Education in much of Africa is largely based on post-colonial Eurocentric or American curriculums that teach little about African history and culture, while what there is, is often skewed.
Children in Freedom School is an Afrocentric school in Kenya taking a different approach to how children learn. They aim to mentor children to embrace who they are and to own their African heritage.
“We’ll tell them, for example, about Mali emperor Mansa Musa who has been dead for roughly 700 or 800 years and yet is still the richest man that has ever lived,” said founder Dr Utheri Kanayo.
The idea for the school was sparked when Dr Kanayo decided to focus on the education of children after a brief teaching stint, at the University of Cambridge in the UK, saw her base her educational research on the African continent.
In 2013, Dr Kanayo and her husband quit their jobs in the UK and moved to Kenya.
The school originally started as a charity but slowly morphed into a scholarship and mentorship programme. Now, they focus on teaching African history, culture and literature alongside basic education like mathematics.
“If we can start teaching children from when they are small, then we don’t have to decolonize minds in the future,” Dr Kanayo.
They were recently shortlisted for the World’s Best School Prize, putting them among the top 10 schools worldwide in the Overcoming Adversity category.