Refocusing Adult Literacy, Non Formal Education and Long Life Learning Education for Multiliteracies in Africa

Abstract

There is need for some African standardization of the terminology relating to literacy, adult basic education, non-formal education and lifelong learning, not in any restrictive or prescriptive way, but simply to aid understanding and comparability of data and research emanating from countries in Africa. Clarity will be done in this paper to distinguish adult education from more general community development. After decades of sustained efforts to eradicate illiteracy in Africa, illiteracy rates of adults remain high with continuing gender and urban/rural disparities. Illiteracy has several correlations with low productivity, low incomes and poorer health (and susceptibility to HIV/AIDS). It hampers national development efforts. The adult education sub-sector of state education systems remains relatively marginal and under-funded. In spite of the good economic progressed in many countries since the mid-1990s. This paper examines difficulties in some Africans states that is being attributed to multi-linguistic situations compounded by the often rural and subsistence economy of large proportions of the population. Nigeria for example has about 300 languages and dialects, and Chad some 120, of which only about 12 are codified. The Anglophone/Francophone division in African also provides its own difficulties for co-operation. This paper will therefore provide statistical summary of illiteracy and under-education in African countries. The paper therefore concludes that, adult education should be introduced to all teacher education programmes in African states to enhance multiliteracies.

Keywords: Adult Literacy, Non – Formal Education, Lifelong Learning Education, Multiliteracies.

Refocusing Adult Literacy, Non Formal Education and Long Life Learning Education for Multiliteracies in Africa