Driving the African Astronomy Education Agenda through Extra-Curricular Approaches-The AWB Nigeria Experience

This paper highlights the various approaches to adopt in driving the Astronomy agenda among young people across Africa, most especially in countries where there are no existing curricula for Astronomy in Elementary and High Schools. I will be using Nigeria as a case study through the Education and Outreach efforts of AWB Nigeria. https://awbnigeria.org/

Many African countries do not have an existing curriculum for Astronomy at the Elementary and High School levels, this poses a major challenge to the spread of Astronomy in Africa. If young people are not exposed to Astronomy early enough, the chances of pursuing careers in Astronomy will be very slim.

I served on a curriculum committee that was set up by the Nigerian government to get Space Science, and by extension, Astronomy into STEM curricula, I have a first-hand understanding of the challenges involved in getting a curriculum for Astronomy. The committee was unsuccessful as it faced many administrative and bureaucratic bottlenecks in the discharge of its mandates.

This experience led to AWB Nigeria coming up with other approaches to getting Astronomy Education to young Nigerians through extra-curricular pathways. My team has recorded huge successes in this regard as we have seen a rise in Astronomy popularity as well as unprecedented acceptability of Astronomy across the country.

My presentation will focus on the processes and challenges of these approaches and highlight the replicability of these approaches across other African countries.