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Decolonization of Higher Education in East Africa
Details
Higher education in the East African Countries of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda was a creation of the British colonial government right from the 1920s when Makerere College was established as a tertiary institution that trained a few East and Central African students to prepare them to take jobs in support of the economic growth of the United Kingdom.
In this presentation, Chacha Nyaigotti Chacha will seek to demonstrate that since independence in the '60s, higher education in East Africa has experienced an exponential growth of Universities and other tertiary institutions. He will trace this transformation while underscoring how the development of higher education in East Africa contributed to the struggle for freedom and independence from colonial bondage and highlight how the curriculum has evolved allowing both the learners and the lecturers to engage in introspection as they go on to decolonize their minds and culture. He will demonstrate that during the colonial period, the driving force behind the development of education in general and higher education, in particular, was to ensure that there would be an adequate supply of a trained human capital that could be deployed in a strategic economic undertaking whose proceeds would be repatriated to the home country of the colonizers. He will also discuss the question of the curriculum, language, and culture in an attempt to indicate that the use of English in the three countries continues to be a pertinent question that scholars are debating to date.
Where
Louis A. Simpson International Building, Room 144
Princeton, NJ 08544, United States
Speakers
Prof. Chacha Nyaigotti-Chacha
Chairman, Kenyan Commission for University Education
Professor Chacha Nyaigotti-Chacha (born 22nd August 1952 in Kuria District, Nyanza Province, Kenya) is a Kenyan playwright and consummate educationalist.
He was educated at Kenyatta College, receiving a BEd (Honours) (Swahili Language), and later studied at Yale University, gaining an MA in Anthropological Linguistics and a Ph.D. in Anthropological Linguistics. He has taught at a number of Universities in Kenya and the United States, during this period he served as Dean, of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the United States International University(Nairobi) Dean of the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Egerton University and Research Professor at the Institute of Regional Integration and Development at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Nairobi.
Previously he served as the Executive Secretary of the Higher Education Loans Board Kenya and for 10 years as the Executive Secretary for the Inter-University Council for East Africa(An East Africa Community Institution)
He has worked on Higher Education in Africa with international institutions such as the Rockefeller and Ford Foundation Institutions, the World Bank, and the Swedish International Developmental Agency(Sida)
He continues to provide leadership in Higher Education organs, where his current main interest is in the areas of quality assurance and student welfare.
Hosted By
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies
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