ABSTRACT
Both France and Britain, whether through the agency of the missionaries or directly through their colonial administrations, came to see the introduction of Western education as essential to the prosecution of their exploitation of West Africa. Whilst both Britain and France saw as the basic objective of their educational policies the training of Africans for participation in the colonial economy and administration, they differed substantially in their approach. The emergence of the educated elite was by far the most important consequence of the imposition of colonial rule, for it was this elite that was to take over government from France and Britain. The French trained a small elite under a system which stressed the importance of loyalty to France. Education has often been seen as creating a break between Western-oriented and traditional society. Between traditional African society and Western-oriented society there was not dichotomy but a continual process of re-adjustment.
