Empowering Students in Africa for Social Activism through Action Research
Dainess Maganda

Abstract
The use of imperial languages and limited access to texts are among factors contributing greatly to the low quality of education in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). With the goal to guide students to create supplemental reading materials and make space for African indigenous languages to be used in the learning process, the author conducted an action research for one month in one primary school in Northwestern Tanzania. The study involved 119 sixth-grade students, 19 teachers and 19 parents who worked together to write books for their school library. In doing so, the author related several disciplines in order to incorporate academic activities which resulted in knowledge integration in three dimensions: 1) at the researcher level, 2) at the research process, and 3) at the researched subjects’ level. The article underscores ways in which researchers and scholars, research methodology, and educational practices can be integrated in ways that affect how much students learn, how well they learn and their ability to use their knowledge in practical and context-specific ways to better their world. This study shows how integration of academic activities to the solution of real life problems is a way to potentially generate more inter-disciplinary research, education, and communication.

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