Italian colonial educational policy in the Horn of Africa

The paper illustrates the educational policy during the Italian colonization in the Horn of Africa. According to the study, Italian policy aims at the elimination of prominent and educated natives who are regarded as potential inciters of rebellion against Italian rule. Therefore, colonization has systematically hindered the development of national cultures, imposing Italian language as official language and limiting the education to three or four years. For this reason, no attention was paid to the progress of the school, which was left in the hands of religious, soldiers and local teachers. However, the educational policy was highly focused towards fascist reforms. The paper observes, for instance, that in addition to being based on strong Italianization processes and rigid linguistic repressions, the dissemination of fascist propaganda was recurrent in textbooks