In working to build a sense of nationhood, Ghana has focused on many social engineering projects, the most meaningful and fascinating of which has been the state's effort to create a national culture through its schools. As Cati Coe reveals in Dilemmas of Culture in African Schools, this effort has created an unusual paradox: while Ghana encourages its educators to teach about local cultural traditions, those traditions are transformed as they are taught in school classrooms. The state version of culture now taught by educators has become objectified and nationalized—vastly different from local traditions. Coe identifies the state's limitations in teaching cultural knowledge and discusses how Ghanaians negotiate the tensions raised by the competing visions of modernity that nationalism and Christianity have created. She reveals how cultural curricula affect authority relations in local social organizations—between teachers and students, between Christians and national elite, and between children and elders—and raises several questions about educational processes, state-society relations, the production of knowledge, and the making of Ghana's citizenry.

Mission, Communion and Relationship addresses the urgent need for the churches in Africa to positively respond to the crisis confronting the continent's young men. It calls for the church to commit itself to providing alternatives to the various crises confronting male youths in Africa (dislocation, illiteracy, streetism, unemployment, emigration, crime, imitation of foreign cultures, consumerism, drug abuse, promiscuity and HIV/AIDS). Mission, Communion and Relationship argues that communion and solidarity with male youths is a missiological imperative of the Roman Catholic Church in Africa, which must work in concert with other Christian denominations, as well as Muslim and African Traditional Religion leaders. This interdisciplinary book brings together insights from ecclesiology, church history, theological anthropology and the social sciences as well as African and Western philosophy with concrete ecclesial and human experiences. Mission, Communion and Relationship sets forth a framework for dealing with the cultural formation and religious development of male youths in ways that are authentically African and Christian, socially oriented and pastorally engaged.

'Another World is Possible' examines the many peoples who have mobilized religion and spirituality to forge identity. Some claim direct links to indigenous spiritual practices; others have appropriated externally introduced religions, modifying these with indigenous perspectives and practices. The voices of Black people from around the world are presented in essays ranging from the Indian subcontinent, Japan and Australia to Africa, the UK and the USA. From creation narratives to trickster heroes, from the role of spirituality in HIV positive South Africa to its place in mental health and among the poor, spirituality is shown to be essential to the survival of individuals and communities.

Since the turn of the millennium, in Ghana and in other African countries, there has been a vociferous debate over the history and present condition of the family. The debate has largely fragmented the Ghanaian constituency into two nearly intransigent camps: those who think the indigenous family system should experience cultural osmosis to accommodate the seismic Western cultural revolutions and the overwhelming religious constituency who advocate the retention of conservative family system. This book is a contribution to the debate. Written by an African Studies academic, it seeks to use the resources of both the social sciences and religion to assess the merits of the various parties to the debate. The author believes in the legitimacy of the traditional family system as conditio sine qua non for preserving human civilization. Nevertheless, the goal of this book is not to further polarize the Ghanaian front, but build bridges, by inviting the various parties to the debate to walk the complex pathways of exercising compassion without compromising the values that support human flourishing. Charles Prempeh is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Cultural and African Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi-Ghana.

This book examines the critical aspect of quality assurance maintenance of competitive-standards in African higher education. It explores both the micro and macro-levels of continental African higher education regulatory authorities, and analyses different institutional, regional and national practices for moving towards continental quality assurance approaches. Contributed to by scholars across Eastern and Southern Africa, the book considers conceptual, practical, epistemological and policy dimensions of quality and quality assurance, especially in relation to higher education in Africa. It therefore draws on research and local expertise to open up debate about how to assure and enhance the quality of higher education, providing a comprehensive review of eight countries and considers societal challenges. It aims to satisfy the need of more thoughtful and critical works on African education as produced by African educators. The uniqueness of this book lies in integrating both the theoretical and practical dimensions of quality to devise appropriate strategies for ensuring quality and standards in higher education in continental Africa and beyond. This authoritative book advocates for a timely discussion around the prpvision of good quality higher education and research in African universities, and will be of great interest to academics, policy makers, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of higher education, comparative education and African studies.

An attempt to recapture the liberation philosophy of Kwame Nkrumah, first prime minister of Ghana. Owusu seeks to define a theoretical basis on which a modern socio-political and ethical structure for Ghana can be built and offers a paradigm for developing a role of advocacy to the Ghanaian religious edifice. He also strives to recapitulate Ghana's self-dignity, self-realisation and self-subsistence by highlighting the essential assumptions, dimensions and specificities of African personhood.

"On the afternoon of a hot southern African summer day in the capital city of Zimbabwe, some 1000 participants at the eighth assembly of the World Council of Churches engaged in a deliberative session on "Ubuntu and the African kairos". It was 8 December 1998, the 50th anniversary of the founding of the WCC. A local Zimbabwean theatre group enacted a powerful political drama entitled "A Journey of Hope." This was the beginning - or launch - of a pilgrimage of conversion, commitment, and above all accompaniment." "This book is much more than a report of an action taken in 1998. It is a story of people who have vowed never again to walk on tiptoe: people who will never again submit to humiliation. Journey of Hope: Towards a New Ecumenical Africa is filled with energy, passionate in tone, honest in its critique and brimming with hope. This story of a special focus on Africa is truly about a new Africa."--BOOK JACKET.