An Anticolonial Development: Race, Schooling, and Emancipation in Twentieth-Century West Africa (African Studies) - Softcover

Prosperetti, Elisa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 100961858X ISBN 13: 9781009618588

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2026

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

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

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 100961858X
• ISBN 13: 9781009618588
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320