Schooling in the Ownership Society: What is the BIA and what the hell are they doing in Uganda?

Schooling in the Ownership Society: What is the BIA and what the hell are they doing in Uganda?:

What is the BIA and what the hell are they doing in Uganda?

Shannon May

Some might see it as the great white hope coming to save and fix the poor in Africa. I see it as cultural imperialism -- taking the worst aspects of American corporate-style school reform and spreading, with the might and power of power-philanthropy and the World Bank, to countries that can least afford to resist.

Bridge International Academies (BIA) is a for-profit organization active in privatizing public education in several African countries including Liberia, Kenya and Uganda. They have already built 412 for-profit schools in Kenya in six years. BIA co-founders, Shannon May and her husband, JayKimmelman, have raised more than $100 million from Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and the  Omidyar Network (eBay founder Pierre Omidyar) to push their "Education in a Box" model in Africa.

According to the Washington Post:

BIA — which is supported by the World Bank; Pearson, the world’s largest for-profit education company; and billionaire education philanthropists Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, among others — operates a chain of for-profit schools in a few African countries, Schooling in the Ownership Society: What is the BIA and what the hell are they doing in Uganda?: