Towards a more community-led approach to Learning and Development: Lessons from precolonial Africa

I wrote an article recently exploring an enabling approach to Learning & Development (L&D), and why this approach is necessary for organisations seeking to embed socio and technical practices associated with fast flow. The enabling approach emphasises (among other things) community-led learning — as in, learning which involves communities (e.g. teams, Communities of Practice, working groups etc.) — working together to identify and address their development needs, supported by learning enablers.

On the subject of community-led learning, I’ve become really inspired lately by some literature on pre-colonial systems of education in Africa. While I appreciate this may seem a little random, it’s really not! There are so many pearls of wisdom in the literature that I find highly relevant in relation to enterprise L&D. I want to share a very condensed version of the learnings I’ve taken so far, in the hope it may provide others with food for thought.

Pre-colonial systems of education: mechanisms for community sustenance

I’m afraid I’ll have to generalise here, by not taking into account the huge amount of cultural and ethnic diversity on the continent of Africa, but please bear with me. It seems that, in pre-colonial times, education was often community-led, meaning it was driven, not by individualism or the needs of a few, but by the needs of the whole community [1]. Moreover, it was the community who owned and implemented their own learning strategies. These strategies included a strong emphasis on in-situ learning, supported by the mentorship of senior practitioners [1–3]. In this manner, people learned by observing others, long before theories about social learning were put forward by Western scholars. This was tacitly understood to be an effective way to learn. Moreover, learning was holistic. For example, someone learning about farming would be expected to learn about all aspects of farming, rather than specialising in one part of the process [3]. This makes sense from a sustainability and risk management perspective — it increases the bus factor, which is vital for the health and survival of the community.

Knowledge was more often shared through person-person interaction than codified. That’s not to say that libraries, universities and formal scholarship didn’t exist — far from it — but, within societies, there was a lot more value placed on informal learning. Indeed, learning was considered a life-long process that was not so much focused on bettering the individual, but on serving the community. And it worked. Communities and kingdoms thrived and prospered. Innovation happened. The metalworking skills that West African slaves took to the Caribbean where they were patented by Europeans [4–5] — these were African innovations that owe their existence to generations of community-led learning.

Learning was recognised as an essential and communal capability, vital to the health of the community. According to one source, there is a Yoruba phrase, oku eniyan, to describe those who fail to learn [6]. It means, “the living dead”, which, intuitively, makes sense — how else do we recognise something as alive, other than by observing it grow and change over time? In this sense, learning is synonymous with being alive and being of value to others. It reminds me of that English phrase, they’re deadwood, which is used to refer to someone — often in a group context — who is considered useless and ineffectual. In a community, someone who doesn’t learn — i.e. who is unable to take on other perspectives or modify their behaviour in response to feedback — might seem a bit like “deadwood” to the rest of their community. Who here hasn’t experienced the pain of living among deadwood?

Indeed, there was a great deal more emphasis on community and on serving the community. While Western philosophies and religious beliefs tend to amplify individuality, and the idea that each individual carries some unique essence that is separate from the sum of their physical parts (i.e. a soul), we find much less emphasis on ‘self’ in other global philosophies, African included. There is, in its place, a stronger sense of oneness and of belonging to something bigger than ourselves, which might explain the natural tendency towards community-led systems of learning. Take the Bantu word Ubuntu as an example. This is a word meaning ‘humanity’ and it is said to emphasise the “interconnectedness between individuals and their surrounding societal and physical worlds.” [7]

Post-colonial systems of education: mechanisms for control

So what happened? Well, Europeans came along, and, after a lot of raping and pillaging, colonial systems of education were established as a more enduring way to exert control over indigenous populations. These were a vehicle by which Europeans sought to impose their own values and religious beliefs; dismantle indigenous customs and traditions; and disempower whole communities, not just in the short-term, but for generations to come, so the West might continue to prosper from the continent’s rich stores of resources. From this point, communities were no longer consulted on learning. Learning was now contrived by outsiders to serve the interests of a dominant power. Of course, things have thankfully been changing since colonised nations have regained independence, but still the legacy of colonialism will take some time to dismantle in African systems of learning and education.

Organisations are made up of communities!

In this condensed and simplistic summary of a hugely significant episode in global history, I’ve referred to communities a lot. For me, there’s something very significant about the concept of community in relation to learning enablement. It occurs to me that the education system which seeks to control will tend to focus on individuals while promoting conformity, whereas the education system that seeks to empower will focus on community, and, in doing so, will allow for divergence among individuals. This feels like an important point to note, if we are to succeed at enabling complex systems to learn.

And, of course, teams are communities too. Yet we don’t typically consider L&D in terms of what the community needs. Instead we have a tendency to devise capability frameworks and progression pathways that implicitly ask for homogeneity, in order to meet a need that originates outside of the community. It begs the question, what might it look like to shift the dial a bit, from controller-led towards community-led?

Food for thought

I’ll conclude this article with some questions for you to ponder…and, of course, I’m also more than happy to have a chat about it!

• Where on the spectrum of community-led vs controller-led does learning and development happen in your organisation?
• What benefits and challenges can you see with the community-led approach to learning?
• How might you move a little further towards a community-led learning ecosystem?

References

[1] Abdi, A. (2011). CHAPTER FIVE: African Philosophies of Education: Deconstructing the Colonial and Reconstructing the Indigenous. Counterpoints, 379, 80–91. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42980886

[2] Ashu, F.E., Lavngwa, M.S., Ngantchop, M.A.T. (2023) African Philosophies of Education and Their Relevance to School Leadership in Africa: A Guide for Educational Systems and School Leaders. Open Journal of Philosophy, 13(1).

[3] Mosweunyane, D. (2013) The African Educational Evolution: From Traditional Training to Formal Education. Higher Education Studies, 3(4).

[4] UCL News (2023) Black metal-workers in Jamaica pioneered key industrial revolution innovation (online)

[5] Adekola, K. (2006) Dynamics of Metal Working Traditions in West Africa. African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter, 9(1).

[6] Merriam, S.B. & Young Sek, K. (2008) Non‐Western perspectives on learning and knowing. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 119, 71–81.

[7] Wikipedia (2024) Ubuntu philosophy