Drawing on two decades of interviews and ethnographic fieldwork (1998–2018), this book presents a unique and multi-faceted history of youth development in South Africa through the lens of a South African non-governmental organization (NGO) prominent in youth development from the mid-1980s until 2008. The book weaves history, ethnography, and discourse analysis to contextualize the Joint Enrichment Project (JEP) in the politics and history of South African education. It examines JEP’s role leading up to and during South Africa’s transition to democracy, its work and influence in post-apartheid South Africa, and the continued relevance of its legacy to contemporary initiatives seeking to address youth development and social justice. While JEP repeatedly repositioned itself as an organization, from fighting the effects of apartheid on young people to becoming a potential partner with the new African National Congress (ANC)-led government, its most significant role may have been to reposition people. After tracing JEP’s twenty-year history, the book focuses on the participants in a 1998 Youth Work Scheme, exploring their learning experiences and the program’s immediate impact on their lives. It then revisits these participants twenty years later in 2018, analyzing their life trajectories after JEP and comparing them with the life trajectories of former JEP staff over the same period—shedding light on broader patterns of socio-economic reproduction and change in the country. The book concludes with a discussion of a perennial paradox facing youth development institutions. This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of education, international development, anthropology, and African studies.

This book examines the critical aspect of quality assurance maintenance of competitive-standards in African higher education. It explores both the micro and macro-levels of continental African higher education regulatory authorities, and analyses different institutional, regional and national practices for moving towards continental quality assurance approaches. Contributed to by scholars across Eastern and Southern Africa, the book considers conceptual, practical, epistemological and policy dimensions of quality and quality assurance, especially in relation to higher education in Africa. It therefore draws on research and local expertise to open up debate about how to assure and enhance the quality of higher education, providing a comprehensive review of eight countries and considers societal challenges. It aims to satisfy the need of more thoughtful and critical works on African education as produced by African educators. The uniqueness of this book lies in integrating both the theoretical and practical dimensions of quality to devise appropriate strategies for ensuring quality and standards in higher education in continental Africa and beyond. This authoritative book advocates for a timely discussion around the prpvision of good quality higher education and research in African universities, and will be of great interest to academics, policy makers, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of higher education, comparative education and African studies.

Religious Education in Malawi and Ghana contributes to the literature on opportunities and complexities of inclusive approaches to Religious Education (RE). It analyses how RE in Malawi and Ghana engages with religious pluralisation and provides a compelling case for the need to re-evaluate current approaches in the conceptualisation, curriculum design and delivery of RE in schools in Malawi and Ghana. The book explains how a pervasive tradition of selection involving exclusion and inclusion of religion in RE leads to misrepresentation, and in turn to misclusion of non-normative religions, where religion is included but marginalized and misrepresented. The book contributes to wider discourse of RE on opportunities as well as complexities of post-confessional approaches, including the need for RE to avoid perpetuating the continued legitimisation of selected religions, and in the process the delegitimization of the religious ‘other’ as a consequence of misrepresentation and misclusion. Inspired by Braten’s methodology for comparative studies in RE, the book draws on two qualitative studies from Malawi and Ghana to highlight the pervasive problems of religious misclusion in RE. This book will be of great interest for academics, scholars and post graduate students in the fields of RE, African education, educational policy, international education and comparative education..

This innovative volume critically examines the intersection between democracy, education and communication in African educational domains. Providing a platform for multidisciplinary research, it advances scholarship in democratic citizenship education in African higher education through methodological and theoretical innovation. The book discusses the extent to which explicit or subtle communication frameworks that underlie policymaking, institutional culture, teaching and learning experiences in African higher education significantly engender democratic mind habits and practices in students as citizens. Chapters in the book examine how communication frameworks in pedagogy ought to navigate power imbalances between students on the one hand and the institution and academics on the other. The book also examines how (dis)empowering higher education policies are and whether they contribute to democratic equality. This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of education, democratic citizenship education, communication, and African studies.

With comprehensive examples from researchers across East Africa, West Africa, and Southern Africa, the book examines how primary, secondary, and tertiary education was affected by the pandemic and how its effects are shaping the future of education in Africa. This book addresses diverse issues relating to COVID-19 and education, including the gendered-, classed-, and disability-related effects of the pandemic; African educators’ and students’ experiences with different remote learning technologies; and the outcomes of government interventions in education, such as prolonged school closures. The chapters and case studies highlighted in the volume represent the voices of African educators, students, and parents as they share their experiences of the pandemic and their perspectives on how learning should be optimised to better manage future disruptions to education. This book is the first of its kind to comprehensively examine the effects of COVID-19 on education in Africa and will be essential reading for researchers, academics, and scholars of African education, international and comparative education, and education policy.

This book critically examines how the COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated digital innovation within higher education using case studies from Africa. Imagining a future for post-pandemic higher education, it analyses the challenges and opportunities of remote teaching and learning. The book explores the structural barriers around access to higher education and how these were reconfigured and amplified by technology-dependent teaching and learning. Case studies from countries across Africa provide unique insights into the challenges experienced by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) during the COVID-19 pandemic, examining examples of emergent pedagogies such as online, mobile and social media-enhanced teaching, and blended learning. The chapters consider online assessment and teacher professional development, critically examining some of the benefits and structural challenges of digital technology integration in the context of pre-existing education disparities (such as students and teachers living in poverty-stricken and highly unequal societies). Offering invaluable insights into higher education in Africa, the book will be essential reading for researchers, scholars, and students in the fields of higher education study, digital education and educational technology, and African and comparative education. It will also be of interest to higher education managers and policymakers.

The Hidden History of South Africa's Book and Reading Cultures shows how the common practice of reading can illuminate the social and political history of a culture. This ground-breaking study reveals resistance strategies in the reading and writing practices of South Africans; strategies that have been hidden until now for political reasons relating to the country's liberation struggles. By looking to records from a slave lodge, women's associations, army education units, universities, courts, libraries, prison departments, and political groups, Archie Dick exposes the key works of fiction and non-fiction, magazines, and newspapers that were read and discussed by political activists and prisoners. Uncovering the book and library schemes that elites used to regulate reading, Dick exposes incidences of intellectual fraud, book theft, censorship, and book burning. Through this innovative methodology, Dick aptly shows how South African readers used reading and books to resist unjust regimes and build community across South Africa's class and racial barriers.

This volume is the result of academic cooperation between scholars in Norway, Sudan, Zambia, and South Africa linked to a master’s program in international education and development. It draws upon studies carried out in Sudan, Zambia, Namibia, and South Africa. Most of the chapters deal with the HIV/AIDS pandemic in various ways. Because youth are the group most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, the various chapters discuss the complex discursive spaces that youth inhabit and navigate, and where the interlocking concepts of social identity, power, inequality, sexuality, vulnerability, and resilience are brought together. Many of the chapters discuss the HIV/AIDS pandemic in relation to indigenous knowledges and argue for including indigenous knowledges in the fight against the pandemic. The suggestion to include indigenous knowledges opens space for a more varied, holistic, and comprehensive approach to the pandemic. The book invites readers to explore the oppressive and often dangerous socioeconomic situation that many youth in sub-Saharan Africa experience, also beyond the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Chapters on street youth in Namibia and youth in a township in Cape Town discuss the often creative coping mechanisms employed by youth to escape or mitigate the oppressive situations they find themselves in.

This book examines the role that popular media could play to encourage political debate, provide information for development, or critique the very definitions of ‘democracy’ and ‘development’.

Print Culture in Southern Africa is concerned with the institutions and processes informing textual production, circulation and consumption in the region, over a broad historical period from the late 18th century to the present day. The book is organised around three closely related themes. Firstly, it presents original research into the formation of reading publics and the impact of reading cultures, by uncovering obscure but important reading communities and circuits of book distribution and reception. A second theme is the relationship between print and politics, with a particular focus on the networks of power: how control over the production and circulation of printed books has shaped literary and cultural development. The third theme is transnational print culture, and how the control exercised by publishers in Europe and America has shaped literature and society in southern Africa. Drawing together interdisciplinary research and diverse methodologies, the collection encompasses a range of perspectives, including literary studies, anthropology, publishing studies, the history of the book and art history, and many of the chapters are based on previously unexamined archives and collections. The volume contributes to current debates and opens up new and exciting ways of furthering the study of postcolonial literature and African book history. The chapters included in this book were originally published in the Journal of Southern African Studies.