Cultural imperialism: philanthropy and education in sub-Saharan Africa.

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Our research will further the understanding of the connections between US philanthropic organizations and education in Sub Saharan Africa. The US philanthropic organizations that were studied include the Phelps-Stokes-Fund, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, MacArthur, Mellon, and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Our research focus on the movement of people, money, and ideologies from the US to Sub Saharan Africa and vice versa. As well as reflecting a strategic realignment in the ecosystem of international development organizations, at a time when the concept of knowledge societies continues to gain recognition. The panelists write from the perspective of history, political science, comparative education, and educational policy studies. The presentations are based on original research which analyzed the implications of the foundations’ organizational characteristics, modus operandi, and substantive decisions for social and political control of developmental processes.
Apart from highlighting the connections resulting from the movements of people, money, and ideologies, our presentations will also highlight the challenges that stem from these connections. Findings from the research have uncovered both the advantages and disadvantages of those complicated connections in the short and the long run. While these connections enabled African elites to gain leadership training during the colonial era, the continued use of English as the primary language had detrimental results. The transmitting of knowledge using English in post-colonial Africa, at the expense of local languages, has continuously reinforced the prominence of English as the lingua franca of Africa's development with consequences that are easily traceable today. This privilege of English as a language of instruction will allow one of the presenters to show that far from being centers where knowledge is produced, African educational institutions are establishments where power asymmetries reign.
By focusing on the movement of students, staff, and administrators as they cross nation-state boundaries from the US to Sub Saharan Africa and vice versa, this panel will show, first, that understanding the history of education in Sub Saharan African entails that we follow the movement of people, money, goods, and ideologies from one region to another. Secondly, that African educational institutions—in English speaking countries—that originate from connections with US philanthropic organizations tend to be hybrids of British, US, and African institutional systems.
A central conclusion of our critical analysis of foundations such as the Phelps-Stokes-Fund, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, MacArthur, Mellon, and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, is the sociopolitical consequences of those powerful philanthropic institutions. We found that they have a corrosive influence on the societies they operate in. They represent “relatively unregulated, unaccountable concentrations of power and wealth which buy talent, promote causes, and in, effect establish an agenda of what merits society’s attention” (Barker, 2012). This in a nutshell distinguishes philanthropy as a form of cultural imperialism.
The participants of the panel such as policymakers, educators, and comparative education scholars will learn to avoid the use of simplistic frameworks when studying educational institutions in Africa. Local analysis of institutions in Africa might lose the contextualized analysis if we do not research the interventions of philanthropic organizations. A simplistic framework used to address African education problems has the danger of resulting in flawed solutions that fail to consider the complexities and/or different histories of the institutions they are trying to re-develop.
We find our research on Sub Saharan Africa applicable to other regions, as the philanthropic organizations, we studied operate both at home and in many other developing regions. Given the regional interchanges which are a result of colonialism, Cold War politics, and neo-liberalism, the movement of ideologies, people, money, culture, and goods from one region to another has intensified, including educational plans and policies.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Robert Arnove, Indiana University

Individual Presentations

• Educational borrowing as negotiation: Reexamining the imagined and actual roles played by US philanthropists in designing British colonial education in Africa - Shoko Yamada, Nagoya University

• Rockefeller Foundation in Southern Rhodesia: American Philanthropy and Higher Education in Sub Saharan Africa - Fungisai Musoni, The Ohio State University

• The influence of US foundation on universities in Africa. Towards an anglicized world? - Fabrice Jaumont, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme

• Global White South - Christopher S. Collins, Azusa Pacific University; Alexander Jun, Azusa Pacific University

Discussant

• Esther E. Gottlieb, Ohio State University