The new GEMDEV notebooksFrom the black Prometheus to unemployed graduate : societies, sciences and ideologies in post-colonial Guinea

Abstract

"It was through science and technology that Europe colonizedand dominated the African people. It is therefore through science and technology that Africa will be able to free itself from colonial domina:on... We are going to bring the light of science right into the homes of peasants! This was the credo of the young Guinean state from the moment it gained independence in 1958 and throughout the period of its revolutionary regime (1958-1984). Education was seen as the most decisive sector for building "a new society" by training "a new man". What came to be known as the "cultural revolution" was marked by reforms initiated by the single party in 1959-1960 and pursued for more than three decades within the framework of a statist, centralized and planned system. These included the Africanization of education, the introduction of national languages in education, productive work in schools, and so on. The most far-reaching, yet liVle-known, aspect of these reforms was the primacy given to sciences -mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. -in the education system. But despite this positivist, all-conquering vision of science, the First Republic did not really succeed in "bringing the lights of science into the homes of peasants", and while Prometheus may have appropriated fire, the spark does not seem to have set fire to the plain! The 'Promethean' momentum of the revolution was brutally interrupted by the change of regime in 1984. The Promethean vision of science and technology was replaced by a more 'utilitarian' vision of the role of science: to train 'human capital' for the jobs offered by the market. Despite some results, which were more quantitative than qualitative, the vast majority of graduates from education and training institutions became "young unemployed graduates". Teachers and politicians are drawing aVention to the decline in "scientific vocations", but for more than a quarter of a century of the new educa