Most African education systems are still locked into old patterns that were never designed to build independent nations. Instead of teaching people how to run our economies, manage our resources or question power, schools train students to repeat what they’ve read in textbooks that have either been written somewhere else or written locally with borrowed ideas that don’t fit our context.
Across the continent, what counts as a good education is still linked to foreign exams, foreign universities and foreign approval. English and French are still the main languages of instruction, even in places where only a small percentage of the population uses them at home. That means that from the very beginning, learning is disconnected from most people’s reality. And because of that, the ideas being taught stay abstract. They don’t touch the ground.
Take economics and business education, for example. Many universities still follow Western models, promoting theories that were built for different economies, with different histories and different goals. The result is that students leave school better prepared to join international agencies than to build local businesses. They learn about stock markets before they learn about informal markets. They study industrial agriculture in Europe before they understand the practices that have kept African communities fed for generations.
And it's not just universities. In primary and secondary schools, students are pushed to memorise instead of think. They are taught to pass exams, not to challenge systems. History lessons focus on colonial timelines but often skip over post-independence betrayals, economic sabotage or local resistance. Young people grow up hearing more about Churchill and Napoleon than Sankara or Nyerere. This is conditioning. It’s not education.
This problem is sustained by a mix of policy choices and funding models. Education budgets are influenced by external donors. Curricula reforms are driven by partnerships with European or American agencies. Even teacher training is influenced by foreign consultants. All of this sounds like support, but it locks African education into a loop where progress is defined from outside.
Some countries have started to shift. Rwanda has rolled out education reforms that focus more on problem-solving and use local languages in early schooling. Ethiopia’s education strategy includes mother-tongue instruction and cultural studies, though it faces implementation challenges. South Africa has made attempts to review its history syllabus to include liberation movements and local political thought. But overall, the continent is still working within a system where knowledge is valued only when it comes from abroad.
This has long-term effects. It affects confidence, innovation and decision-making. When generations are taught to look outward for answers, they begin to doubt their own. That’s how dependency works. Through money or politics and through the small ways people are trained to think.
Fixing this doesn’t necessarily require starting from scratch. It requires reclaiming what was already working and making room for new thinking. This means investing in local research, funding African-led publishing, putting more money into teacher training that is rooted in local context and designing systems that reward independent thought and not just foreign standards. It also means allowing schools to become spaces where hard questions are asked and young people are prepared not only to pass, but to lead. Until that happens, education will keep producing smart people who are disconnected from the work their countries actually need.