Writings on Education in West Africa

These two short pieces by the missionary Hannah Kilham (1774–1832) demonstrate her concern for victims of the slave trade and her desire to spread the Christian faith through education. Her exceptional interest in indigenous West African languages as a medium for education contrasts with the views of her contemporaries.

Hannah Kilham (1774–1832) was a missionary whose aim in her work in the Gambia and Sierra Leone was to teach children in their own indigenous languages rather than in English. In order to do so she learned the Wolof language from African sailors in London and later, in Sierra Leone, collected specimens of thirty languages through her encounters with freed slaves. The first of two publications reissued in this volume, Kilham's Report on a Recent Visit to the Colony of Sierra Leone (1828), discusses the state of education in the colony as well as the general condition of its people. The second, Claims of West Africa to Christian Instruction through the Native Languages (1830) also discusses the system of education, outlining the process of tuition, and emphasising the need for Bible translations into African languages. For more information on this author, see http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=kilhha