Chapter Enhancing Adult Education through Institution Building: The Nigerian Experience

Overview & Synopsis

Adult Education as a humanitarian discipline is critical for ensuring social justice, human capital development and social transformation in different walks of human life. The role of Adult Education in achieving the above objectives could only be visible in Africa with the institution building. The decolonisation process of adult education played a vital role in ensuring such institution building in Africa. The early inception of Adult Education in Africa has received enormous contributions of great scholars and educators, who established and strengthened institutions of indigenous education for proper entrenchment of Adult Education. One of such great scholars was Professor Lalage Bown of blessed memory, who contributed to Adult Education discourse across many African countries. This chapter uses primary and secondary sources of data to establish ways of enhancing Adult Education, while reflecting on the works and legacies of Bown. It discusses the legacies of Lalage in the light of personal reflection of the author, who was privileged to meet Bown at a conference as a student at the University of Glasgow. The chapter draws from the experience of the people who worked or had encounters with Professor Bown in Nigeria and beyond. It examines publications and activities of Bown in the promotion of indigenous knowledge. It offers policy directions arising from the discussions of Bown’s legacies in order to provide solutions to the current economic, social and political development challenges facing Africa.