Search

Sub-Saharan African societies had contacts with China that stretch back to the early days of the Silk Road where the two regions facilitated trade relations and exchanged technology and ideas. Beginning in the 1950s China formalized relations with SSA based on South-South cooperation. At the end of the Cold War, China intensified its relations with SSA within the frameworks of "One Belt one Road" in Africa and the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). The China-Africa relations have scored benefits in the areas of promoting infrastructural development, strong investments in SSA, trade links between the two regions, less expensive technical assistance for nations in SSA, cultural exchanges, and student scholarships. Nonetheless, the relations raise complicated issues around trade where China is flooding markets in SSA with inferior goods, acquisition of resources, Chinese mining companies causing environmental destruction in many countries in SSA, and the Chinese government's debt trapping of many sub-Saharan African nations. Many suspect that China is surreptitiously forging a relationship with SSA that may help it assert its "trusteeship" over sub-Saharan Africa's political, economic, and development processes. The paper is developed within these broader contexts to examine the paradoxes and contradictions of the China-sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) relations and their potential impacts on education policy and practice in the region. The paper focuses on SSA, a region that constitutes forty-eight of the fifty-four countries of the African continent. This sociohistorical paper is part of my ongoing study to examine the impacts of external forces' economic and political relations on education policy and practice in the SSA and the potential of the relations to destabilize the epistemological processes of sub-Saharan African societies. [For the complete Volume 22 proceedings, see ED656158.]

The Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) is an international, non-profit educational organization. The Association's purpose is to advance the knowledge, theory, and quality of teaching and learning at all levels with information technology. "EdMedia + Innovate Learning" took place in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 24-28, 2019. Thirteen award papers focus on the following topics: interactive modules as a digital support for students in the introductory phase of civil engineering studies in Germany; smartglasses as assistive tools in higher science education in Germany; the impact of intentionally designed student learning in environments on student participation; how students' digital media behavior and self-efficacy relate to academic achievement in Germany; cross-linking recitation sessions and physics lectures using eXperiment-based video-analysis tasks in Germany; OER and flipped classrooms; mapping support strategies for pre-service teachers' ICT integration in Finland; a pedagogical framework for mixed reality classrooms; international computer supported collaborative learning-projects in education in The Netherlands; developing social capital among learners in collaborative learning; persistent learners' insight into serial MOOC participation in Ireland; using m-learning in a technology-enhanced bachelor course in the Netherlands; and the price of student reading lists. [For the 2018 proceedings, see ED606952.]