1. The document discusses the importance of images and imagination in African education. It argues that images play a large role in early education and digital culture, and influence what futures children can imagine. 2. It notes that without seeing themselves represented in educational materials, children may feel invisible. Representing African cultures positively through images and stories can help children believe in their potential. 3. The author advocates imagining ambitious futures for African children beyond statistics on poverty and conflict. Imaginative resources that portray African experiences can help children see what they can achieve.

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Risky Reading: Images and the Vision of African Education
by Chimaechi Ochei
Founding Director, Kio Global
Take a deep breath, close your eyes and picture:
one child whom your work affects,
one thing you’ve learned today, and
how that thing will have benefited that child in ten years’ time.
- Title slide
Not risqué reading – we can talk 50 Shades of Grey afterwards if you
want.
We are all here because it is an exciting time.
To be African, to work in Africa.
The potential on the continent is vast.
We are in education because we love unlocking potential.
But educators and entrepreneurs alike have no certainty about the
future they are working for.
In rapidly developing Africa, the uncertainty rises even more sharply.
No-one knows the future with certainty
Especially with so much in flux
What can we do in the face of this uncertainty?
Teach ourselves, and teach our children to think big.
That means, to take risks. To imagine.
We’ll come back to this
and to my story
but first: pop quiz!
- African-American presidents on film/TV

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The image of a black president was drip-fed into households globally for
ten years through popular culture before Barack Obama was elected.
Imagination, creative arts, is a place to project and model the future.
As well as economics or history, arts and literature are a realm for
projecting future possibilities.
The imagination is the place to take risks.
Morgan Freeman went on to play God in Bruce Almighty.
(Whole other topic. We can talk about that afterwards too.)
- A funny thing happened in Lagos
How Kio Global started:
While working in editorial for Random House publishers in London, I
went on holiday in Lagos. Visiting a children’s bookshop in Ikoyi, a
smart area, I found not a single book with an African child on it.
That wasn’t the funny part.
The funny part was, I was publishing a list of multicultural children’s
books in London at that moment. Kio Global began distributing
educational resources to join those dots.
We are experiencing parallel problems in London and Lagos.
It is an exciting, unique time when the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’
world are discussing the same problems.
- Ken Robinson quote
“Every country on earth at the moment is reforming public education.
There are two reasons for it: the first is economic: How do we educate
our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st century?
...The second is cultural: how do we educate our children so that they
have a sense of cultural identity... while being part of the process of
globalisation.” Sir Ken Robinson, 2010. (Former Ofsted inspector)

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We may not have the advantage being in London, or a being in Lagos.
The answers could come from anywhere.
- The importance of images
What does all this mean in practice?
1) Early years and digital culture
Hands up primary or early years educators…
Hands up secondary or adult educators…
We are all in the same boat.
Both early years (formative)
and digital culture (informative)
have pictures and very few words as currency
A picture is worth 1,000 words – but digital culture renders 1,000
pictures.
The pictures you show as an educator are a drop in the ocean of images,
helpful and unhelpful, that a child will see.
This feeds the imagination. The possibilities.
What are we looking at?
2) What happens when you’re invisible?
This seems to be the opposite problem in visual cultures like early years
and digital culture.
Not being seen at all.
Or being seen through a glass darkly.
I read English Literature – well all my life, clearly, but officially at
university.
I was invisible to myself in what I read for a long time.
Unfortunately it is still possible to have a great education, to read many
things and to meet not one friend that looks like you along the way.
If you were to pick a superhero power, it might be this.

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But we all need to know we are seen, heard, and significant.
3) What we can imagine we can realise
We have seen with the Hollywood film effect that an atmosphere of
positive images, belief, imagination, vision, has the potential to affect
reality.
I don’t have to tell you, educators, how building confidence and belief
changes a child’s capacity to succeed.
What are we imagining for our children?
What size future do we see for them?
4) What are we looking at?
What are we focused on?
In my experience publishing books about black characters in the West,
and looking at visual representations of
African subjects, and even thinking about African education,
there is often a journalistic, statistical approach.
The striking factual differences are often the point of an editorial or
piece of art: poverty, corruption, conflict, even the weather.
The days when a good education meant a large collection of facts
is gone.
We need to imagine more when we think of Africa.
Can you imagine that journalistical statistical approach being taken in
children’s education here?
No more Gruffaloes, Narnia or Hobbits!
- Some of Kio Global’s resources
Seeing a Chinwe Roy, a refugee from the Biafran war, as a celebrated
artist who painted the Queen.
Seeing African languages from an oral tradition in their written form.
Zilombo: Seeing a Malawian cross between Grace Jones and Indiana
Jones

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South African Animals: seeing an A to Z of wildlife, led by a Swazi girl
The Bush: Seeing the responsibility of keeping pets… in Uganda.
Hurricane: Seeing an adventure in a tropical storm.
The Night the Lights Went Out: Seeing powercuts, but learning not to be
afraid of the dark.
The Feather: Seeing birds and their habitats all over the world.
Giant Hiccups: Seeing a Ghanaian giantess with hiccups
Lima’s Red Hot Chilli: Seeing a beautiful, shiny red chilli on a hungry
afternoon… and making a bad choice!
- The best kept secret
For those of you who heard Professor Tooley earlier, he wrote The
Beautiful Tree, a book researching low cost, high quality private schools
in Asia and Africa. His then employers, the World Bank, kept saying
‘Such schools don’t exist’.
In some circles, you and I don’t – statistically – exist.
In a leading African economy, Nigeria, the top five education
conferences are only 5 years old. (Nigeria is also apparently the biggest
importer of champagne in the world. Perhaps linked to the said
education conferences.)
Something new and possibly unexpected is happening in Africa.
Parents are imagining bigger things for their children.
We are in on – and may be – the future’s best kept secret.
Keep imagining.
Thank you.