Creole cosmopolitans: The African middle classes and new international schools

• In Event: Civic Education in the Afrikan Context

Proposal

International education research about sub-Saharan Africa often focuses on development and deprived contexts, almost never on the African middle classes. Yet African economies have grown 4.6% annually from 2000-2019 and, since 1990, cut poverty from 49% to 36% in 2018 (AUC & OECD, 2018). New middle classes are emerging across the continent. These are often urban “attuned to changing technologies, highly educated (…) future-oriented and hugely aspirational” (Southall, 2018, p. 5). On the one hand, this has given rise to a popular “Africa rising” narrative in which such groups are seen as the new engine of development, democracy, and social transformation in Africa (Mercer & Lemanski, 2020; Southall, 2018). On the other, research suggests that the new African middle classes are far more heterogeneous (Melber, 2016). Their relationships towards their own societies depend on a host of factors beyond wealth, such as social networks, values, worldviews, and senses of belonging. Education thus plays a potentially vital role in channeling the aspirations and values of this powerful new group.
This presentation discusses an empirical study of a new type of African “medium-fee”, private international school and its effects on the “senses of belonging” and social responsibility of its affluent yet middle-class students. The study used a mixed methods approach to examine the career and education aspirations; senses of identity, belonging and social responsibility; and perceived impact of their school and curriculum on 94 upper secondary students in the Enko Education network. Enko Education is a rapidly expanding network of “medium-fee” international schools across 13 African countries that offers the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) (Enko Education). At 4,500 USD per year, Enko charges ~15% of the tuition of typical international schools. It thus caters to a new, professional middle-class demographic of doctors, educators, and medium-size business owners, rather than the “transnational capitalist class” that have historically dominated this type of education (Ball & Nikita, 2014). Enko is the first of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa but reflects a growing trend in international education: the rise of “mid-market” international schools that target new, aspirational middle classes in the Global South, who seek English proficiency, internationally recognized qualifications, and admission to universities in the Global North for their children (Fraser, 2020; ISC Research, 2021).
This has implications for African economic, social, political and educational development. The students at schools like Enko will form a key part of Africa’s growing professional classes. They reflect new ways that global education discourses, curricula and ideas are shaping African education and middle-class identities (Lentz, 2020).
This study asks: Who are these young people becoming? What are their horizons, hopes and senses of belonging to local and transnational communities? Do the “global citizenship” and educational pathways of programmes like the IBDP necessarily detract from local identities and needs, or can such “transnational dimensions” (Lentz, 2020) of identity enhance local ones?
The study combined a mixed methods data collection with the theoretical lenses of “creolization” (Hannerz, 1987) and cosmopolitanism (Appiah, 2013). 94 IBDP students (ages 15-19) were surveyed online in 2021-2022, as a master's dissertation project, across three Enko Education schools in Yaounde, Cameroon; Bamako, Mali; and Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. 12 students were then interviewed in semi-structured interviews. They represented an average 53% of the IBDP student population in those schools. This allowed both for comparison between sites across Enko Education network, as well as semi-structured interviews that added detail and explanatory power. The survey asked about students’ university and career plans, understandings of “global citizenship”, senses of responsibility to family, local and global communities, and perceptions of the impact of the IBDP program on these attitudes.

Findings revealed a surprising amalgamation or “creole cosmopolitanism” at work (termed coined by the author). Students reported that their IBDP education had significantly shaped their international career and study aspirations, but without detracting from their local ties. Almost all students planned to study in the Global North, but then return home in 2-5 years after completion in order to contribute to the development of their countries. This impulse was strongest among Malian students—the country with the greatest political instability and poverty—and weakest in Cameroon. Rather than draw their attention away from their local communities, students felt that the IBDP had strengthened their sense of agency and increased their desires to support their families, communities and countries. Interviewees reported increased sense of responsibility and tolerance towards a wider range of people, beyond family or neighborhood. These results demanded a new analytical lens. Rather than the more common Bourdieusian analysis or post-colonial theory, Hannerz’s concept of “creole cultures” in which “widely different” cultural sources integrate into a “continuous spectrum of interacting forms” and channel “international cultural flow” (1987, p. 552) provided a frame.
This paper seeks to expand the definition and horizons of African and international education studies. It also seeks to change the dialogue in African education development by introducing a new population, one with means and new types of aspirations and identities. It introduces an innovative topic, theory and cross-disciplinary analysis. First, it examines the emerging phenomenon of private, middle-tier international schools in Africa. Second, it coins the term “creole cosmopolitanism”. Third, it combines the formerly separate fields of elite education studies and the sociology of the African middle classes. Finally, it provides a rare English-language study of private education in francophone Africa.

Author

• Catharina Gress-Wright, Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)