Overview

In what measure could education be an agent of African freedom? Combining histories of race, economics, and education, Elisa Prosperetti examines this question in two West African contexts, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, from the 1890s to the 1980s. She argues that a Black Atlantic perspective changes how we see decolonization and development in West Africa, by revealing schooling's essential role in aspirations of African emancipation. Rejecting colonial exploitation of the African body, proponents of anticolonial development instead claimed the mind as the site of economic productivity for African people. An Anticolonial Development shows how, in the middle of the twentieth century, Africans proposed an original understanding of development that fused antiracism to economic theory, and human dignity to material productivity.

Full Product Details

Author:   Elisa Prosperetti (National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
Weight:   0.630kg
ISBN:  

9781009618625

ISBN 10:   1009618628
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   04 June 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: Moumouni on the seine; 1. 'Improvement of the highest order': race, development, and education in colonial West Africa (1880s–1930s); 2. 'The duty of colonized people': forging an anticolonial politics of West African emancipation (1945–1960); 3. 'Africa's most urgent and vital need': human capital theory, UNESCO, and the ascendance of anticolonial development (1958–1961); 4. 'The most important limiting factor': the paradox of the postcolonial teacher (1957–1980s); 5. 'Let me receive all that I ask': the precarity of school-going in postcolonial West Africa (1950s–1970s); 6. 'The African record is unique': the decline of public schooling and the rise of neoliberalism (1966–1981); Conclusion: stooped/upright; Bibliography; Index.

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Author Information

Elisa Prosperetti is Assistant Professor of History at the National Institute of Education, part of the Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore.

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