East Africa
Map
East Africa
Challenges & Millennium Development Goals
East Africa faces many challenges. Since the region is so big, we’ll look mainly at Kenya and Tanzania as case studies.
Bring East Africa Alive in Your School and Classroom
School-Wide Activities
Cafeteria DJ
Suggest students liven up the lunchroom with an hour of tunes from East Africa (these can be found on the Internet or at libraries, cultural centers and music stores).
Artistic Edge
Have students create a collage or quilt or some other artistic expression of what they learn about East Africa. Display it for the school to see so they can share the knowledge.
Poverty Count
Pick a statistic from this website. Then, for a $1 donation, let students guess the answer. For example: Q: How many people in Kenya die of AIDS every five minutes? A: Two. Each person that gets the right answer gets their name marked on a piece of paper (don’t tell them whether they’re right or wrong at the time), and at the end of lunch hour, the winners get called on stage and get to split 50 percent of the profits. The other 50 percent gets donated to a charity of the organizing students’ choice. When the winners are called on stage, the organizing students can talk for a few minutes about why they’re doing this fundraiser: to raise awareness about some of the issues facing kids in East Africa and ways we can all work together to help.
Subject-Specific Activities
Math
Have students calculate the approximate distance in miles between their hometown and the capital of a country in East Africa, for example Kenya’s Nairobi or Tanzania’s Dar es Salam. If they want to take it a step further, have them figure out how many steps the average person takes in a mile and then calculate how many steps it would take to walk from here to there.
Language Arts
Language is a great way to understand culture. Encourage your students to research and try out words in Swahili and Sheng. There are some introductory words on this website, plus they’ll easily find others online or even in the local library.
Music
Have students find music from East Africa (Internet, library, cultural centers and music stores house some great samples). Have them bring in the music and share it with the class. A couple songs that young people might like include Mpenzi by Swahili Nation or Jambo Bwana by Tedd Kalanda Harrison.
Read and Teach the Student Websites
We’ve also created websites especially for your students, each of which provides additional information about West Africa. Visit these sites, specific for elementary and secondary schools, to see West Africa from a student’s perspective and to absorb the information yourself.
- Website for Elementary Students—focus on East Africa
- Website for High School Students—focus on East Africa
Teaching East Africa
Here are some ways you can use the student sites to teach about East Africa:
- For the “History” section of the student websites, draw a timeline on the blackboard, including only the dates. Have students call out what happened during those dates. Put some of the historical events on the board, and then have students break into groups to do library research about different times in the region’s history, from the trade of gold and ivory to the scramble for Africa. They could later give presentations or write journal entries about what they learn.
- For the “Culture Connection” section of the student websites, bring in a song from East Africa (whether downloaded from the student websites or the Internet or picked up from a library). Together, read the short “dance-story” featured on the student websites and then play the song you brought in. Have students listen to the song and think about a story they could tell by dancing or acting silently to the music. Get them into groups and have them perform their message. Even more powerful would be if they performed the piece about an issue affecting East Africa like poverty or AIDS. This would work especially well for a drama class.
- For the “Politics” section of the secondary student website, have students become different powerful East African women for a day. Have them research influential leaders like Graca Michelle and Aloisea Inyumba. Have them make presentations in the first person about their character.