panel 20

AFRICAN AGENCY AND COLONIAL EDUCATION. EDUCATION AS A DRIVER FOR SOCIAL AND TERRITORIAL MOBILITY

CONVENORS:

• CHRISTINE SMITH-SIMONSEN, UNIVERSITY OF TROMSØ, (Christine.Smith-Simonsen@sv.uit.no)
• UOLDELUL CHELATI DIRAR, UNIVERSITY OF MACERATA (uoldelul@unimc.it)

Africa has long and lively traditions of education, of both formal and informalkinds, the models and contents designed to fit African realities. With the expansion ofEuropean presence on the continent, new educational models were introduced. In manyrespects, Western education, with its values and knowledge mainly developed in a Westerncontext, has had more profound impacts on African societies than any other colonial legacy.Conventionally, colonial education has been represented through a victim perspective, withthe Africans as passive subject to its impacts and ramifications. The aim of this panel is toexplore and understand the complex range of African responses and actions to the changingscenes of education.In this perspective the role of African agency in the field of education is crucial to understandprocesses of social and territorial mobility in the colonial and post-colonial Africa.

PAPERS: