The Athens of West Africa: A History of International Education at Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone (review)

Until recently, higher education as a field of study within African scholarship was scant at best. Prior to that, with their close relationship to never-ending literacy campaigns, primary and secondary systems claimed center stage, leaving higher education in scholarly oblivion. However, given the global economic importance of the current knowledge revolution, the study of higher education has gained prominence the world over, and Africa is no exception. Therefore, a book that traces the roots of higher education in Africa, delineating its role in the colonial project—as well as the postcolonial and neocolonial vicissitudes—is quite timely. And the focus on Fourah Bay College, the only institution of higher learning in West Africa from 1827 to 1948, is commendable. Although Paracka neither defines nor posits his rationale for choosing “International Education” as the book’s subtitle, nonetheless he broaches a crucial component of higher education research today. Multinational approaches to higher education have become a major driving force in today’s technology-driven and highly competitive global economy.

In this impassioned but densely packed book, Paracka positions Fourah Bay as the archetypical West African university. Located at the intellectual heart of often controversial and shifting political patterns, Fourah Bay has a history that is closely intertwined with the emergence and consolidation of the modern state. Using largely original sources, Paracka manages to historicize the college within the country’s sociopolitical problematic, identifying it as “a social-cultural microcosm of the political, racial, religious, and social tensions that characterized the colonial and post-colonial revolutions in West Africa…” (3). In this way Paracka debunks the persistent myth of university autonomy.

Unfortunately, Paracka provides no conceptual framework for his approach to writing about higher education, and his target audience remains difficult to determine. Nevertheless he addresses critical issues of great interest to higher education researchers today: institutional history and mission; politics of education; access, equity, and affordability; faculty and curriculum; and education and nation-building, among other topics.

Paracka’s enthusiasm in collecting such an enormous amount of data cannot be discounted. But the book’s incoherence is most puzzling. His drive to pack as much information on the history and sociopolitical context of this 180-year-old institution leaves the book somewhat disjointed. The reader must dig into the maze of information to approximate its thesis. And the author’s exiguous analysis and interpretation of data—along with undefined and unoperationalized concepts, such as “pan-Africanism,” the “scramble out of Africa,” and “development education”—tend to undermine the book’s scholarly rigor. It comes across more as a historical report.

In the same vein, the book is punctuated by frequent “surprises” whereby the reader is sometimes hard-pressed to find in Paracka’s chapters what the title promises. This is clearly demonstrated in chapter 5, whose title (“Scramble Out of Africa”) is difficult to decipher and lacks any evident link to the wide range of topics explored—student admissions, faculty, examinations, curriculum, worship, culture, study-abroad scholarships, funding, Davidson Nicol’s biography and publications, and the Pickard-Cambridge, Elliot, and Fulton Commissions.

The book’s cohesion is further diminished by its occasional inconsistent chronology, as well as the author’s excessive use of direct quotation, thus raising serious questions about the publisher’s commitment to editorial review before bringing a book to publication, especially one emerging from a dissertation. Nevertheless, despite its organizational pitfalls, the book serves a legitimate exploratory purpose in a field of study that is most deserving of scholarly attention. It provides a “thick description” of an important case study—and a vital springboard for future research.