Abstract
Over the past three decades, Sub-Saharan Africa has registered significant interest in literacy, even as the region pursues progress, development, and nationhood. But what forces have shaped such pertinent themes as access to opportunities for the advancement of literacy, and the trajectories for the attainment of this pursuit? These and other questions are what this book strives to answer. Sustaining Literacy in Africa: Developing a Literate Environment is written to further earlier studies and initiatives on the topic, as promoted by international agencies such as UNESCO. These agencies have established benchmarks and mapped routes to accelerate gains in literacy and numeracy acquisition, while also pushing for positive reforms to improve resource management and reinforce the literate environment. The book starts off as an ambitious and critical inquiry into the forces, both internal and external, that surround this beleaguered subject. It then goes on to address current discussions on the social, political, and economic conditions that remain challenges to the advancement of a literate environment in Africa, all in a span of eight chapters, across some 248 pages. In all, the book serves as a powerful lens to the region’s relentless pursuit of literacy.
Easton’s book is a treasure trove of knowledge and an important resource for educators, more so development professionals and stakeholders. These include politicians, health administrators, agricultural leaders, economists, researchers, policy makers, and civil society members committed to fostering a progressive literacy agenda in Africa. The book is meticulously researched, with highlights on historical origins, evolving definitions and New Literacy Studies, as well as pointers from the Bersche Institute and related theoretical models and new trends. The author’s approach to the data on this disempowered region has its roots in two domains: one, his vantage point as an insider who is guardedly optimistic and, two, his objective perspective as an outsider. Borrowing from the latter, Easton makes candid judgment rooted in historical and cultural realities about leadership, resource management, multilingualism, as well as language use and preferences. He exploits these traits of the African situation to contextualize the tension between politics and development policies, which are sometimes progressive and often plain reactionary.
The debate over the literate environment in Africa is hardly new. It is rather at a crossroads against a backdrop of mounting sustainability issues in many poor African communities. In this quite readable text, the author enriches our knowledge and powers his arguments with a new stroke of realism. Throughout, he emphasizes the supply and demand questions. While the supply side is more promising, he argues, the demand side is lacking in vision and adequacy to meet the learning requirements of today’s competitive world. A key postulate is that, in Africa, the evolution of the literate environment boasts small triumphs: it serves a broad literacy constituency, which includes schools, organizational and workforce settings, technical and vocational training institutions, as well as postliteracy activities. Because achievements in these areas register a mixed picture of successes and modesty, literacy mastery should be a key objective in the multisectoral development areas agitating for change.
A weakness that stands out in the narrative is that the scope of this text is quite broad. To support his argument, Easton references examples of selected countries’ literacy projects. Good examples are the expansive details on Ethiopia and Senegal (and their micro-finance and banking activity), and the POTAL-MEN of Fulani herding communities in Upper Benin. It would have been advantageous to the reader had the focus been narrower and offered breakdowns that allow comparisons of the progress of the three principal language subregions (Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone) on literacy empowerment, as well as contributions to the literate environment. Equally, the importance of gender, gender inequality, and the unprecedented growth and value of technology (particularly the proliferation of cell/mobile phones) are serious impact variables that called for deeper analysis. An asset of this text is the third chapter on methodology. While it is instructive on the approaches, it is not the author’s own methodology but rather a rich review of qualitative and ethnographic methodologies applied in various studies.
Notwithstanding the growing number of studies in the past few years discussing this enduring and intractable problem of the status of literacy in Africa, this work updates the field by providing an engaging and reflective analysis of the changes and shifts in development strategies. The work also serves as a powerful inquiry into the potential for sustainability of a literate environment if all things were equal. Easton offers a keener understanding of the challenges and prospects for literacy conquest. He enables the reader to have a fresh consideration of his recommendations and imperatives for the region’s socioeconomic, political, and overall well-being. As noted in the Foreword by Qian Tang, “It is only with rich literate environments that truly literate societies can be developed” (p. 6).