Education development in Tanzania after Independence

1. Colonial education was aimed at preparing a few Africans who could occupy lower positions like being messengers and clerks. This was to be achieved through the provision of elementary education in bush schools, missionary schools and government schools. The colonialists wanted to get people who could do clerical work like arranging files and posting letters. The Africans who held such positions were paid low salaries and helped the colonialists to reduce administration costs.
2. The colonial education provided by missionaries was aimed at converting Africans to Christianity. In the schools run by missionaries, spiritual teachings were incorporated into the syllabi. This type of education was aimed at making Africans easily accept colonialism.
3. Colonial education was aimed at propagating racial segregation between Africans, Indians, Arabs and Europeans. Thus, members of every racial group had their own schools. This was done purposely to make Africans feel inferior. Africans mainly received primary education and, indeed, very few got tertiary education, which was reserved for Europeans and Indians.
4. Colonial education was based on racial discrimination. For example, it favoured Europeans and Asians, while at the same time discriminating against Africans. In primary and secondary schools, there were more Europeans and Asians than Africans. The number of Africans who attended colonial schools was very limited. Even those who attended such schools received elementary education so as to facilitate colonial production. The content of this education was designed in such a way that it served the interests of the minority Europeans rather than those of the majority Africans.
5. Colonial education was provided to few Africans, mainly the sons of chiefs, catechists, pastors and rich people. This was deliberately done to win their loyalty as this was important for colonial administration and church evangelisation.
6. Colonial education was based on gender imbalances as it was mainly provided to males. Girls were ignored on the grounds that they were economically less productive. In 1955, for example, there were a total of 150 students from Tanganyika studying at Makerere University College, but only four of them were women. This imbalance was also due to African culture, which made parents give more opportunities to boys than girls. Similarly, the colonial government preferred training boys to training girls.

After the establishment of colonial rule in Tanganyika, there was a need to ensure that the people accepted colonial policies. This was considered very important as the colonial government was in need of raw materials, cheap labour and markets. To achieve this objective, the Germans and the British, who colonised Tanganyika at different times, introduced a European education system to maximise the exploitation of African natural resources and labour in their own interest. Between 1890 and 1918, the Germans introduced an education policy that reflected their mode of administration. The mode of administration adopted was direct rule. Apart from reflecting this mode of administration, education played an important role in building the Germans' ideology among the people of German East Africa.

The main agencies that provided education during the German colonial administration were Protestant and Catholic missionary organisations and the colonial government itself. Their curricula put much emphasis on vocational education, masonry, carpentry, tailoring, road construction and agriculture. However, the educational activities introduced by the Germans were short-lived. They ended with the First World War. Later on, educational activities were re-structured by the British when they took Tanganyika as a mandate territory under the League of Nations.

In 1925, the British government introduced a system of ruling Africans in accordance with their traditional political organisations. The system was popularly called indirect rule. It was introduced by the second British Governor, Sir Donald Cameron. The system involved integrating African political structures into the central British administrative structure. The indirect rule policy influenced the nature and development of education in Tanganyika. Special schools were established to train the sons of chiefs to ensure that the local leadership was indoctrinated with British values and the British political ideology.

Soon after independence, the president of Tanganyika, Julius K. Nyerere, noted some weaknesses in the system of education inherited from the British. In his view, the system had been designed in such a way that it could create a class of a few privileged elites. In response, President Nyerere advocated a system of education that would not favour the elites and undermine others in the country. The president criticised colonial education for encouraging individualistic values, instead of promoting a cooperative spirit among the people. He also viewed colonial education as an instrument for destroying African values and replacing them with colonial and Western values. Thus, President Nyerere wanted to reform the primary school curriculum, which was meant to promote and maintain colonial rule and its ideology. The need to improve and develop the education system was reflected in the objectives of the development plans discussed in the previous section of this chapter.

New curricula which emphasised self-reliance and agricultural production in primary and secondary schools were designed and implemented.

The government also sought to reduce illiteracy. Before independence, Tanganyikans who knew how to read and write were very few numerically. At independence, only 10 per cent of the population knew how to read and write. To address this problem, the government reforms the education policy and intensified the efforts to eradicate illiteracy in the country. The First Three-Year Development Plan of 1961-1964 was aimed at expanding the enrolment of pupils on schools to reduce illiteracy.

Following the Arusha Declaration, which instituted socialism as the country's philosophy, the government sought to review the national education curriculum in keeping with this new philosophy. The education provided was to enable each recipient to have socialist values.

1. It was from this drive that the philosophy of Education for Self-Reliance (ESR) was published in March 1967. The purpose was to prepare young people to learn to serve their society.
2. The ESR was aimed at imparting and transmitting knowledge skills, values and attitudes to Tanzanians. The education provided in primary and secondary schools was to go beyond the notion of preparing the youth for higher learning institutions.
3. Education was, in that respect, intended to be complete at every level. It was to provide the knowledge, skills and attitudes that would enable students to live successfully in a developing socialist state.
4. Furthermore, the ESR philosophy emphasised collective making of efforts to develop the country. Under the ESR philosophy, schools were designed in such a way that they would become economic, social and educational communities capable of meeting their own maintenance needs. In that respect, by 1968, all primary and secondary schools, as well as teacher-training colleges had embarked on farming and other self-reliance activities like poultry projects, shops and livestock keeping.

The ESR was a typical example of equality in society as the policy document was aimed at making education beneficial to the whole society. The policy objective would be attained through making educational institutions producers of goods which would, in turn, benefit the same institutions. In addition, all learners were required to participate in various communal productive activities. Under the ESR philosophy, examinations were to be structured in such a way that they measured students theoretically and practically.

Moreover, primary education was not used as a ladder to the secondary level of education. Rather, it was supposed to prepare students for future life. Likewise, secondary education was not a ladder to universities, teacher training colleges and technical colleges. Instead, it was to prepare people for life and service in the society. The middle-level primary schools, most of which were boarding schools run by missionaries or private organisations, were abolished. The payment of school fees was abolished at all levels of education. This transformation had far-reaching consequences. Children from poor families began to enjoy upward social mobility.

Despite the challenges, the ESR programme realised some achievements.

1. Among of them were the increase in student enrolment at all levels of education. For instance, in 1962, pupil enrolment on primary schools stood at 518,663, but the number rose to 1,990,650 in 1976 and 3,530,622 in 1981. This tremendous increase was due to the ESR programme. Some of the reasons for the increase included the abolition of school fees and the nationalisation of private schools.
2. Furthermore, the ESR helped to eradicate the problem of ethnicity and gender imbalance, for the students who were selected to join secondary schools were distributed nationwide, regardless of their ethnic groups and regional backgrounds. The quota system serve this purpose. Emphasis was also put on gender equality. As a consequence, the ESR helped to minimise the problem of gender discrimination in education. For instance, in 1961, female enrolment in Form One was 29 per cent and Form Six 9 per cent. By 1981, the total female enrolment in Forms I-VI had risen to 34 per cent.
3. Another success of the ESR was the introduction of political education to create political awareness and consciousness among pupils on politics, economics and the social condition of the nation. Political education was introduced as a compulsory subject for all learners.
4. Moreover, the ESR was the foundation for the Universal Primary Education (UPE) whereby education was provided free of charge and was compulsory to all children without any discrimination. This measure solved the problem of school fees and rural-urban migration among school leavers.
5. To make it effective, the government allowed secondary school graduates to teach in primary schools. Finally, the ESR imparted practical skills to pupils. Learners studied skills relevant to their societies such as crop farming and animal keeping.

Implementation of the ESR was not successful for various reasons. One of the reasons was the

1. lack of guidance as education stakeholders implemented it blindly. Neither the ESR nor later policies gave directives on how to pursue the objectives. Although in the examinations there were questions closely related to the ESR philosophy, the questions could not be used to evaluate the implementation of the policy broadly. The implementation of the ESR also lacked proper organisation as it was not coordinated from above. Thus, it was difficult to evaluate the strategies which were being implemented.
2. Another problem was the students and teachers' negative attitude towards the ESR. With the ESR, schools tried to change students' attitude towards manual work and national responsibility without success. Unexpectedly, students perceived the ESR as punishment because students who misbehaved were punished by being asked to do agricultural work on school farms and in gardens. Thus, teachers used agriculture and manual work to discipline naughty students.
3. There was also a shortage of funds for implementing the ESR. The government lacked enough funds to run ESR projects and buy teaching-learning materials. Thus, there was an acute shortage of relevant teaching and learning materials like books and pieces of chalk. There was also a shortage of desks. Parents did not consider the ESR useful because even classrooms were built by them. Finally, the ESR lacked a proper assessment mechanism as it was implemented differently in different places.

Like any other African country, Tanzania faced various challenges before and after independence. Tanzania faced certain economic, social and political challenges that she inherited from colonialism. It also faced certain challenges from the mid-1970s to early 1980s. The challenges are commonly called economic crises which are discussed in the following section.

The economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s were caused by a shortage of consumer goods and basic production inputs such as agricultural implements and industrial inputs such as spare parts and raw materials. Basic needs such as home-based commodities like cooking oil, salt, soap, sugar, batteries and kerosene were also insufficient.

Moreover, there was high inflation. The rate of inflation, for example, increased from 10 to 12 per cent in the early 1970s to about 25 per cent in the late 1970s. In the early 1980s it increased to 30 per cent.

Furthermore, there was a decline in the performance of the manufacturing sector. The decline in commercial agriculture, particularly export crops, was a major factor for the decline of the industrial sector.

There was also the deterioration of the quality and provision of social services which was observed in several sectors like the health, education and water sectors. The government's ability to allocate funds to these services declined remarkably. For example, the funds allocated to the education sector declined in relation to the total government expenditure between the 1970s and 1980s. Thus, from the beginning of the 1980s, the education sector faced several problems such as lack of textbooks, lack of desks, lack of staff houses and poor school maintenance.

There was also deterioration in the transport sector. The problem was seen in the lack of spare parts and poor maintenance of roads and railways. This affected the collection of agricultural products and the delivery of inputs and basic consumer goods to the rural areas. As a result, there was a decline in agricultural production. Agriculture is the backbone of Tanzania's economy.

This decline resulted in the fall in the volume of exports, especially the volume of cashew nuts, coffee, sisal, tea and tobacco, which were the main export crops. A serious drop in these crops was witnessed between the early 1970s and mid-1980s. As a result, there was further depletion of foreign exchange.

There were several factors for the economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s. The major factors included the following:

1. One of the factor for the economic crises was an increase in the price of petroleum oil. The war between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt and Syria in 1973 increased the price of oil more than four times at the world market. This increase came about because the Arab nations did not export oil to the USA and Western Europe because these powers supported Israel during the war.
2. The price of oil increased again in 1974. Like other countries, Tanzania was affected by this increase. In this regard, the government earned less foreign exchange from its exports and used a huge amount of foreign exchange to import oil at very high prices. At the same time, there was a drastic decline in the price of agricultural exports.
3. The occurrence of persistent drought in the early 1970s also contributed to the economic crises. The country was hit hard by a severe drought in 1973 and 1974. This caused severe famine throughout Tanzania. The country exhausted all its food reserves to enable the victims to survive the famine. Thus, the government used much money to import food, especially maize, wheat and beans for the victims of famine. Thus, funds which should have been used to implement national development plans were used to import relief food from the USA an North America.
4. Moreover, the collapse of the East African Community (EAC) in 1977 adversely affected the economy of Tanzania. Tanzania was forced to establish new structures for civil aviation, harbour administration, railways, postal services and telecommunications. Investment in infrastructure made the government spent a large amount of funds highly needed for other domestic purposes. Hence, the economic crises were inevitable.
5. The war between Tanzania and Uganda, which was fought from 9th October 1978 to 3rd June 1979, also caused the economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s. The government used much money during the war by buying weapons and financing the logistics of the war such as the movement of soldiers, foodstuffs and other war needs from Tanzania to Uganda. As a consequence, the government experienced a serious shortage of funds for use in the economic and social sectors. The estimated cost of the war was US $500 million. This cost was so big that it had a direct negative impact on the country's budget.

Initially, the government sought to improve domestic policies before finding foreign-based measures to solve the crises. Some of the measures taken are discussed below.

Internally-designed reforms The first major attempt that the government made was to formulate a National Economic Survival Programme (NESP) in 1981-1982.

The objectives of the NESP were to increase substantially foreign exchange earnings, save on imports, eliminate food shortages through village-centred irrigation schemes, controlling public expenditure in both government and parastatals, formulating development plans that emphasised the consolidation of activities, instead of introducing new activities, and raising the productivity of workers and farmers through appropriate incentive schemes.

The objectives of the NESP were not realised because they were ill-defined. It was argued that the NESP was formulated in a hurry and that it contained unrealistic targets. Therefore, the programme did not lead to economic recovery. The government also implemented the domestically-based Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) between 1982 and 1985.

The major objective was to finance the fiscal deficit largely through domestic borrowing in the absence of external assistance to reduce inflation, restore production, maintain social services and revive the economic infrastructure. The SAPs were also intended to promote agricultural development and improve efficiency.

Furthermore, several provisions were put in place to fight economic sabotage which was common at the time of the crises. The government passed Economic Sabotage Act No. 9 of 1983 to fight overpricing and the hoarding of goods done because of the scarcity of commodities in several parts of the country. The government established special tribunals to deal with economic sabotage offences.

In the mid-1980s, it was realised that, in order to overcome Tanzania's socio-economic challenges, there was a need to re-adjust the economy. Thus, the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were consulted to secure either loans or grants for that purpose. The assistance received from the international community saved the economy from declining and, thus, the economy started growing in the late 1990s.

Tanzania adopted a donor-funded Economic Recovery Programme (ERP) in 1986 after its domestic policies had failed.

The ERP came up with a set of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and a package of reforms that were essentially aimed at liberalising the economy. The SAP-related measures included the devaluation of the shilling, the liberalisation of trade and the encouragement of local and private capital producer incentives.

Others were the liberalisation of internal trade by removing price controls, cutting government expenditure on social and productive services through cost-sharing measures and eliminating subsidies and allowances. The government was also advised to reform the political system by re-introducing the multiparty system, which was expected to bring about checks and balances and, indeed, accountability.

Moreover, the SAPs were meant to increase production for internal and external markets and to improve the country's physical infrastructure and the industrial sector. However, as explained earlier, in the long run the SAPs did not enable the government to solve the economic crises.