Africa and international policy making for lifelong learning: textual revelations

Julia Preece *
Adult Education Discipline, School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Private Bag X01, Scottsville 3209, South Africa
1. Introduction
This paper discusses the relationship between international
agendas for lifelong learning and nancial aid for low income
countries, especially those on the African continent.
The paper takes a broadly critical theory perspective and argues
that such internationally determined agendas fail to take account
of context and culture. In the context of lifelong learning
discourses, the paper deconstructs some of the texts and
discourses from the North about the South (articulated here in
its political, rather than strictly geographical sense) in order to
dene spaces that allow the articulation of alternative positions for
lifelong learning and policy making. Examples of some differences
in terminology between Southern Africa and European descrip-
tions of lifelong learning are used to reinforce some of these issues.
While drawing on similar approaches by other writers the paper
focuses on illustrative cases in two African countries to demon-
strate how international aid priorities affect government choices
and policies for lifelong learning, in spite of more regional analyses
of the role of education and lifelong learning for the continents
development needs.
Although the dominant tensions on a global scale between a
concept of lifelong learning for human capital and lifelong learning
for social purpose are recognised, this paper argues for a holistic
concept of lifelong learning which takes account of African
perspectives and philosophical traditions. It makes reference to
writers such as Mbigi (2005) who argues for an African
entrepreneurship leadership that engages with national identity
and which is rooted in African belief systems. The paper also draws
on global support (primarily from other Southern contributers)
for well-being perspectives including those that are articulated
collectively in civil society cyber spaces. The paper concludes by
asking how these growing international voices from below can
effectively challenge the dominant human capital agendas of
international policy makers. In so doing, it highlights some
implications of ignoring a wider lifelong learning policy agenda
for the Sub Saharan African continents development needs.
2. Theoretical framework
In order to frame the context for this paper I briey draw on
postcolonialist theory as a means of positioning the narratives of
formerly colonized nations, particularly from the African conti-
nent. A postcolonialist perspective argues that the effects of
colonization did not cease after formal decolonisation. It uses a
range of critical theory lenses to demonstrate how northern
constructions of the South continue to promote colonizer view-
points. One way of doing this is to deconstruct texts written by the
North and insert alternative texts that reect southern versions of
their histories and worldviews. The aim is to redress the imbalance
of whose voice is heard. The political aspect of postcolonialist
analysis seeks to expose the inconsistencies in externally dened
development rationales for developing countries. In terms of text
analysis it often highlights what is not said, exposing hegemonic
alliances as a relationship of power (Ashcroft et al., 2000) and
interpreting the textual silences. In so doing it deconstructs the
essentialist language of development as dened, for example, by
international indicators emanating from the World Bank.
International Journal of Educational Development xxx (2012) xxxxxx
* Tel.: +27 33 260 5981; fax: +27 33 260 5756.
E-mail addresses: preecej@ukzn.ac.za, julia.preece@glasgow.ac.uk.
A R T I C L E I N F O
Keywords:
Lifelong learning
Africa
Discourse
Development
Policy
A B S T R A C T
This paper discusses the relationship between international agendas for lifelong learning and nancial
aid for low income countries, especially those on the African continent. It argues that there are subtle
differences in terminology written by policymakers respectively in Europe and South Africa for lifelong
learning but that international development agendas reinscribe lifelong learning for countries in receipt
of development aid. Taking a postcolonial perspective the paper provides a textual analysis of case
examples from policy documents in two African countries to demonstrate how international aid
priorities negatively affect government choices and policies for lifelong learning, in spite of more regional
analyses of the role of education and lifelong learning for the continents development needs. It argues
that the inclusion of indigenous worldviews fromthe south have potential to enhance a global agenda for
the social purpose element of lifelong learning.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
International Journal of Educational Development
j o ur n al hom ep ag e: www. el s evi er . c om/ l ocat e/ i j ed u d ev
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doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2012.02.007
So, in Girouxs terms, postcolonial analysis is a form of cultural
politics (1992, pp. 4243). It takes a strategic position against the
more dominant discourses that trivialize or ignore alternative
ways of seeing and interpreting the world. It privileges alternative
perspectives from the formerly colonized countries. It draws on
poststructuralism regarding the concept of power relations and the
way ideologies are internalized so that no other view seems
possible. Such ideologies and power relations are enacted through
structures, systems and discourses in the form of language and
behaviour. So, for example, alternative versions of development
are not considered in the dominant discourses and strategies for
international aid.
But postcolonialism goes further than poststructuralism to
reposition, challenge and expose those northern discourses that
are claiming to work on behalf of southern populations. It shows
how only certain people are vested with authority to know. So the
postcolonialist project is to destablize seeming certainties, in
terms of knowledge about the other. This process of deconstruc-
tion can be applied to analyzing the way lifelong learning is framed
for, and by, both the North and South.
Della Faille (2011) has argued that discourse analysis in relation
to development studies remains a marginal eld, partly because it
has been insufciently applied to a wide range of contexts and
partly because of the multiplicity of denition for this concept.
Although discourse consists of behaviours and attitudes as well as
language (Foucault, 1980), language, text and images communi-
cate values and meaning (Fairclough, 1993) that dene and label
constructions of social reality and legitimise forms of domination.
Wright (2010) points out that discourse analysis is multidimen-
sional. Linguists, for example, focus on the structure of language
rather than the context in which it appears (p. 199), while applied
linguists address the messages and meanings that texts appear to
be conveying in particular contexts. In development studies this
refers in particular to the way in which texts reinforce the
legitimacy of one perspective to discredit alternative perspectives
(Ferguson, 1994; Escobar, 1995; Preece, 2009; Della Faille, 2011).
Exponents of this latter form of discourse analysis include
Robinson-Pant (2008), Escobar (1995) and Ferguson (1994)
amongst others. Such analysis is often presented within an
ethnographic framework (Grillo and Stirrat, 1997; Robinson-Pant,
2008; Escobar, 1995).
The postcolonial space, however, in this era of globalization, is
also necessarily one of intersections between cultures. As Loomba
(1998, p. 241) states: In order to listen for subaltern voices we
need to uncover the multiplicity of narratives that were hidden by
the grand narratives, but we still need to think about how the
former are woven together. The next sections respectively discuss
some of the textual nuances of denition and purpose between
these two poles, how those nuances were played out in
international policy making and how international aid agendas
inuenced lifelong learning policy at national levels, using two
African countries as case exemplars. This is then followed by some
reections on the silenced texts of African lifelong learning
traditions and discussions, before discussing some possibilities for
re-positioning those texts within the wider debates.
3. Lifelong learning discourses
We start, therefore, with examining two denitions for lifelong
learning (LLL). I have discussed elsewhere (Preece, 2006, 2009,
2011) the differences between the European Memorandum of
2000, and that of the draft document developed by the (less
authoritative) Southern African Development Community (SADC)
Technical Committee for Lifelong Learning in 2003. But in
summary, the language of the European memorandum tends
towards individual development and competitiveness in the
context of economistic visions for growth in Europe. Its denition
in 2000 was as follows:
[A]ll purposeful activity, undertaken on an ongoing basis with
the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competence . . . To
adjust to the demands of social and economic change and to
participate actively in the shaping of Europes future (Commis-
sion of the European Communities (CEC), 2000, p. 3).
While, on p. 5, the memorandum does cite two LLL purposes of
promoting active citizenship and promoting employability, its
focus on p. 7 privileges vocational education and training . . . [to]
equip all young people with the new basic skills required in a
knowledge-based economy. Subsequent analyses of later Europe-
an Commission documents in this respect draw similar conclu-
sions (Holford and Mohorcic Spolar, 2012).
There continue to be many critiques in the north about the
imbalances of perspective for this economistic focus (Field, 2005;
Jackson, 2011 amongst others) and there were distinctive efforts at
national levels to re-focus towards a more socially oriented version
of LLL (see the community learning policy document by the
Scottish Executive, 2004 in the UK, for example). There is also
much academic literature that discusses the social context of
learning (for example Wenger, 1999).
But the point to be made here is that, within the African
continent, the vocabulary for equivalent attempts to dene lifelong
learning produces some interesting shades of difference. The SADC
version forefronts these interests in a more collective, intercon-
nected and holistic way, even, for instance, referring to global,
rather than the memorandums focus on European, contexts:
Lifelong education is a comprehensive and visionary concept
which includes formal, non-formal and informal learning
throughout the lifespan of an individual to attain the fullest
possible development in personal, social and vocational and
professional life It views education in its totality, and includes
learning that occurs at home, school, community and work-
place, and through mass media and other situations and
structures for acquiring and enhancing knowledge, skills and
attitudes.
. . . A key purpose of lifelong learning is democratic citizenship,
connecting individuals and groups to the structures of social,
political and economic activity in both local and global contexts
(in Aitcheson, 2003, p. 165).
The SADC text, it will be argued from a postcolonialist
perspective, reects a positional worldview that is often promoted
in the South but weakened by policy agendas for international aid.
Furthermore, it is now widely recognised (Torres, 2003; Preece,
2009) that internationally agreed development targets in the new
millennium have deected interest in the notion of LLL for
populations in the South to a narrow discourse focus on universal
primary education.
Medel Anonuevo (2006) elaborates this argument by highlight-
ing a series of international events which coincided with enhanced
European interest in lifelong learning, starting with the UNESCO
world conference Education for All (EFA) in Jomtien in 1990. This
conference introduced a range of goals which came to be known as
the EFA goals. They followed the principles of lifelong learning by
identifying targets for early childhood education, universal
primary education, life skills, literacy and gender equality.
However, since many of the targets specically related to countries
receiving international development aid, EFA became the dis-
course for the South, while lifelong learning was adopted as the
discourse for the North. Moreover, while in 2000 the Commission
of European Communities produced their Memorandum for
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Lifelong Learning with a view to enhancing Europes economic
growth, the United Nations Millennium Summit of 2000 formu-
lated eight international development targets which became
known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These
were signed up to by the World Bank, the IMF, Heads of State and
other international development agencies. The MDGs deected
attention away from the broader EFA targets of countries classied
as developing. Education goals were reduced and sealed the
shift in international aid for over a decade to what has been
criticized as a narrow educational focus on universal primary
education, and there are now signs that this agenda is shifting to
include secondary education (Tikly and Barrett, 2011).
In its endeavor to highlight alternative positions this paper
perhaps over generalizes the polarities between the north and
south. It is recognized that not all views of learning in the south,
particularly amongst the younger generation share a collectivist
view of living and learning (Preece and Mosweunyane, 2004, for
example). However, the issue that the international aid relation-
ship with Africa is driven by external agendas has been presented
frequently enough (Samoff, 1999, for instance). Similarly, others
have presented different perspectives on the tensions between
economistic and social approaches to schools education in relation
to development (see Tikly and Barrett, 2011 in relation to human
capital and rights based approaches, Jansen, 2005 in relation to
target and measurement setting for schools). But policy shifts
slowly into practice and there is evidence (Aitcheson and Alidou,
2008) that lifelong learning policies in African contexts are still
framed within discursive tensions that are played out differently
from those in the north and with little recognition of the context in
which those agendas are set.
4. Development discourses for lifelong learning
Critiques of development discourses that fail to develop, stretch
back a long way. One of the most empirically grounded critiques
comes from Ferguson (1994) who demonstrates, using Lesotho as
an example, how the language of development texts constructs the
objects of development as a development problem. He cites, for
instance how Lesotho is promoted by the World Bank as a
development problem where:
Impediments to development of the national economy are thus
located in lack of roads and markets, lack of training and
education, lack of agricultural inputs . . . [P]roblems which loom
largest in other, non-development accounts, such as structural
unemployment, inux control, low wages, political subjugation
. . . parasitic bureaucratic elites, and so on, simply disappear.
Therefore, he argues, development projects never manage to
solve the problem they were designed to address because the
problem is being dened in a way that serves predetermined
images of problem and solution, while ignoring other, associated
realities.
Robinson-Pant (2008) examines the UNESCO Global Monitoring
Report (UNESCO, 2006) Literacy for Life in this respect in order to
expose how the meaning of literacy practices is inuenced by the
dominant instrumental view of literacy (2008, p. 785) through the
construction of language in the report.
Escobar, in the context of Columbia, draws heavily on Foucaults
concepts of knowledge, power, subjectivities and resistance in
relation to concepts of development and underdevelopment. This
includes Foucaults concept of disciplinary power where those
being discursively dened ultimately adopt the external denitions
of their underdevelopment such that they are hegemonically
drawn into denitions and discourses that undermine their
identities. Since power is vulnerable, multiple systems of discursive
practices serve to undermine resistant discourses. Escobar (1995)
discusses the mechanisms by which a certain order of discourse
produces permissible modes of being and thinking while disqualify-
ing and even making others impossible (p. 5). The extent to which
this happens in the illustrative case examples will be discussed later
in this paper.
In relation to lifelong learning and development, Torres (2003,
p. 144) points out that the educational language of international
development agencies for countries in the South has the effect of
predetermining how policy agendas are formulated. The effect is to
create an educational ceiling for countries in the South:
Goals formulated in terms of universal primary education,
improving the quality of education, reducing illiteracy rates,
reducing school repetition, reducing school drop out or
preventing school failure activate very different mindsets,
policies and expectations than goals formulated as universal
basic education, literacy for all, improving the quality of
learning, ensuring retention in school, ensuring school
success and striving towards lifelong learning for all.
In the new millennium issues are usually framed by develop-
ment indicators that include large-scale poverty especially in
rural areas, unemployment, famine, conicts, illiteracy, poor
access to basic health and other services, the highest incidences
of HIV infections in the world, as well as concerns for democracy,
gender inequalities, environmental degradation, conict zones,
low productivity, access to, and drop-out rates from, school. Yet the
only solution is an economistic one. So when the World Bank does
write about lifelong learning for developing countries, it is
prescribed without reference to its own articulated concerns for
democracy and inequality:
Lifelong learning from early childhood to retirement is
education for the knowledge economy and it is as crucial in
transition and developing economies as it is in the developed
world (World Bank, 2003, backcover).
In this World Bank document on lifelong learning, economic
sustainability is the starting point not human rights. There is
little discussion of the notion of lifelong learning itself and barely a
reference to adult education literature. Fleeting reference is made
on page four to the value of social capital. This is measured in
econometric terms as the ability of actors to secure benets such
as assets and credit (Grootaert, 2001, p. 13), even though there is
extensive literature on other, well-being effects of social capital in
relation to lifelong learning (Field, 2005).
These concepts contrast sharply with the range of lifelong
learning needs in the South that are identied by other writers.
Odora Hoppers (1996), for instance, advocates that education
should address: peace building, the role of civil society, community
involvement, womens participation in politics and human rights
issues and conict management, social justice, world complexities
and sustainable development, as well as economic growth.
Whilst such dichotomies of purpose are also articulated by
writers in the north, the difference for continents like Africa is that
there is an assumption in the international development aid
agendas that the South is not able to speak for itself and has no
learning history of its own. The fact that the international agenda is
already framed within a discourse of equity and development
means that other voices for equity are silenced and delegitimized.
A textual interpretation of this point is provided by Biccum
(2005). He analyses in detail some of the promotional literature on
development by the UK Department for International Develop-
ment (DfID). He exposes how the vocabulary of poverty and
globalization is repackaged and marketed as a modernized version
of the nineteenth century civilizing mission (p. 1005). He
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demonstrates how DfIDs narrative of development fails to
acknowledge the responsibility of globalization for the new era
of poverty, by using a discourse which instead suggests a
benevolent attempt by the beneciaries of globalization to help
the poor. What Biccum highlights is the spaces in-between the
literature what is left out in the narrative reveals more than what
is actually said.
Since international aid agencies dene the conditions for their
support, they inevitably inuence the national policies of the
recipient countries. The following two case examples of a small
selection of texts illustrate the extent to which this happens and
the price that governments must pay in terms of national identity,
cultural and philosophical heritage. Following these examples
there will be a discussion of some of the silenced texts of
indigenous values and how they might be woven together with
current lifelong learning debates in the North.
5. Tanzania
Tanzania is a Republic consisting of its mainland country and
three neighbouring islands, known as Zanzibar for devolved
governance purposes. It has a population approaching 42 million
and is currently ranked 152 out of 187 countries on the Human
Development Index (UNDP, 2011). The majority of the population
is still rural with approximately 80% working in the agricultural
sector.
Tanzanias adult and lifelong learning heritage is well
documented (Mulenga, 2001; Yule, 2001; Bhalalusesa, 2004).
The concept of lifelong learning was enshrined in the countrys
post Independence Arusha Declaration of 1967 by former
president Mwalimu Julius Nyerere where he stated that education:
[H]as to foster the social goals of living together and working
together for the common good. It has to prepare our young
people to play a dynamic role and constructive part in the
development of a society in which all members share fairly in
the good or bad fortune of the group, and in which progress is
measured in terms of human well-being (Nyerere, 1967, p. 6).
Nyereres legacy of a commitment to adult education posi-
tioned the nations development agenda within a lifelong learning
context. Primary schools, for instance, are still used as dual purpose
sites for adult education and literacy classes. Equally the countrys
long-term peace and social cohesion may also be attributed to
some of Nyereres early philosophies and concern with national
unity. Since Independence in 1964 it achieved a dramatic rise in
schooling and literacy, but then suffered a series of declines such
that it succumbed to the structural adjustment pressures of the
IMF and World Bank from the mid 1980s, but continued to show
declining standards of health, education and economy (Yule,
2001).
The year 1995 was marked by a new Education and Training
Policy and change of governance to decentralization. The policy
was followed by Tanzanias development document Vision 2025
and other strategy papers in line with aid requirements for
developing countries. The Vision 2025 text (United Republic of
Tanzania [URT], 2002) deserves closer scrutiny as a discursive
example of the power relationship between international aid and
national development policy.
A close reading of its Vision 2025 development strategy reects
a dramatic change in direction from the Nyererean value base. The
Vision text is constructed in overtly neo-liberal discourses. The
indications are that the Tanzanian government is not in control of
its own agenda. Indeed, indigenous knowledge and traditional
cultural values are barely visible in this document.
We are standing at the threshold of the 21st Century, a Century
that will be characterised by competition,.. advanced techno-
logical capacity, high productivity, modern and efcient
transport and communication infrastructure.. we must, as a
Nation.. withstand the expected intensive economic competi-
tion ahead of us. (URT, 2002, Foreword)
In this vision document the words competition and competi-
tiveness occur at least 11 times in the rst section alone.
Associated vocabulary reects the neo liberal agenda with words
like entrepreneurship, growth, dynamic economy, high pro-
ductivity, market-led economy. The development policies of
previous eras are undermined or re-inscribed because they were
not in consonance with the principles of a market led economy
and technological development (Introduction). So the focus on a
competitive development mindset is the new interpretation of
Nyereres self-reliance culture. Nyereres concepts of national
unity and social cohesion in an environment of democracy and
political and social tolerance are included in the vision document
for the purpose of creating wealth (Section 1.2.3). The aspired for
well educated and learning society must embrace the competi-
tive spirit regionally and internationally. The Arusha declaration is
critiqued for insufciently addressing the complexity and
dynamic character of policies and incentive structures which
were necessary to effectively drive the development process..
based overly on state-control (section 2.0). The stage is set,
therefore, for a donor-led form of capitalism, with the goal that this
approach should ultimately reduce donor dependency and a
defeatist developmental mindset.
The document is openly self-critical of past endeavours,
referring to their outcomes in terms of concepts such as
apathy. . . erosion of trust and condence. . . failures in
governance and organization . . . corruption and other vices.
In contrast the future predicts the country in terms of a strong
and competitive economy . . . active and competitive player in
the regional and world markets . . . reversing current adverse
trends (section 3.3) with recognition of individual initiative and
the private sector (section 4). This public document is a
discursive reection of Foucaults (1980) rendering of disciplin-
ary power where people become docile bodies and behave as if
being watched (p. 154).
Tanzanias Vision 2025 document is indicative of external
inuences on an indigenous communitarian philosophy. Indeed
the shift in ministerial title, in 2007, from its original version of
Ministry for Education and Culture, to Ministry of Education and
Vocational Training is a further reection of such inuences.
Reference to indigenous knowledge and Nyereres educational
philosophy of ujamaa (roughly translated as familyhood) are
noticeably absent from current lifelong learning concepts.
While the text of Tanzanias vision 2020 appears to have
embraced the neo liberal vision in its entirety, subsequent
documents related specically to education, suggest a degree of
internal agency that continues to resist this ideology where it is able
to do so. The Education Sector Plan (Ministry for Education and
Culture, 2004, p. vi) enshrines lifelong learning in a development
programme for adult and non-formal education. Goals include
eradication of poverty, increased literacy and provision for out-of-
school children and youth within a framework of improving
livelihoods, awareness of HIV, gender and environmental issues,
governance and sustained social and economic development.
Post literacy and continuing education are core components of
the plan, delivered through a range of formal and non-formal
providers, drawing on Nyereres heritage of community managed,
village level committees to foster ownership of the lifelong
learning principle. Tanzanias concept of literacy embraces this
holistic concept and is dened as: the acquisition and use of
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reading, writing and numeracy skills in the development of active
citizenship, improved health and livelihoods and gender equality
(Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, 2008, p. 48). It
seems, therefore, that the Vision 2025 document is a strategic text
to deect attention away from ideologies that are more closely
afliated to local agendas. However, the difference in focus
between these texts is potentially damaging to a development
context of scarce resources in need of coherence of effort.
This latter issue is particularly evident in Lesotho. In Lesothos
policy documents there is overt discursive tension between the
desire to retain a cultural identity and the constraints to conform to
donor demands, so that efforts of self-determination within
government are subject to ongoing policy interference.
6. Lesotho
Lesotho is a constitutional monarchy with a democratically
elected parliament. It has a population of only two million, but is also
70% rural, consisting largely of subsistence farming. It is currently
ranked 160 out of 182 countries on the latest human development
index (UNDP, 2011). Lesotho is smaller and ethnically more
homogenous than Tanzania. It also has a more fragile political
history of independence, and self rule, having a continuous
democratically elected government structure only since 1998. This
background perhaps contributes to the countrys Poverty Reduction
Strategy emphasis on preservation and promotion of culture [a]s an
integral part of the battle against poverty and conict (GOL, 2004, p.
79). Indeed the equivalent document to Tanzanias Vision 2025 the
Lesotho Governments Vision 2020 (GOL, 2001) is resonant of very
different ambitions from those of Tanzania:
By the year 2020 Lesotho shall be a stable democracy, a united
and prosperous nation at peace with itself and its neighbours. It
shall have a healthy and well-developed human resource base.
Its economy will be strong, its environment well managed and
its technology well established (p. 1).
Rather than using words associated with competition and
modernization, the vocabulary of this document is concerned with
unity and peace. In particular there is a strong reference to
traditional values: cherished norms and values that will enhance a
sense of belonging, identity and pride in every Mosotho.. common
cultural heritage.. political tolerance.. state of unity. Reference is
made to the Sotho greeting khotso, meaning peace. This concept
is reinforced by concepts such as truthfulness, love, tolerance,
justice, living in harmony, fair distribution of income and
wealth. Perhaps most signicantly, when the text refers to
modernization it emphasizes the need for integration of tradition
and modern health practices (p. 5).
In the same vein, although the connection between lifelong
learning and vocational and entrepreneurial education is made, it
is done in the context of using locally available and natural
resources thus implying a desire to maintain some ownership of
the development process. Similarly reference to a mandatory
cultural day in schools (p. 8) reinforces the concern with
maintenance of the nations cultural heritage.
The language of the Lesotho Vision 2020 appears less compliant
than Tanzanias vision 2025. For instance the Lesotho document
refers to threats which not only include increasing competition
from international markets, but also donor conditionalities.
Indeed an unwillingness to comply with such conditions as
structural adjustment policies is thinly disguised in the sentence:
It is a challenge for Lesotho to sustain internationally accepted
prudent levels in terms of debt service ratio, (p. 16) thus leaving
the reader in no doubt that many of the vision strategies are
externally imposed rather than homegrown ones. But such
resistances are hard won, as evidenced by attempts at policy
making for non-formal education (NFE) and the subsequent
Education Sector Strategic Plan (GOL, 2005).
A draft NFE policy was completed in 2000 (Braimoh, 2000).
Although this draft policy is often referred to in subsequent
education documents it was never formally ratied. It is wide
ranging in scope with goals such as meaningful rural development
and the advancement of love, justice, respect for human rights and
peace and the promotion of positive cultural values and a
disciplined moral society (p. 24). The draft policy called for a fully
edged NFE department within the Ministry and for the
Department to play a signicant role in the coordination and
provision of NFE services, within a wider lifelong learning remit.
It appears, however, that this NFE draft policy was discouraged by
the countrys most inuential funder vested with authority to know
the World Bank. A reading of the World Bank implementation
report (World Bank, 2004) on its education sector development loan
to Lesotho, highlights that the policy was not achieved because of
insufcient consultation or priority. The Ministry was cautioned
not to take over services that are already being provided by NGOs
and other private sector providers (p. 13). Yet the NFE document
itself emphasized wide consultation and high priority for NFE. It may
be, therefore, that World Bank priorities deected attention away
from the broader NFE vision thus ensuring a reduced role for the
Ministry with subsequent consequences for how NFE (and by
implication lifelong learning) would be implemented. Government
responsibility for LLL and NFE in the subsequent Education Sector
Plan (GOL, 2005) was reduced to a coordination role primarily for
literacy. Instead of a whole department with responsibility for NFE,
there is an NFE inspectorate represented by one person within the
Ministry of Education. This means the inspectorate is unable to do
much more than monitor existing provision.
Such examples of donor interference mean that policies for
lifelong learning are minimized and de-culturalised in these
contexts, even when there is evidence of internal country
resistances. The inevitable effect is to weaken governmentality
of policy, potentially raising new spaces for subversion, disorgani-
zation and subsequent implementation failures.
The power relationship between discourses, however, is a fragile
one. There is growing evidence of discursive spaces for alternative
voices from a variety of perspectives from the South in relation to
lifelong learning. It is suggested here that these voices could be
harnessed to promote new agendas if supported by a collective,
global voice.
7. Lifelong learning in Africa
In spite of the above international interventions, lifelong
education and lifelong learning have been discussed in the South
since the 1970s. For example the former Tanzanian President
Mwalimu Julius Nyereres post Independence plans for growth in his
Arusha Declaration (Nyerere, 1967) have already been outlined. Over
the years a number of conferences between UNESCO and the
Ministries of Education of African Member States (MINEDAF) have
continued this theme, as exemplied by their Durban Statement of
commitment in 1998:
We commit ourselves to an expanded role for education which
should be a lifelong process, a continuum which transcends
schooling systems and which focuses on the building of a
learning society (UNESCO, 1998, p. 4).
And again in 2002:
Promoting lifelong learning in Africa entails the creation of
literate societies, the valuing of local knowledge, talent and
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wisdom, the promotion of learning through formal and non-
formal education, and taking the best advantage of the new
information and communication technologies and the divi-
dends of globalisation (UNESCO and MINEDAF, 2002, p. 1).
In the context of Africa this paper argues that lifelong learning
agendas have to harness the continents local knowledge, talent
and wisdom by drawing on its own context specic heritagebut
within a modern frame of reference. A brief look at that heritage
prefaces the broader discussion on alternative discourses.
7.1. Indigenous African perspectives
It has already been stated that these world views are not
universally held across Africa. But a number of writers claim that
there are distinctively African philosophical worldviews that are
associated with concepts of connectedness, communalism, interde-
pendency and intersubjectivity (Bell, 1997, for example). A primary
indicator of these ideas is the way the individual is positioned in
relation to others. For many Africans the individual exists for society
and society for the individual (Fordjor et al., 2003, p. 190; Fasokun
et al., 2005) where knowledge is a shared, seamless resource and
learning is rmly rooted in the African experience of living within
ones own society (Lekoko and Modise, 2011). Life and death are
strongly connected. The notion of the collective, and the interde-
pendence of all humans, includes connections with the dead and the
yet to be born. Many Africans still refer to their ancestors for advice
and support for the living. The individual is therefore dened
strongly in terms of his or her relationship with others. Traditional
learning activities build on the same ideologies and inform
perceptions of lifelong learning. African discourses promote the
existence of the community and put its interests before the self. The
development of collective self reliance, for instance, means it is the
duty of everyone to teach and learn and for the strong to provide for
the weak, harmonizing individual interests with community
interests (Ntuli, 2002). The SADC denition of lifelong learning,
referred to in section three of this paper, is arguably a reection of
this more collective stance.
Lekoko and Modise (2011), in expanding this concept of lifelong
learning, distinguish a number of features of learning in terms of
dimensions, one of them being the dimension of I/We; We being
the term used by Africans and I being the thought concept used by
westerners when referring to the self. Thus the individual in this
sense is not the same as the western concept of an individual as a
separate entity. This issue is best explained through the Sesotho
proverb motho ke motho ka batho (A person is a person through
other persons).
In support of this distinction Nyamjoh (2002) refers to another
proverb a child is one persons only in the womb which explains
that traditionally the child belongs to the wider community and its
identity is moulded by many. These notions of connectedness,
spirituality and the collective nature of being impact on how
people interact and what they do with their learning.
So, for instance, Nyereres Kiswahili concept of ujamaa would be
realised through the development of self-contained village
communities, supported by collective agricultural practice in
those villages, where:
[P]rogress is measured in terms of human well-being, not
prestige buildings, cars, or other things whether privately or
publicly owned. Our education must therefore indicate a
sense of commitment to the whole community (Nyerere,
1967, p. 6).
Adult education within this context was seen as liberation from
ignorance and dependency, raising of consciousness, inspiring a
desire for change. It was rmly embedded in a communitarian
concept of lifelong learning.
While these positions are not without their critics (e.g.
Mbembe, 2001), and are not geographically or socially cast in
stone, they are illustrative of tendencies that pave the way for an
approach to lifelong learning that is essentially less individualistic
than the version promoted for instance, by the European
Commission (Commission of the European Communities, 2000).
Yet externally imposed discourses for education in relation to
development rarely link lifelong learning with this broader agenda.
Instead they promote a particular vision based on a decit model of
what continents like Africa lack, rather than recognition of its
disregarded riches of indigenous knowledge, cultural, spiritual and
social values.
8. Alternative discourses for lifelong learning
Alternative discourses come from a variety of quarters. The
focus here is on those that emanate from the political South. Three
examples are provided here. The rst results from the expanding
use of the internet and its mediation through e-mail by an
international non-governmental organization, the International
Council for Adult Education (ICAE). ICAE frequently applies simple
use of e-mail technology to facilitate global discussions amongst
contributers who do not have sufcient bandwidth for more
elaborate exchanges. During its virtual seminar of October 2009,
prior to the UNESCO led CONFINTEA VI conference on adult
education, participants were invited to highlight their concerns for
adult and lifelong learning.
The contributions focused on a desire for change in values and a
stronger recognition of the contribution of indigenous value
systems, which privilege humanness over prot. An example of
this comes from Arkonada (2009, Education Debate no. 6). She
introduces the concept of living well as an alternative interpreta-
tion of development. Living well is developed from the
Ecuadorean concept of Pachamama, translated as mother earth.
Arkonadas description of this philosophy bears many resem-
blances to comparable words in African languages (such as the
term ubuntu in South Africa). These terms reect complementarity,
reciprocity, and communitarianism: We have been taught and
educated to live better but not to live well (ibid). By living well the
emphasis is on living in harmony with each other and mother
earth, through a global citizenship responsibility that respects
diversity and puts people before prot. In the current context of the
failure of global capitalism and ongoing struggles to protect the
planet from environmental disasters such messages reinforce
ongoing cries for a renewed world vision that challenges
established ethical and ideological norms and practices (Sen-
gupta, 2009, Education Debate no. 12).
A second example from the global South includes the now, well
established measurement in Bhutan of Gross National Happiness
(GNH), which is required to work in synergy with the more
conventional concept of Gross National Product (GNP). GNH
measures well being rather than production. It aims to redress the
imbalances of environmental sustainability that are caused by
production patterns. Indices of basic happiness overlap with GNH
since they include qualities of nutrition, housing, education, health
care and community life (Bakshi, 2005). In this respect Mustafa
(2005) describes four pillars of economic self reliance, pristine
environment, promotion of Bhutans culture, and good governance,
as strategies for the promotion of well-being, to run alongside
additional indicators such as satisfaction with personal relation-
ships and purpose in life.
A third example comes from the increasing body of academic
literature that emanates from the South.
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Writers such as Torres (2003), Mbigi (2005), Amutabi and
Okech (2009) and Preece (2009) are arguing for more indigenous
contributions to lifelong learning. For instance, Mbigi (2005), in the
context of Africa, emphasizes that people in leadership positions
should root their strategies in African cultural belief systems and
thought (p. 5). Both Mbigi and Torres refer to the De Lors (1996)
pillars for lifelong learning, offering a more relevant interpretation
that respectively embraces indigenous perspectives as well as our
contemporary contexts.
The four pillars (learning to know, to do, to be, to live together)
that were cited in the De Lors (1996) report were intended as
universal aspirations. Mbigi suggests they can be interpreted
through an African lens that emphasises traditional learning by
doing, the ubuntu philosophy of living together in interdependent
relationships, and reection on lifes experiences (Mbigi, 2005, p.
145): Education should seek to develop not only the full potential of
a person but also all the multiple intelligences of a given individual.
Thus Mbigi invites us to examine lifelong learning through an
African lens that privileges the collective over the individual, which
in turn impacts on reectivity and learning by doing.
Torres in 2003 suggested that a fth dimension should be added
to accommodate contemporary concerns:
Learning to be, to know, to do and to live together is not enough.
Learning to adapt to change is not enough. Learning to change,
to proactively direct or re-direct change for human well-being
and development, remains a critical challenge and the mission
of education and learning systems, especially in todays highly
inequitable world (p. 34).
Torres additional notion of learning to change invites us to
take account of these past as well as future contexts for lifelong
learning, thus making the link between learning for all levels of
education and development as a national and human aspiration.
Alternative perspectives are plentiful. But some of these
discussions remain fragmented within isolated texts. The African
Civil Society Report (African Platform for Adult education, 2008) in
preparation for the CONFINTEA VI event captures the concept of
life-wide learning, encourages recognition of diversity, collabora-
tive partnerships and relevance of indigenous knowledges. At a
recent colloquium in South Africa on sustainable rural learning
ecologies Mpisi (2011) talks about an asset-based (as opposed to
the discursively more negative concept of needs-based) approach
to training small scale farmers by drawing on their existing skill
and knowledge. Issues of human trafcking, conict, corruption,
climate change, inequalities and increasing disparities between
the rich and poor are not being addressed within dominant
frameworks and those frameworks continue to be challenged
(ICAE, 2011).
Although there are textual representations by northern and
southern academics in journals and there is an occasional book on
lifelong learning that invites a chapter from the South (for example
Jackson, 2011), these examples are infrequent and do not impact
on policy. Recognition of these issues is beginning to emerge
through such publications as the UNESCO World Report (2010)
which emphasizes the need for intercultural dialogue in order to
unlock deep rooted antagonisms (p. 9). UNESCO suggests the need
to facilitate a more hybrid development of cultural dynamics:
Strategies that promote recognition of traditional and even tacit
forms of knowledge can open avenues for the presentation of
vulnerable societies while broadening the scope of mainstream
knowledge (p. 17). Similar arguments in relation to literacy are
presented by Hildebrand and Hinzen (2004) amongst others.
Without an increase in such interactions between the North and
South the element of life-wide learning across the globe is
distorted and unrepresentative.
9. Concluding summary
This paper has discussed the textual representation of lifelong
learning discourses in the south that are largely engineered by
international development agendas, using Lesotho and Tanzania as
illustrative case examples. It argues that the resultant effect for
these recipient countries is to distort and fragment policy so that
development itself is weakened in the struggle by nations to retain
some ownership over their own contexts and identities in the face
of external interference. There seems to be a disjuncture between
the social nature of the problems listed in global development
indicators, by those with authority to know, and the proposed
economistic solutions to these problems. Those labeled as having
authority to know are given legitimate power, reinforced by their
discourses which use language that frames resistant discourses as
less authoritative or silences them completely. The authoritative
effect of these discourses is to silence debate, by those without
authority to know, that targets similar indicators within a well-
being context through more humanistic solutions. This discursive
gap contributes to the perpetuation of development issues so they
remain a problem.
Literature from southern contexts has highlighted a number
of distinctive features that might contribute to a more holistic
discourse for lifelong learning. This paper has suggested that
northern texts often fail to recognize southern ideologies, thus
contributing to their ongoing marginalization and silencing of
the very voices that might contribute to the strengthening of
alternative discourses to inuence policy on a global level. Only
a small selection of texts has been used to illustrate, and
support, similar discursive analyses from other authors, though,
as Della Faille (2011) suggests, more in-depth projects are
required to complete the picture. Nevertheless the analysis
highlights issues that require closer attention in policy
approaches to development.
Some ways forward to bridge the gaps in understanding of
development in different contexts might include recommenda-
tions in the UNESCO (2010) World Report that argue for greater
dialogue and recognition of diversity. This reects the notion of
culture as a dynamic process but one which is allowed to emerge in
hybrid forms, rather than be forced to change direction to t an
externally imposed agenda. Directly linked to this is the need to
explore how the communitarian concept of lifelong learning
espoused in academic terms in some quarters of the political north,
and drawing on strong traditions within African contexts - might
nurture a more holistic form of social capital. These more
collaborative approaches to understanding development as
organic and context bound have, it is argued, greater potential
to contribute to the wider lifelong learning needs that have been
articulated by Odora Hoppers, Torres and others.
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