Balancing Africanisation with community education: Implication for achieving the SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities

Abstract

As we begin to witness different innovations and challenges that the 21st century has brought into different sectors including education, some African scholars are already advocating for an education system characterised with African philosophy and African values. Such education is believed by many as the one capable of upholding the indigenous knowledge systems that the people of Africa are known for. The paper amplified the importance of community education in the current advocacy for africanisation of education for sustainable development. The alarming rate of poverty, unemployment, crime, and environmental issues being experienced in most African nations has exposed the weakness of the Western education in addressing the present challenges of the continent, thus, the need to revisit the indigenous forms of community education which were prevalent in Africa before the advent of Western education. ‘Sustainable Cities and Communities’ is the number 11 of the 17 goals recently set by the United Nations in September 2015 to address a broad range of sustainable development issues in Africa and, other continents of the World. The paper posits a proposition for the restructuring of education, both formal and non-formal, in the context of communities in Africa to make the citizens responsible and responsive to both current and future societal needs and demands.

Keywords: Community, Community Education, Indigenous Education, Sustainable Development, NIgeria.