The enquiries provide pupils with the opportunity to produce a sustained piece of work that brings together core content and essential skills.  Pursuing the enquiries requires pupils to ask questions about real problems, to collect and interpret information and to think critically about possible solutions, whilst building up their knowledge and understanding of fundamental geographical issues.

The videos and articles on the Our Africa website provide the core material pupils will need to make a start on the enquiries.  Central to the enquiry process is gathering information, and as such pupils should be encouraged to explore all the pages for the particular country that the enquiry relates to as they might find relevant details in unexpected places (including in the videos).  As an extension, pupils can be pushed to consult and evaluate a variety of different sources and to pursue their own lines of enquiry.

Finding an enquiry

Currently, there are five enquiries to use with Our Africa. You can find them below:

1. Comparing development: life in Zambia and the UK
2. Benefits and problems associated with tourism in Kenya
3. South Africa’s cities: Cape Town and Johannesburg
4. HIV/AIDS in Malawi
5. Examining the causes and effects of urbanisation in Kenya

Each page has a printable pdf which includes all the information from the webpage.

Possible approaches

The enquiries might be used at the end of a unit of work, allowing pupils to apply what they have learnt and gain a deeper understanding of the issues through meaningful contexts.  Pupils may be asked to produce a features article for a newspaper or website, or a presentation using ICT or a poster (handwritten or using ICT).  If pupils work independently, then the enquiries provide an ideal piece of work for assessment.

Alternatively, the enquiries might be used to give a coherent narrative structure to a unit of work, with each of the key questions providing a focus for a lesson.  Used in this way it will be necessary to find supporting materials from other sources, which might be a class textbook, for example.