run schools, as well as the establishment of religion-oriented schools. Demands for languages of instruction involve several issues. For example, there have been continuous discussions about English as a universal language and local languages for identity. In Islamized Africa, the Arabic-Islamic school, with its religious and secular subjects, attracts increasing numbers of Muslim parents. The Arabic-Islamic school is, in a sense, a product of globalization processes. The papers on this panel illustrate the features/processes mentioned.
Information and communications technology (ICT) promotes the processes of globalization. For higher education in Africa, ICT is seen as a means for increasing access, providing cheaper services, linking institutions locally and abroad, and to participate in the global knowledge society. The challenges faced in implementing these needs are discussed with illustrations from South Africa.
Recently, we have been observing a marked rise of private higher education in Africa. The paper will aim to explain the background of the growth through the case of Senegal, describe the emerging roles this phenomenon plays and the forms it takes, and its consequences for knowledge production and identity formation.
Uganda’s lack of a coherent form of language policy development, which is a violation of The Asmara Declaration, has denied indigenous languages their due place in the era of globalisation. This paper discusses and analyses case studies of distinct minority languages, attitudes towards indigenous languages teaching, and challenges for the future.
The paper will analyze in a comparative perspective the claims for democratization in the higher education in Brazil and South Africa, considering the rule of the state in the implementation of inclusion politics, the impact of such politics for the development, and the appearance of alternative forms of identification.
This paper looks at the development of private secondary and higher education in Iringa - Tanzania. It analyses both the structural reasons for the widespread national growth of private secondary education since the late 1970s, and why beneficiaries of an earlier public secondary education, began their own education initiatives in the mid-1980s.