African Education Quotes

No one in my family had ever attended school [...] On the first day of school my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education. That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why this particular name I have no idea.

Regarding African education in this country, there was a time when the government took no interest whatsoever in African education. It was the churches, that part of civil society, which bought land, built schools, and employed and paid teachers. People like myself, right from grade eight up to university, I was in missionary schools.

Not only do African students deserve excellent universities, they deserve good elementary and secondary schools, too - and then, to have access to ongoing vocational and job training to ensure their skills remain as relevant as possible to African organizations.

My message was 'Think African. Make schools read African history.'

Not only have we paid the price with our names in ink, but we have also paid in blood. And they can't say that black people can't be intelligent, because going back to Africa, in Guinea, there are almost 4 million people there and what he, President [Sekou] Toure, is doing to educate the people: as long as the French people had it they weren't doing a thing that is being done now.

As African economies boom and businesses are created, one of the big questions this growth raises is that of third-level education: how can Africa develop a knowledge infrastructure to rival that of the west, a sort of Harvard University in Africa?

There's a rising tide of concern among activists, economists, and artists about Africa. Theres a temptation to think of it as a monolith as opposed to all these different countries with different problems.

It is African scholars themselves who will create the ultimate Encyclopaedia Africana.

The only people who can fix Africa are talented young Africans. By unlocking and nurturing their creative potential, we can create a step change in Africa's future.

I spent a lot of my childhood saying goodbye because I went to boarding school. I didn't resent my parents for sending me there so young as I understood the limitations of the education system in Africa, where we lived at the time.