Achebe once offered a glimpse of education during the colonial period in a TV programme . As a student, Joyce Cary's apallingly patronsing novel about an African, "Mister Johnson", was offered as an example of English literature. (The story later appeared as an apallingly patronising film.) In a similar way, children in French colonies were set to study France, a country that most of them would never visit, in detail, including the names of all the French rivers and all of their tributaries. In the then Malaya, I once tried to express a ringgit (dollar) amount in sterling to a local Chinese. I atruggled with the calculation but he smoothly interjected with the correct figure, in pounds, shillings and pence. I was astonished, as he had never been abroad, and asked him how he knew. He said that the only maths books provided by the British when he was a child used pounds, so pupils had to learn how to calculate in them.
I have only read "Things Fall Apart" by Achebe but will put the others you note on my list.
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Chinua Achebe - Ambo
