Many roads for education to take in Africa

The organisers claim that much focus has been paid to increasing numbers of institutions, especially the establishment of private and government-built and owned universities. There has, however, been stagnation in increasing the quality, relevance, ease of entry and of paying for access till completion. The question is coming at a time when resolute determination by […]

The organisers claim that much focus has been paid to increasing numbers of institutions, especially the establishment of private and government-built and owned universities. There has, however, been stagnation in increasing the quality, relevance, ease of entry and of paying for access till completion. The question is coming at a time when resolute determination by university teachers in Kenya, Uganda and  Nigeria’s have insisted on this question being confronted by both governments, parents, the media, the private sector, politicians and public intellectuals.
The question rests on a tradition started in ancient African societies across the centuries. As an example, societies which were determined to distribute power into each household in the community, had rituals for training age-groups in values of courage, discipline, individual and collective responsibility and punishing personal slight and insult to families, clans, instantly. Colonial education used boarding schools to cut pupils off from traditional educational rituals and denying parents a voice in contents of school lessons and physical education. Rituals by Zulu, Fulani and Masai peoples for instilling courage are yet to be integrated into school curricular. The BBC broadcast pictures of Japanese primary school children naked in bitter winter cold as a school ritual for training tenacity.
Colonial education also denied equity of access to female children. Sarah Ntiru of Uganda and Professor Bolanle Awe told Debrah Ogazuma in a television documentary shot in seven African countries, that in Kampala and Ibadan women activists fought colonial officials to demand that secondary schools admit girls, and build all-girl schools. It is not clear what is uniquely feminine in the content.  Time was when girls running one hundred metres with bottles balances on their heads, trained poise and concentration and patient-speed.
Insistence on quality was rather limited in scope. I was staggered to read Professor AJP Taylor report that to enter Oxford University on a scholarship – since his father was not rich – he read over one thousand five hundred books including all classics in British history and literature- to prepare for a compulsory interview he had to pass with an excellent grade. That culture as well as library resources are still lacking in most secondary schools.
The training in skills for planning, engineering change in conquered alien societies, building bombs and traps into the fabric of future politically independent countries, ingested by those who created and sustained British and French empires, was absent in colonial schools. Substituting them with training for integrating Africa; defusing bombs, and preventing new forms of imperial invasion and re-colonisation, has not entered syllabuses In Uganda, for example, a time bomb in territory seized from Bunyoro-Kitara empire and given to the Kingdom of Buganda, rolled from a split in Obote’s cabinet in 1965 to populations in northern Uganda being trapped inside death-ridden camps for over twenty years.  In Sierra Leone and Rwanda, colonially engineered inequa-lities between ethnic groups yielded genocidal conflicts. Education in colonial schools had not created political leaders capable of defusing these bombs before they subsequently exploded.
Colonial education in Africa was a replay of Spanish colonial rule in South America. The use of ‘’mita’’ (or slaves labour used for building infrastructure and producing food for feeding the aristocracy) borrowed from Inca rulers, assumed extreme form in apartheid South Africa. The practice of using humans to carry loads – including railway engines across Congo River – was a Spanish innovation. The practice of forcing conquered people to buy Spanish goods at extortionist prices was used by paying low prices for coffee, cocoa etc. In 1533 Bartolome de las Casas reported that Spanish officials stole land and foodstuffs from native populations.  Algerians, Kenyans, Zimbabweans, Namibians, South Africans and Angola suffered that. This tradition of governance as a tool for looting and exploitation of citizens by government officials has persisted till today.
 There has been a failure to create educational contents for uprooting this culture. The Japanese ransacked Buddhism for notions for running modern politics and an industrial economy. Notable codes include: shame unto suicide for hurting national goals; valuing excellence within a group (of Toyota workers) rather than as an individual; workers in a company being a family and not contract money-earning employees. In their 2013 book, Why Nations Fail, Aaron Acemoglu and James Robinson note that only founding leaders of Botswana followed this road; scoring rare success. Elsewhere in Africa Robert Michel’s ‘’Iron Law of Oligarchy’’ has reigned.  They mistakenly ignore Nyeyere’s creative Ujamaa (African Socialism).
 Misplaced blame of military dictatorship ignores colonial dislocation and blockage of their linkage with traditional village democracy. Colonial education’s moral malnourishment from community conscience is the root of post-colonial culture of governance as the looting of public resources.
There has been lack of social frameworks and training of skills for anticipating systemic dangers and creatively designing development. Feudal habits for defending power and privileges deserve close analysis for poaching tricks.
In his 2013 book Good African Coffee, Andrew Rugasira insists that business entrepreneurs should NOT enter Africa’s civil services as arenas for making personal wealth.  Such entrepreneurs   must use their brilliance, tenacity, self-pride, and moral integrity to fight for space to put value-added products from their own local industrial processing and packaging, on shelves of supermarkets in Europe, Asia and North America. Under the dictum that ‘’Africa needs trade and not aid’’, they must be innovative and aggressive manufacturers and marketers of high quality products. Those with a vocation for public service must create the legal, infrastructural and financial environment to support them. Rugasira should sent yeast to organiser of the Dakar summit.