Abstract
This essay examines the organization and implementation of the National Literacy Campaign promoted in Angola immediately following independence, using it as a vantage point to investigate the dilemmas and conflicts that marked the birth of the new nation and the consolidation of the State, especially in the urban area, amidst contested legitimacy and proliferation of different political agendas and interpretations of what independence should mean. Based on the written press and official publications, the article explores the Cuban influence in the Campaign’s organizational and pedagogical conceptions, the State-in-the-making operational frailty, the autonomous political agency of urban students—and the governmental efforts to curtail their revolutionary enthusiasm—, and the employment of the Campaign as a lever to build a universal basic education system in Angola.
Keywords
Angola; educational policy; literacy; post-colonial State; nationalism