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- Convenors:
-
Anton Tarradellas
(Université de Genève)
Paulos Asfaha (University of Geneva)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussants:
-
Alexander Keese
(Université de Genève)
Pierre Guidi (IRD, université Paris Cité)
- Stream:
- History
- Location:
- David Hume, Lecture Theatre C
- Sessions:
- Friday 14 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel intends to discuss and explore elites' training in modern Africa. Focus will be placed on circulations, connections and transfers that happened through education. It also aims to tackle topics as development, soft power or globalization and welcomes contributions from all disciplines.
Long Abstract:
Since the first contacts between Portuguese and Africans in the 15th century, outsiders arriving in Africa have sought to disseminate knowledge, moral values or technical skills. A significant number of these practice and know-how transfers was specifically intended to local elites or to reshape power structures by creating new leaderships. Four trends can be set. During the colonial era, missions and colonial powers have tried to mold elites loyal to their churches and states. Then, from the interwar period, African nationalists started using education to build a postcolonial leadership. Following independence, US and Soviet superpowers took part in the competition to influence Southern countries through student education, alongside initiatives of IOs and NGOs. Finally, the rise of new centers of influence in Asia and within Africa itself has increased the scope of training opportunities in the current globalization era. (Lulat 2005; Matera 2015; Guimont 1997; Muehlenbeck 2012).
Foreign figures from missionaries to IOs' experts were key actors of this process, alongside aid-receiving individuals. They acted through channels that followed North-South and South-South dynamics and the connections thus created were used to maintain relations of domination, but also allowed disruptive or even liberating movements.
This panel intends to discuss and explore these specificities of elites' training in modern Africa. The thematic focus will be placed on circulations, connections and transfers that happened through education at regional, national and global levels. It also aims to tackle topics as varied as development, soft power or globalization. The panel welcomes contributions from all disciplines.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 14 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to point out the colonial creation of new leaderships - and the reshaping of power structures - in the Lower Casamance region of Senegal during the French colonization, as well as the relationship between chieftainship, Colonial State and Catholic missions.
Paper long abstract:
This paper aims to point out the colonial creation of new leaderships -and the reshaping of power structures- in the Lower Casamance region of Senegal during the French colonization, as well as the relationship between chieftainship, Colonial State and Catholic missions. The French administration struggled to find chiefs in the decentralized societies of the region. Hence, they decided to create two new leaderships: the village and canton chiefs. The French intended to confront them to the traditional authorities or, as they called them, féticheurs. Based on archival and oral sources, this paper will expose the process by which colonial administrators and missionaries tried to mold the local elites to their interests. ¿How they appointed the chiefs? ¿How they educated or, at least, tried to educate them? ¿Which were the functions of these chiefs? ¿How were they seen by their own societies? We will attempt to answer these and other questions by exploring the life and deeds of several chiefs.
Paper short abstract:
This paper consists of a first prosopographical approach of the Burundian, Congolese and Rwandan that immigrated to Brussels between 1945 and 1960. In particular, this study focuses on their training from the colony to Belgian universities and their inscription in the Brussels' urban landscape.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is a first step in my PhD project which consists of a prosopographical study of the Burundian, Congolese and Rwandan cultural elites that immigrated to Belgium between 1945 and 1975. Using a historical perspective, I intend to reinforce the attempts of civil society actors and social scientists to analyze the discriminations suffered by Afro-descendants in today's Belgium in relation to history and colonial memories. The central hypothesis of my study is the following: these cultural elites have presumably been sidelined by Belgian authorities throughout the decolonization process. After the Second World War, Belgium gradually authorized some contingents of "privileged" visitors from the Congo and Ruanda-Urundi to enter the metropolitan territory; we assume that most of them are students or seminarians until independence (1960-1962). We know that their mode of migration differs completely from the waves of Italian, Moroccan and Turkish immigration, based on international and economic agreements. However, we wonder what was the impact of this dissimilarity on the place accorded by the Belgian authorities to each other. Thanks to the Brussels' administrative archives of the Foreigners Police, I will identify these literate immigrants, trace their journey from the colony to the metropole and highlight the common characteristics of this social group. Can we consider them all as elites? What was their basic education and what curriculum did they choose? Which universities did they favor? In which neighborhoods did they settle? I want to answer these questions before addressing their - anticolonial? - intellectual production.
Paper short abstract:
With China's increasing engagement with Africa, the soft areas of China-Africa cooperation remain underresearched compared with trade, investment and infrastructure.This paper will review China's training to African elites under the framework of FOCAC and the evolving China-African relationship.
Paper long abstract:
China's presence in Africa has attracted a lot of research interest in trade, investment and infrastructure. However, little attention has been paid to soft issues in China-Africa cooperation. In fact, China's training courses to African elites become increasingly important. With focus on the history and present of China's training to African elites under FOCAC and the evolving China-Africa relationship, following questions will be discussed. What is the mechanism of China's training to African elites and which ministries, departments and colleges are involved in the training to African elites? What are China's motivations to provide training to African elites? What are the main content of those traininigs? What are the differences of China's training with those provided by Western donors? What are the impact of China's training and the transferability to African countries?
The paper argues that China's training to African elites have unique characters: First, it is based on equality and mutual benefit; Second, Africa's stance of "looking east" in the beginning of the century gave a boost to the exchange of experience on governance between China and Africa. With the deepening of cooperation, African countries realized that they not only need funds and investment from China, but also China's development and governance experiences; Third, China does not take the training as a soft power strategy, but rather as mutual learning process in the South-South cooperation. It is also a public good that China provides to African countries.
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to show how the training of postcolonial African students in American universities fits both in the projects of US expansion and African nations-building, in a context of global Cold War marked by the ideology of development.
Paper long abstract:
In the late 1950s, while anticolonial revolts were about to lead to the creation of independent African states, civil rights activists, philanthropic foundations, African nationalists and US universities joined forces to train Africa's future elites in the United States. After a shy start, these initiatives developed considerably in the 1960s. On the one hand, the new African states were seeking to quickly train the civil servants who would be able to implement modernization projects on the continent. On the other hand, the extension of the Cold War in southern countries led American diplomacy to extend its influence in Africa. The convergence of these African and American interests led to the establishment of large-scale scholarship programs which enabled several thousand young Africans to study in the United States until 1990.
This paper aims to show how the training of postcolonial African students in American universities fits both in the project of expansion of US diplomacy and in that of African nations-building. Taking the example of the ASPAU and AFGRAD programs, it will highlight three essential dimensions of the US training project: its ideological dynamics (modernization theory), the competitive climate (US vs USSR and old colonial metropolises' programs; training abroad vs training at home) and finally the ability of students to play the role of mediators who participated in re-appropriating US influence on the continent.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will explore the role of the scholarship initiatives of the African-American Institute in the training of Nigeria's post-colonial elite class. Focus will not only be placed on short-term global connections and local disruptions but also on the long-term effects of this elite training.
Paper long abstract:
Higher education promised great economic advantage to graduates and newly independent Nigeria. However, with limited spaces within, many percipient Nigerians traveled to the US having accurately judged the shift in global power from Britain to the US since 1945 and taking advantage of the latter's international scholarships during the 1960s and 1970s. Yet, while ASPAU recipients acted as cultural ambassadors in the US, they served as conduits for American interests back home as these international education programmes were integral to US soft power initiatives to shape hearts and minds favourable to their growing world dominance. Notably, the African American Institute (AAI) administered African Scholarships Program at American Universities (ASPAU), culled the cream of Nigeria's finest (previously educated at colonial and missionary secondary schools) between 1961 and 1970. The AAI now has 15,000 alumni worldwide. However, this expansive relationship, involving the global movement of people and ideas, created disruptions in Nigeria's post-independence development as return rates were discouraging and many eventual returnees turned to private sector employment pushing Western models of development.
The academic literature on US higher education support in Africa focuses on Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller philanthropic private initiatives. Therefore, I will examine AAI's role, as a contractor to the US government Agency for International Development, in the training Nigeria's post-colonial elites and how this peculiar training served growing US interests and stymied Nigeria's post-independence development. It will also illuminate how elite training contributed to the subsequent mass exodus of Nigerian intellectual elite class since then.
Paper short abstract:
Looking at the Swiss trading and retailer company UTC, this paper aims to examine the effects of the Nigerian indigenization measures on a private foreign company in regard to management training practices.
Paper long abstract:
When the Swiss Union Trading Company (UTC) expanded into the Nigerian market in 1931, nobody thought about training Nigerians as managers. Instead, all management positions within the company were filled with Swiss citizens. For almost half a century this was to remain the case. New staff was regularly recruited in Switzerland in order to replace outgoing managers and training instructors in Nigeria. Meanwhile, the Nigerians were employed as clerks, drivers, in some cases as shop-keepers in the wide sales network of the company, but usually as simple blue-collar workers. This began to change in the 1970s, when Nigeria launched the "Nigerianization" program. The program required that a substantial part of its shareholding be transferred to Nigerian citizens. In addition, the management had to be "Nigerianized" as well, which means a substantial part of it should consist of locally recruited and trained managers. The company moved into recruiting Nigerian graduates and, in cooperation with ORT (Organization for Educational Resources and Technological Training), created a training program for future Nigerian managers. It took almost 20 years for the first Nigerian to take over the top executive chair in the company. However, he left the company after the last shares of the Swiss parent company were sold to Nigerian shareholders in 1997.