ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the virtues and challenges in traditional African educational systems, in the context of continental pan-Africanism, and argues that traditional African educational systems must be complemented by a pan-African educational one that transcends 'ethnicity' and the other inward-looking micro-nationalistic educational systems in contemporary African education. Traditional African education, like any system of education, had and still has its own strengths and weaknesses. The African child was educated to know, internalize and to practice roles appropriate to his sex and age. The weaknesses in traditional African education were explicitly revealed with the advent of Christian and European formal school systems. "Tribal education was not an education for change"; it demanded conformity, but not individuality, creativity or individual uniqueness. The virtues and challenges in traditional African educational systems aside, it is crucially important that continental Africa implement a pan-African educational system that will facilitate the economic, political, and cultural transformation, reconstruction and integration of the African continent.
