Original Article

Higher Education Policy (2005) 18, 275–288. doi:10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300090

Educational Development and Knowledge Flow: Local and Global Forces in Human Development in Africa

A Bame Nsamenanga

1Ecole Normale Superieure du Cameroun, Bambili Campus, PO Box 270, Bamenda-Cameroon, West Africa. E-mail: bame51@yahoo.com

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Abstract

Both local and global forces impact on educational and human development. This disrupts Africa's capacity to own, generate, and share knowledge. A disorganizing hybridism between African, Eastern and Western heritages exacerbates the difficulty. A social Darwinian perspective disparages but exploits Africanity. Furthermore, no extant theory captures the complex braids of Africanity, which tend to be reduced to evolutionary templates, therein trivializing them and misguiding interventions. We offer the concepts of a learning posture and a diversity paradigm as discovery constructs to bring Africa's hidden knowledge out of the traditional closet; into synergy with new technologies and into application for competency building for local knowledge generation and development.

Keywords:

Africa, learning posture and diversity paradigm, institutional and participatory education, human development as socialization of knowledge, skills and competency development, collaborative networks and partnerships, global village

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