Perspectives on Lifelong Learning in Africa

This book critically analyses the principles and models of lifelong learning in the African context. It promotes an approach to lifelong learning that makes African ways of thinking and learning, beliefs and value systems integral aspects of the education process. It recognizes the fact that lifelong learning has wide and great appeal in Africa because its framework encompasses learning throughout the life cycle (from birth to death) and in different learning environments (traditional and modern), formal, non-formal and informal. Unlike other books that address the learning processes in Africa, this work recognizes that lifelong learning is more than just education and training beyond formal schooling. The book recognizes that the concept of learning is facing fundamental changes in the context of global knowledge economy, needs and dynamics and yet these changes remain embedded in oral traditions and have unfortunately not been recorded on paper. This book, therefore, intends to commit these experiences on paper, present the various lifelong experiences in selected African countries for the purposes of dissemination and preserving them for posterity. This is in recognition of the fact that one important source of change in Africa has been the accelerating speed of scientific and technological advancement; and the resulting changes in the society and economy in many African countries.