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Highlighted Session: Afrika SIG Bantaba 2025 - “Reflecting on the legacy of our founders to Envision Afrikan Education in a Digital Society”

Tue, March 25, 2:45 to 4:00pm, Palmer House, Floor: 3rd Floor, Salon 3

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Description of Session

The Bantaba has been Afrika SIG’s signature gathering space since 2017—a place of critical reflection, dialogue, and collective imagining for Afrikan education futures. Each year, it centers on urgent issues shaped by Afrikan contexts, histories, and aspirations. This year, we gather to reflect on the legacy of our founding leaders and envision what Afrikan education must become in a digital society.

Our past years consisted of the following:
• 2017 – Focused on Education in Agenda 2063.
• 2018 – Reimagined North-South relationships through post-colonial lenses.
• 2019 – Decolonizing Education for Sustainability.
• 2020–2021 – Pandemic reflections on education beyond the human and social responsibility in Africa.
• 2022 – Revisiting the persistent call to break from Eurocentric education systems.
• 2023 – Africa at the Crossroads: claiming the 21st century through transformation.
• 2024 – Sankofa: Regenerating power through collective action.

In 2025, we are “Reflecting on the legacy of our founders to Envision Afrikan Education in a Digital Society” Our theme is influenced by the death of Sam Nujoma on February 8, 2025, at the age of 95. This was a watershed moment for Afrika—one that, as an Afrikan SIG, we cannot ignore or leave unmarked.

For Namibia, he is honoured as His Excellency Dr. Sam Shafiishuna Nujoma, the Founding President of the Republic of Namibia and Founding Father of the Nation, who consistently maintained that, “A people united, striving to achieve a common good for all the members of society, will always emerge victorious.”

For the continent, he is the last of the freedom-fighting generation that included Abdel Gamal Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Milton Obote, Seretse Khama, Modibo Keita, Sekou Touré, Nelson Mandela, Samora Machel, and others. With his passing, the last living connection to the generation of presidents who fought for independence has been severed (in the physical sense).

CIES 2025 provides us an opportunity to engage in deep reflection necessary for envisioning the future of education in Afrika. Many of our continent’s founding leaders saw education as fundamental to liberation and progress. How, then, do we (re)envision education in a digital society in light of this historical moment? Amongst the many questions we will explore in our Bantaba are the following:

1. How do we carry forward the liberation ideals of leaders like Sam Nujoma in our approach to digital education?
2. Can digital education be truly liberatory in present day and future Afrika?
3. Whose knowledge gets digitized, and whose gets left behind?
4. Is access enough?
5. How can education in a digital society honor the memory and mission of liberation-era leaders like Sam Nujoma?
6. In the shadow of colonial education systems, how do we avoid creating a digital version of the same inequality?
7. Are we preparing Afrikan learners to be digital citizens—or digital consumers?
8. What does an African-centered digital curriculum look like—and who gets to design it?
9. If independence was fought with the body, is the next liberation struggle for the mind—and will education in a digital society be its battleground?”


The 2025 Bantaba will be held in person in Chicago, Illinois, and follow a four-part format:
1. Introductory Remarks – By the chair and presentation of the synthesis
2. Roundtable Discussion – Moderated by the chair
3. Breakout Sessions – Small groups explore guiding questions
4. Reporting Back & Plenary – Audience engagement and commentary from invited discussants

Sub Unit

Chair

Individual Presentations