Twenty years of adult education in Southern Africa

The paper’s starting point is to consider adult education as embedded in the political, social, cultural and economic processes of society. The writers believe that it is necessary to develop an understanding of these contexts in order to understand the role of adult education in Southern Africa in the last 20 years. The paper then looks at adult education in the Southern African context in terms of three themes. These are: adult education for survival; for economic development and for political and cultural development. Finally the paper considers the shift from adult education to lifelong learning.