Education is often perceived in policy agendas as playing a transformative role in realising sustainable development and the SDGs on the continent. The assumption is based, however, on an insufficiently critical understanding of the historical role of education in supporting unsustainable development. The article provides a critical account of the relationship between education policy and sustainable development in Africa as an aspect of the postcolonial condition, i.e. as an aspect of the colonial legacy and of Africa's position in relation to contemporary processes of globalisation. It is argued that if education is to play a transformative role in relation to sustainable development then education policy needs to be fundamentally re-oriented and harnessed to wider processes of economic, cultural and political transformation in the interests of social and environmental justice.