LANGUAGE AND POLITICS IN EAST AFRICA

ALI MAZRUI

Ugandan voters follow instructions in Swahili and English

A MAJOR difference between politics in Africa and politics in more developed political systems is that personalities count for more in Africa. It is true that Africa's experience in the last 10 years has demonstrated how ineffectual individuals can be in the face of certain types of problems. But even after we have made allowances for that, it remains true that major changes in political arrangements or administrative machinery can be made in Africa by the simple decision of a pair of men at the top, civilian or military. That such a decision can as easily be negated not long afterward by the

counter-intervention of another two leaders is itself further evidence of how easily change can be brought about by individual personalities. If small elites are of such importance in African conditions, a discussion of language and leadership is more than just pertinent.

A factor which needs to be grasped immediately is that there are times when a national language is necessary precisely in order to make national leadership possible. If Jomo Kenyatta had spoken no other language than Ki-Gikuyu, there is no doubt that his national stature would have suffered. Ordinary members of other tribes would have found it difficult

to identify themselves with him as their own leader. Julius Nyerere's authority among the populace would also have been reduced if the only speeches he could make were in the language of the Wazanaki. And Kwame Nkrumah would hardly have aroused and held widespread national enthusiasm if every state utterance he made was in his own Nzima language, rendered intelligible to other Ghanaians only through an interpreter. In short, effective national leadership in Africa demands a command of a trans-tribal language.

But can any African language ever be tribally neutral? At first sight, East Africa seems to provide a convincing affirmative answer. Swahili is, after all, an African language. It is not associated with any particular tribe. Only a small minority of those who speak Swahili speak it as a first language, and even they do not constitute a "tribe" in the usual socio-logical sense, but rather an ethnically and culturally mixed sub-culture of the East African coast. The language is sufficiently diffuse to be politically weak, and does not suffer from the handicap under which Hausa and Luganda have labored—that of being the native lan-guage of politically powerful ethnic groups.

And yet the "tribal neutrality" of Swahili is not absolute. Swahili might not be associated with any particular single tribe, but it can be associated with a particular collection of tribes. After all, Swahili is a Bantu language. Until recently this did not seem to have much relevance. But a prolonged controversy over the possible utility of Swahili as a first national language in the correspondence columns of Kenya newspapers in the first quarter of 1967 suggested that many of the African critics of Swahili were people with Nilotic names. Was this a coincidence? Indeed, some of the so-called Nilotic names might have been no more than pen-names disguising non-Nilotes. Nevertheless, Africa being what it is, and Kenya politics being what they are, it is just conceivable that Swahili is suspect in Nilotic circles because it is a Bantu language. In any case, East Africa is a unique region in which to study the

AFRICA REPORT, JUNE 1967

59

problems attending the quest for a na-
tional language. Here are three countries
which have achieved a degree of political
intimacy great enough to bring them
to the threshold of political marriage.
Few regions in the world have been more
closely integrated economically or come
so close to federation; yet the three coun-
tries present three distinct linguistic
situations, with a high potential for a
continuing cultural interplay. Moreover,
a major paradox attends each of the three
situations.

The New Situation in Uganda

Of the three countries, Uganda was the
most successful instance of the British
colonial policy of indirect rule. An as-
sumption of that policy was that a good
deal of the local African culture should
be preserved, and the local culture of
Ugandans included local languages. Yet
in the process of preserving these local
traditions, the British helped to ensure
the country's dependence on the English
language. Uganda—still the most tra-
ditionalist of the three East African coun-
tries—is also the one that most needs
the English language to carry on its activi-
ties at the national level. The position of
English as a national language in Uganda
is not as yet being seriously challenged.
What might in time be challenged is the
status of Luganda as the second most
important medium of communication.

In impressive contrast to the situation
that seemed to suggest itself in the Kenya
press controversy, the greatest friends of
Swahili in Uganda are the Nilotic peoples,
while its chief critics have been a "fellow
Bantu people," the Luganda-speaking Ba-
ganda. Swahili was taught in Uganda
schools for some time before World War
II, but finally disappeared from the cur-
riculum, mainly because it was regarded
as a serious rival to Luganda. The po-
litical eclipse of the Baganda in 1966
(see "The Obote Revolution," by M.
Crawford Young, Africa Report, June
1966, p. 8) has greatly improved the
prospects for the future of Swahili in
Uganda. While this large and energetic
group is bound to reclaim at least some
of its former influence in time, it is now
unlikely that Luganda could ever attain
the status of a national language.

If the non-Baganda demand greater
recognition for an alternative "language
of the common man," the only serious
candidate after Luganda is indeed Swa-
hili. It is a language which has already
been penetrating some Uganda areas out-
side Buganda, and is on its way toward
conquering all Uganda towns and cities.
Swahili has been crucial, for example, in
the trade union movement, and has also
been professionally important in the
Uganda sectors of the East African Com-

mon Services. Kenya's export of man-
power to its neighbor in the northwest
has itself constituted a form of linguistic
penetration.

Then there is the official status of
Swahili within the Uganda army and
police. A language which has the sym-
pathetic support of the armed forces any-
where in present-day Africa has an ally
of some stature. The role of the soldier
in the dissemination or consolidation of
language is not unique to Africa: the
vulgarization of Latin by soldiers in pre-
medieval Europe remains, after all, part
of the genesis of the French language,
and it is just conceivable that the utiliza-
tion of Swahili in the armed forces in
East Africa might have comparable long-
term cultural repercussions. What is of
more immediate significance for the
future of Swahili is that its strongest op-
ponents in Uganda are currently in de-
cline, while some of its friends are in
positions of renewed influence. The
friends range from Batoro working
women to Acholi trade unionists; the
opponents had been the native-speakers
of Luganda.

Within the Uganda Government itself,
there may be an interest in Swahili on a
different level altogether. In a sense,
Milton Obote is the Nnamdi Azikiwe of
nationalism in East Africa. Just as Azi-
kiwe was involved in the growth of na-
tionalism in both Ghana and Nigeria,
Obote was both a founder-member of the
Kenya African Union and a major figure
later in Uganda's independence move-
ment. One of the lingering effects of
Obote's years in Kenya seems to be a
special interest in Swahili. A resolution
of the 1962 Annual Conference of the
Uganda People's Congress urged greater
use of Swahili, and Prime Minister Obote
reaffirmed this the following year. It is
not certain what Dr. Obote's next moves
in language policy are likely to be, but
he is believed to favor greater cultural
integration of East Africa.

Tanzania Is Committed

Tanzania exemplifies a different para-
dox. One of the arguments against Swa-
hili in the Kenya press controversy is that
the language is the child of Arab im-
perialism. To some extent, this is true.
Swahili as a culture is neo-Islamic in
almost the same sense that French as a
culture is neo-Christian. This does not
mean that one cannot speak French with-
out being a Christian. On the contrary,
a large proportion of the French people
themselves are no longer believers. But
it does mean that the French culture has,
in the course of the centuries, acquired
a wealth of intellectual and idiomatic
associations which bear the influence of
Christianity. On the other hand, Swahili

is less a child of Arab imperialism than
English is a child of British imperialism.
Unlike the British, the Arabs did not pass
on their own language to East Africa but
merely influenced the development of a
Bantu language. The Arabic influence
on Swahili is almost entirely in the vo-
cabulary; in another three decades, Swa-
hili might have absorbed almost as many
words derived from English as it now has
from Arabic.

The fact remains that the Arabs as a
neo-imperial community had a crucial
influence on the growth of Swahili. If
this is cause for suspecting Swahili, then
Tanzania is a linguistic anomaly. No-
where else in East Africa has there been
greater anti-Arab emotion than in Zanzi-
bar, yet nowhere else in East Africa is
there a greater cultural attachment to
Swahili than in Zanzibar. In fact, it
was in revolutionary Zanzibar that Swa-
hili was first proclaimed a full official
national language as opposed to English.

The Tanzanian situation has still an-
other dimension, for it was here that
British colonial rule had its smoothest
and mildest conclusion. While Kenya had
a violent anti-British insurrection and
Uganda had its moments of rioting and
boycotting against this or that aspect of
British rule, the nationalist movement in
colonial Tanganyika sometimes seemed
to be almost Anglophile. Yet that old
Anglophile Tanganyika has now become,
in the area of language policy, anti-
English.

Soul-Searching in Kenya

Kenya's linguistic situation is of a
different order. Most of the classical
masterpieces of Swahili poetry came from
the Kenya coast—from Lamu and its
sister islands, from Mombasa and farther
south. And yet, in terms of general dis-
semination, Swahili culture is more wide-
spread in Tanzania than in the Kenya
nation as a whole. Kenya has a narrow
area of concentrated aesthetic achieve-
ment in Swahili—but elsewhere in the
country only a simplified version of the
Swahili language is used as a neutral
medium of communication. The impact
has been strong enough, nonetheless, to
force the country into the agonies of cul-
tural reappraisal. The chances are that
Swahili will eventually complete its con-
quest of Kenya, but there are many ele-
ments of uncertainty in such a predic-
tion.

Evidence of Cultural Integration

At a time when East Africa is dis-
mantling its inherited regional economic
institutions, and has long since broken
off serious discussion of political federa-
tion, there is evidence that it is feeling its
way toward greater cultural integration.
Some of the evidence is rudimentary, but

60

AFRICA REPORT, JUNE 1967

it is certainly not without significance.

New regionally conceived books for schools are being devised (for example, the projected major study ZAMANI: *A Survey of East African History*). There is regionally shared broadcasting, notably the programs promoted by the East African Institute of Social and Cultural Affairs. Region-wide seminars and conferences, such as those arranged by the East African Academy or the University of East Africa, are on the increase. Indeed, the University of East Africa itself in spite of the uncertainties concerning its future, has so far been a major instrument of cultural and intellectual integration in East Africa. So has the Academy in its own more restricted way, as well as magazines such as *Transition* and the *East African Journal*. Soon these are to be joined by Mawazo (a Swahili word meaning "Reflection") from Makerere and Zuka (Swahili for "Emerge"), to be published by the Oxford University Press. Most of these, of course, are instruments of cultural integration only at a high level of literacy; but other media of cultural dissemination are in demand at the grassroots level. Repeatedly, Swahili projects itself as the most important medium of cultural dissemination in a wide scope.

President Léopold Senghor of Senegal has often talked about the need for an African contribution to "universal civilization." It is true that Africa can make such a contribution without using an African language. Some African poets using French and English are adding something quite significant to the total sum of world culture. And yet full African involvement in world culture requires more than making Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka available to readers in Europe and America; it is also necessary to make Shakespeare available to a greater public in Africa. Full African integration into world culture must be a two-way traffic. European languages should indeed be used to project Africa abroad—but African languages should also increasingly be used to make foreign masterpieces accessible locally.

Here again the place of Swahili in East Africa is distinctive. As the most widely understood language in the region, Swahili has tended to be the first to be used in any experimental translation of a world classic into an African medium. The first works of universal civilization to be rendered into African media were—perhaps inevitably—religious. The Bible as a work of literature has long been available in several African languages, but the first translation of the Koran as another piece of world culture 'was in Swahili. This *Ahmadiyya* translation is to be followed by a more orthodox Sunni translation, also in Swahili. The first

Shakespearean play to be rendered into an East African language is *Julius Caesar* in Julius Nyerere's translation. The first masterpiece from European political philosophy to find expression in an East African language is the Swahili translation of Machiavelli's *The Prince* by Fred Kamoga and Ralph Tanner, due for publication in 1967. A Swahili introduction to the study of economics—Peter Temu's *Uchumi Bora*—has now been published by Oxford University Press. And a Swahili introduction to political science is under discussion.

There is sometimes a tendency to regard translation as distinct from creativity. This dichotomy is false. The work of translating world masterpieces into African languages is bound to enrich the creative versatility of the African languages themselves. Swahili's competence as a theatrical medium, for example, can be enriched both by the writing of new Swahili plays and by translating old foreign classics into Swahili. The growth of Swahili as a literary medium would be slowed down if one only waited for an original Swahili masterpiece to emerge. Nyerere's translation of *Julius Caesar* has contributed more to the potential of Swahili as a dramatic medium than any original work in Swahili which has so far emerged.

## Swahili and African Socialism

In the Swahili controversy in the Kenya press, one unresolved question which arose was whether "African socialism would be more accepted if it had been propagated in Swahili." Indeed, the question as to which language should be nationally promoted cannot be regarded as irrelevant to the consolidation of socialism. The whole movement to evolve a distinctly African socialism is, in fact, a quest for ideological uniqueness. In general, this is more difficult to attain through an international language than through a local one. Ideas have to be expressed in words. The word "socialism" in the English language carries so many European connotations that it is difficult to make it appear distinctive in African conditions if the same English medium is used. Use of the word "Ujamaa" instead of "socialism" opens up a whole new world of subtle associations and connotations. Nothing could have given Nyerere's socialism a more striking African ring than the simple label *Ujamaa* that he gave it. All the subtle associations of bonds of kinship, tribal hospitality, and the welfare obligations of the extended family were compressed within that single Swahili expression. No English word could possibly have achieved the same result.

In his 1962 pamphlet on *Ujamaa*, Nyerere added a further African dimension

to his socialism by employing an old Swahili adage to incorporate the ethic of hard work and of anti-parasitism: *Mgeni siku mbili, siku ya tatu mpe jembe*, ("Treat your guest as a guest for two days; on the third day give him a hoe"). The concept of *Ujamaa*, with its suggestion of the obligations of kinship and the extended family, required a Swahili caveat so that it could not be used to justify living on one's relatives.

If the Tanzanians continue to utilize Swahili concepts in sophisticated political theorizing, it is to Tanzania then that we should ultimately look for Africa's most distinctive ideological formulations. Such formulations need not be the most original in the policies they propagate, but they might well be the most African in their idiom of rationalization. If African socialism is indeed a quest for ideological "nativeness," Swahili is a better medium for it than English.

Another point of contact between socialism and the choice of a national language lies in class-formation. There is no doubt that the English language has been a stratifying agent in countries formerly ruled by Britain. Benjamin Disraeli once demonstrated imaginatively how economic factors had divided England into "two nations," the rich and the poor. English has had much the same tendency in many parts of Africa. Where the national language is English, the choice of national leaders is inevitably restricted.

In a country such as Tanzania, national leadership can be recruited from a wider sector of the society. First Vice-President Abeid Karume has no command of English, and there are many important TANU figures who hold high office without the credentials of fluency in the English language. It used to be said that "every American is a potential millionaire." This was always a gross exaggeration, but it was a useful way of portraying the United States as a land of capitalistic opportunity. Today it can be rhetorically claimed that "every Tanzanian is a potential TANU leader." This too is a gross exaggeration, but it indicates the range of egalitarian opportunities in Tanzania. And the sector of political recruitment is larger and more varied than in the neighboring states partly because the national language, Swahili, is not an elite language.

If Swahili were to replace English as the exclusive medium of national values in East Africa, a major price would have to be paid. Socialism bought at such a price might not be worth it. All I have sought to demonstrate here is the plausibility of the assertion that Swahili might be a less ambiguous ally of socialism in East Africa than English could ever hope to be.

AFRICA REPORT, JUNE 1967

61

This is a very big if. Senegal and Congo-Brazzaville, which were the best-developed of the countries in their respective federations under French rule, face difficulties of excess capacity and shrunken markets. This column, more than most of the others, will be subject to changing assessment.

Despite the enormous resources of hydropower available in Africa, only a few developments have been successfully implemented as attractions to low-cost-energy-oriented establishments (e.g., Ghana's new aluminum smelter, or Cameroun's aluminum plant at Edéa). Surplus capacity from Ghana's Volta River plant and projected capacity increases at Edéa provide considerable incentive to expanding aluminum production in both countries. Many new installations are planned in other countries, but most of them are designed to supply electricity for general consumption rather than for electro-process industries. Guinea may see the development of a major plant on the Konkouré to support aluminum production. Congo-Brazzaville places great hope on the long-studied Koulou Project, but the necessary consuming industries have not been willing to make the required investment; a first development on the Congo above Matadi may attract new industry to that city. The major Kainji Dam in Nigeria will supply a grid system; energy-oriented industries may be more attracted in that country by the availability of huge low-cost resources of natural gas.

Tourism should make an increasing contribution to the gross domestic products of many countries, although East Africa would appear to have the greatest near-term potential. Congo-Kinshasa, Rwanda, Burundi, Cameroun, and Guinea have superior assets for tourism, but they will not be realized until security is assured and facilities are provided. Ethiopia is enjoying a modest tourist boom which, however, bears little relation to the very great potential. Mozambique is already favored as a mecca for tourists from Central and Southern Africa. Zambia and Rhodesia have valuable resources

in Victoria Falls and several game parks, but the generally monotonous plateaus are not likely to attract the tourist for cross-country trips. In any event, tourism prospects are adversely affected in this area by the disruptions created by the Rhodesian crisis.

This brings us back to the all-important sector, agriculture, which must continue to provide the main support for economic growth. Countries which are considered to have good to excellent chances for agricultural development are the Ivory Coast, Uganda, Sudan (the only country for which irrigation agriculture is expected to provide the major base), Angola, Mozambique, Rhodesia, Kenya, and Ethiopia. Political and other problems may inhibit this growth, particularly in Rhodesia, the Portuguese territories, and Ethiopia. Guinea and Congo-Kinshasa would be included among this favored group except for the depressing management of Guinea's agricultural resources since independence, and the disruption of agriculture, particularly on indigenous farms producing cash crops, in the Congo.

Fifteen countries, with 48.5 percent of the population and 24.5 percent of the area, are rated as having only fair resources for agricultural development, while eight with 9.8 percent of the population and 28.3 percent of the area are considered to have a poor potential. In view of the heavy dependence on agriculture, this is not an encouraging conclusion for African development.

## The Widening Gap

The last three columns attempt to assess the relative difficulties facing African countries in achieving a satisfactory rate of economic growth. Columns 23 and 24 refer to the short run, say the next five to 10 years, with the former an estimate for the money economy and the latter for incomes of the hypothetical average man. These distinctions were made because there may be a sharp contrast in some countries in the two measures. Mining in Mauritania, for example, is providing

adequate funds to support an unprecedented rate of growth in exports, government revenues, and gross domestic product; but the average citizen is not yet influenced by the new-found wealth and continues in his traditional pursuits. If the government expends its enlarged resources wisely, improvements will be made in these activities, but not in the near future.

Since the estimates in these columns are derived in part from the assessments of inhibiting factors and development opportunities in the previous columns, uncertainty is compounded. Particular difficulty arises in trying to "guesstimate" what may happen in the short run in such countries as Rhodesia, Congo-Kinshasa, and Nigeria. Foreign aid may also improve the statistical achievement of some countries which would otherwise have little chance of recording a satisfactory rate of growth. Thirteen countries with 62.9 percent of the population and 50.4 percent of the area are assessed as being able to achieve an adequate growth rate in the money economy with relative ease. The short run prospects for the average man are much less promising.

The last column rates each country with respect to the longer run with the assumption that inhibiting factors will be diminished in significance. About half of the countries, with 75.5 percent of the present population and 60.3 percent of the area, are rated as having a potential which can be developed with relative ease, while 11 are rated as facing great difficulties in attaining an adequate growth rate even in the long run.

In conclusion, it seems appropriate to stress two points: (1) economic development at a satisfactory rate is likely to be very difficult for large parts of tropical Africa, and (2) contrasts among the countries as far as economic development is concerned are likely to widen in the years ahead. Some countries will move rapidly toward modernization and higher standards, while others will retain a predominantly subsistence economy for many years.

AFRICA REPORT, JANUARY 1967

47

IVORY COAST EDUCATION:

BRAKE OR SPUR?

EFREM SIGEL

IN RECENT years the Ivory Coast has emerged as everybody's African success story. Even without resorting to the usual comparisons with its neighbors, the Ivoirien republic is prosperous. Although the spectacular growth of the first five years of the decade appears to be levelling off—1965 saw a slight decline in the value of exports, while the gross national product remained almost static—the overall statistics are impressive. In the first five years of independence, exports of coffee, cocoa, wood, and bananas soared, national income rose by an average of nine percent each year, and total investment reached $720,000,000, or $100,000,000 above expectations.

In one area, however, the Ivory Coast has made no perceptible progress. Africanization of the government, and especially of the private sector, has lagged far behind the pace in other African countries, and the economy remains more dependent than ever on both foreign expertise and foreign capital. Indeed, the number of French citizens living in the Ivory Coast has increased from 12,000 to 30,000 since the end of colonial rule, and much of the capital generated by the economic boom is returned to France each year in the form of repatriated business profits and salaries. Expatriates hold from 60 to 90 percent of the middle and top management jobs in such key areas of the economy as construction, transportation, commerce, and industry. And a leading government official estimated privately that, given the present rate of development, the Ivory Coast will need twice as many foreign experts by 1970 as it does today.

Up to a certain point, this relaxed attitude toward expatriate participation is a deliberate policy. President Felix

Houphouët-Boigny made it clear at independence that there would be "no Africanization on the cheap" in the Ivory Coast. By this he meant that efficiency and progress would not be sacrificed in order to give Ivoiriens jobs for which they were not qualified. There is, however, a growing recognition in the governing political party, and in key ministries of the government, that this go-slow policy is becoming politically untenable. It is surely stretching the point to justify some of the jobs still held by Europeans in the Ivory Coast. In a typical day of shopping in Abidjan, for example, one will encounter French salesgirls in the chic clothing stores on the plateau, French cashiers in the Pran-tania supermarket, and French tellers in the banks. Even some of the truck-drivers employed by the major logging companies are French.

Education Is the Key

Nowhere, however, is the slow pace of Africanization more evident than in education. In 1965, only seven percent of the 926 secondary school teachers in the country were Africans. When I began teaching in the country two years ago, I had one Ivoirien colleague among the 11 members of the faculty at my school; by 1966, there were two. What concerned me more—and this gets to the very heart of the obstacles to Africanization—is that the education offered bears little relationship to the pressing needs of this developing country.

Out of a population of 3,800,000, the Ivory Coast has an estimated 800,000 children of primary school age, of whom 44 percent are attending class. Although one fifth of the total national budget is set aside for education, the educational structure is marked by the classic African bottleneck. There are

350,000 pupils in primary school, only 22,000 in secondary school, and barely 1,500 in higher education at home and abroad. The scheduled opening of 13 new secondary schools during this academic year will increase the number of public secondary schools by 25 percent at one stroke; but ironically this expansion will increase still further the requirement for foreign teachers and staff. What is more, the students coming out of these schools will not have the kind of training needed to replace Europeans in the economy.

Like most African countries, the Ivory Coast has built its school system on models furnished by the former colonial power. The basic secondary school in the French system is the **college** or *lycée*, which confers the **baccalauréat** degree after seven years. To hold costs down, the Ivory Coast—like many former French territories—has augmented its European-style elite secondary schools with large numbers of *cours complémentaires*. These follow the same syllabuses as the "first-class" secondary schools, but cover only the first four years of the seven year cycle—roughly equivalent to the seventh through tenth grades in American education. They are, moreover, operated on an economy budget: there are no student dormitories, no assembly halls, no athletic fields, and the provision for textbooks and other materials is more modest than for the basic secondary schools. About 40 percent of the country's secondary students are in these *cours complémentaires*.

The attrition rate in the *cours complémentaires* is very high. In my own school, about 40 of the 160 students starting the seventh grade make it to the tenth grade, and many of these have to repeat one or two classes. Only a small percentage of the tenth graders are able

48

AFRICA REPORT, JANUARY 1967

expose African students to the history and customs of other peoples, but no child in any country could be expected to assimilate the sheer amount of material thrown at Ivoirien pupils. In four years of history, for example, with but one one-and-a-half-hour class per week, they must "cover" the ancient Meso-potamian civilization, Greece, Rome, pre-historic Africa, the empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhai, the civilization of medieval Europe, the rise of modern Europe, the Soudanese states of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the slave trade, European imperialism, the development of African nationalism, na-

tionalism in India, Japan, China, the history of the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, World War I, etc., etc. Faced with this indigestible mass of material, teachers and students fall back on an easy gimmick: the capsule resumé, which is dictated by the teacher, memorized by the pupils, and then disgorged in answer to an examination question.

## Old Ways Die Hard

To be fair, the current emphasis on academic education is only partly the government's doing. Any real attempt to change the character of the schooling

provided would meet the greatest opposition from both students themselves and parents. From the first grade on, students tend to look on the educational system as a one-way street toward a white-collar job, preferably with air conditioning. My own survey, carried out in five secondary schools in different regions of the country, revealed that 78 percent of the students' fathers tillied the soil, yet only three pupils out of 110 evinced any desire to be a farmer. Sixty-eight percent hoped to become bureaucrats or professional men.

By the time they reach secondary school, it is probably too late to change the students' expectations of a "job" unsullied by manual work. In his book, *L'Afrique Noire est Mal Partie* (see *Africa Report*, June, 1963, p. 28), René Dumont argues for a completely revamped primary school course which would concentrate heavily on teaching modern agricultural techniques and would be frankly terminal for the majority of the students. My own harping on the white-collar expectations of my students became a standing joke, for I never failed to chide them about their reluctance to get their hands dirty. If a pupil showed up in shirt and trousers instead of the required khaki shorts, I immediately dubbed him "Mr. sub-prefect" or "Mr. Minister."

The boys protested good-naturedly against these jibes, claiming that they helped their fathers in the fields during vacation. Some do, but not many, and not enthusiastically. I spent part of my 1965 summer vacation working with a health education team in Ivory Coast villages. It was always easy to recognize the secondary school students: they were invariably dressed in tapered pants and sport shirts and were sitting under a tree playing checkers.

The Minister of Education posed the problem accurately in a September 1965 report to the governing *Parti Démocratique de Côte d'Ivoire*: "The school does not integrate the child into his traditional and natural milieu, but gives him the means to evade it, without permitting him, for lack of adequate professional training, to insert himself into the' structure of modern economic life.

... The school, far from being a factor of development in accordance with its role, i.e. advancement at once individual and collective, has finished by becoming a source of disintegration and breakup of the society: an obstacle, if not a brake, to the harmonious evolution of the country and to its political equilibrium."

Most teenage students, I found, are rootless and confused, at home neither in the village nor the town. Forced to shift for themselves at an early age, they

## "LET US CONSIDER DAHOMEY..."

RICHARD DOGBEH-DAVID

WHAT good is it to devote much money and effort to sending our children to school—if the result is a drain on the agricultural labor force, accompanied by no increase in the number of industrial workers; if the education they acquire at such cost is soon lost in an environment of ignorance; if the end result is an increase in the number of embittered, alienated, and unemployed persons? Is not the purpose of education to prepare men to enter harmoniously into the economic and social life of their country?

Let us consider Dahomey, the country I know best. Dahomey devotes almost 20 percent of its budget to education, of which primary schooling accounts for 63 percent. This costly system absorbs a fifth of the national budget, yet it is unable to turn out the administrative talent and good citizens required for national development. What can be done about it?

Our present system must be improved through an adequate and rational teacher education program. Most African states are building teacher training schools to give their future instructors an adequate preparation. Retraining seminars are increasingly being used to disseminate new methods as well as to raise the intellectual level of teachers. For in Africa more than other areas, routine and isolation continually lie in wait for the teacher. How many teachers no longer bother to update the lessons they have been repeating year after year?

A new attitude toward graduates and a change in their own mental outlook is also necessary to eradicate the harmful effects of diploma-worship. Without wounding delicate sensibilities, should we not learn a great lesson from the experience of such diverse countries as the US, USSR, and Israel, where a diploma counts much less than "know-how"—a factor more essential to development than half-assimilated knowledge?

Technical and professional education should undergo intensive improvement, taking hold of students immediately after they complete the intermediate form. Children not going on to the sixth form should receive practical training in handicrafts, business, or industry, according to local needs. The school should lead directly into the profession. It is perhaps even more important that agricultural skills be included in school coursework. Instead of bewildering the child with abstract knowledge, we should make him a citizen capable of participating in rural life by taking part in productive activities related to agriculture, such as school gardens, model farms, and cooperatives.

But ruralization itself will not be a success unless it allows a reduction in the cost of education while training citizens who are well adjusted to their environment. Only then may the education crisis be overcome.

—From an article by Richard Dogbeh-David, *Jeune Afrique* (Paris), December 18, 1966. Translation by *Africa Report*.

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Paris newspapers, Ivoirien readers in Abidjan

acquire a rough social maturity and a fatalism that seem to work against intellectual development: in a sense, they know too much about life at 15 to be excited by books and ideas. Their living conditions add to the problem. Students in the *cours complémentaires* come to the towns from the surrounding villages and have to find and pay for their own lodging—usually in unlit, often windowless rooms. The government gives them about 40 cents a day for food, and even this allowance will be cut in half in the current year. That the students should have little civic consciousness or intellectual motivation in these circumstances is not surprising.

## Prospects for Change

Although the Ivory Coast is a long way from bridging the gap between education and development, there are some hopeful elements in the picture. The foremost of these is the uncommon good sense of its top officials. President Houphouët-Boigny is the creature of no ideology and few illusions, and his fundamental realism has asserted itself time

and again as, for example, in the formulation of foreign policy and in the insistence on agricultural diversification as the first step toward sustained economic growth. Another promising sign has been the ferment within the Ministry of Education during the past year, and the evidence of a growing perception that, despite a larger budget and more students, the schools are not pulling their weight.

So far, however, this concern has produced only pedagogical reforms—the search for more dynamic teaching methods or new arrangements of classes and hours that will magically raise the level of success in subjects where results have been disappointing. What is still missing is a disposition to question the whole balance of traditional academic subjects in the curriculum—to examine the plausibility of expecting tenth graders who never see or read a book at home to deal with Racine and Corneille, or the need for students who will never leave the Ivory Coast, or even one region of it, to learn English and Spanish.

To raise these points in Africa today is to risk being called a racist, and many

French educators who know better have remained silent for this reason. They recognize that the memory of the colonial humiliations persists, and that Africans are determined to prove that they can study the same things and earn the same degrees as Europeans. But it is hardly being racist to point out that the job to be done in Africa is not the same as in France. It is not logical to maintain an educational system geared to the production of a small elite clutching the French *baccalauréat* when the Ivory Coast needs farmers, agricultural agents, mechanics, and engineers.

This is not only a problem for economists and educators, but also a political time bomb. Each year, increasing numbers of young men are completing the first four-year secondary course—only to find that there are no places for most of them in the upper cycle, and that most of the well-paid jobs in the economy must still go to foreigners. Unless some way is found to channel this tide of the semi-educated into constructive work, the Ivory Coast will be inviting serious trouble indeed.

AFRICA REPORT, JANUARY 1967

51

A CORRESPONDENT VIEWS HIS COLLEAGUES

ALGERIA THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

PETER BRAESTRUP

THE joys and punishments of being one of the handful of American newsmen assigned abroad vary from place to place. Moscow is claustrophobic, mostly rewrite from Tass, but usually Page One at home. Paris, since the end of the Algerian War in 1962, has become a lumpy diet of fitful NATO crises, predictable Gaullisms, and Common Market trouble, but Parisiennes are still pretty and the restaurants are still superb. Vietnam is tough for serious reporters, a Godsend to self-appointed heirs of the late Ernie Pyle, and, belatedly, a front page story. Far from these major "news centers" are other places, which rarely make big headlines save in time of strife or coup d'état, where American newsmen are few and harassed, and where they must be interested in the local scene for its own sake, or turn to drink.

In such places, foreign newsmen are widely regarded as spies; sometimes they must operate, willy-nilly, like spies to dig up information which in Washington comes to newsmen in the morning mail. The telephone is tapped, the outgoing Telex interrupted in times of crisis, and expulsion a matter of intermittent debate within the regime. Cars and typewriters are hard to get repaired; official sources disappear without explanation; and even unreliable statistics on farm revenue are officially regarded as "an internal political matter." The government-run newspapers shriek against Western "imperialism" and its "retrograde press"; incoming foreign journals which offend are promptly seized. The rumor mill works overtime, personal feuds count more than ideology, and diplomats cannot visit the hinterland without special permission.

Such was Algiers under President Ahmed Ben Bella (1962-65). Such is much of the Arab world, Africa, and Asia today.

Fables From Home

In Algeria, like our brethern elsewhere, we had periodic diversions: the impressive fables broadcast or published

as "fact," "inside dope," or "analysis" at home. Sometimes the nonsense consisted simply of cut-rate punditry manufactured in New York or Washington.

The modern "stay-at-home" analytic approach to foreign news has undoubtedly cost-cutting advantages. It is an approach sanctified by Walter Lippmann, *Le Monde, The Economist*, editorial writers, and a good many campus eggheads. The man in New York, London, or Paris can give the reader more drama, bold prophecy, and "significance" than the cautious paragraphs of his fellow countryman on the scene, who, eyeing the forest, sees dead trees and zig-zag movements in the underbrush. But in Algeria the resulting hash of misinformation made it difficult for local Americans to be 100 percent self-righteous over the neo-Marxist fantasies of Ahmed Ben Bella's press. "You mock our newspapers," an Algerian official would say. "But what about yours?"

Ben Bella's press, though profoundly distrusted by its Algerian readers, gave the State Department the jimjams. Its Communist and "progressive" editors ferociously attacked "American imperialism," swooned over Castro and the industrialization of Bulgaria, and accused the CIA (a bogey-man inherited from the French) of playing water boy to Ben Bella's "counter-revolutionary" foes.

Major US publications showed, often enough, equal imagination, using it as a kind of cement between pebbles of fact plucked from old newspaper clippings. The themes applied to Algeria were traditional: "The Red Menace," "Impending Bloodbath," and, adapted to the 1960s, "The Yellow Red [Chinese] Menace." That old Middle East special, "Nasser Expands Hegemony," faded somewhat after the *Rais'* less than triumphal trip to Algiers in early 1963. Thrown in for good measure were usually a few Good Guys and Bad Guys, and Men Behind the Scenes, apparently anointed on impulse. Each of my colleagues in Africa, no doubt, has his favorite collection of stateside punditry

stashed beside a dog-eared copy of Evelyn Waugh's *Scoop*. I have my favorites from Algiers.

Waiting for the "Inevitable Showdown"

Combining several of the basic themes was a thinkpiece appearing in my beloved alma mater, the *New York Herald Tribune*, on November 11, 1962. The writer, a free-lance (who shall, like the authors of other works cited here, remain nameless), had last visited Algeria the previous July, three chaotic months prior to the formation of the Ben Bella government. His prophecy began as follows:

> Two months, one month, perhaps less, perhaps more. That's the time-table (sic) of tragedy for the inevitable showdown between Algeria's nascent totalitarian government . . . and the pro-democratic, anti-Communist forces headed by short chunky Belkacem Krim, the most powerful dissident in the country. . . .

The piece concludes:

> It is doubtful that even a miracle could prevent this looming confrontation.

Theodore Bernstein would have fun with this prose as prose. For us, the lead is clearly Old School: "Impending Bloodbath" plus "Good Guys and Bad Guys."

The "inevitable showdown" between the Ben Bella regime and Krim did not occur. To pick Krim as Algeria's "most powerful dissident" in November 1962 was like naming William Miller as the Republican strong man of 1966. Krim, after vainly opposing Ben Bella's march to power in the summer of 1962, stayed out of active politics. He made a speech from his haven in Switzerland against Ben Bella in 1964. He never claimed publicly to be "anti-Communist" (nor did any of Ben Bella's foes), and he never commanded what the *Trib's* analyst said were "15,000 armed soldiers." When Hocine Ait Ahmed led the Berber Kabylia highlands into brief, largely verbal defiance of the regime in late 1963,

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A. Economic Aid - U.K.

Motives and Objectives (Excerpts from "Overseas Development: The Work of the New Ministry," U. K. Ministry of Overseas Development, August 1965)

1. The objective of the British aid programme is to help developing countries in their efforts to raise living standards. Our purpose is therefore to promote social and economic development. But development means more than reducing poverty and unemployment. It means fulfilling aspirations towards steady and continued social and economic progress. It means the transformation of traditional societies into modern ones. Our aim is to do what lies in our power to help the developing countries to provide their people with the material opportunities of using their talents, of living a full and happy life and steadily improving their lots.

2. The basis of the aid programme is therefore a moral one. The programme operates through the transfer of economic resources and human skills. It can at the same time be defined in political terms. The international discussion of aid and the programmes to which it gives rise are an important part of international politics; they include some of the most important dealings between nations. But we must be clear about the political objectives which an aid programme can and cannot be expected to achieve. Aid is a means of promoting long term economic development. To be effective it needs to be given over a period and with due preparation to ensure that it is used effectively. Aid is not a means of winning the friendship of individual countries, though we are glad to offer aid to our friends. The process of development may sometimes increase strains, for a time at least, and we should not expect aid to be an insurance against political tensions. Nevertheless, we must recognise that poverty in a world of growing wealth causes discontent and unrest to which economic and social development is the only possible answer. We must therefore be ready to share our wealth and knowledge so as to help promote the progress and strengthen the stability of the developing countries by increasing the material well-being of their peoples.

3. There are many claims on our resources, and at present our balance of payments imposes severe limitations on our capacity to help. This makes it all the more necessary to use our aid to the best effect. We recognise the advantages of giving aid through international organisations and we intend to increase our contributions in company with other donors as the needs of these organisations grow and as our own resources permit. We intend to give the highest priority to technical assistance; this provides skilled men and women to help in development and above all in the education and training of local people and it is often a prerequisite for enabling a country to make good use of financial aid.

4. The financial aid which we give to individual countries will remain, nevertheless, the largest part of our programme. In allocating bilateral aid we believe that preference should be given so far as possible to those countries and regions where it will have the greatest effect on development in the long run. This will depend on a number of things, including the form and type of our aid and the contribution of other donors. It will depend on the material and human resources of the developing countries and, above all, on their readiness and ability to make the effort to develop. We must also take account of the relative poverty of the countries with which we deal.

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5. Countries which are members of the Commonwealth have a special claim on us. We have important historical links and current ties with all independent Commonwealth countries and special obligations towards the territories still dependent on us. We have, until now, provided relatively little to foreign countries. By the criteria we have discussed, more foreign countries could make a claim to our aid than we have been able to help, but there are obvious limits in our present economic circumstances to what we can do in this broader field. We must also avoid dispersing our assistance too widely in amounts which may not make an effective contribution to development. We shall hope, nevertheless, to be in a position to increase our aid to foreign countries as our resources permit.

7. The provision of aid is to our own long-term economic advantage. We have a special interest in encouraging the expansion of international trade; this will be promoted by increasing prosperity which aid can help to further. By helping to raise incomes in the developing countries we can provide expanding markets for exports and safeguard the supply of our imports and the return on our investment. These are real advantages, and we should seek to secure them as far as we can. But they must be secondary to the primary purpose of aid. Moreover even though aid may be in the form of loans which have to be repaid and on which we receive interest, it involves the transfer of economic resources without the expectation of a full economic return. Its primary aim is to supply the country receiving aid with goods and people needed for development. A clear distinction should therefore be kept between aid and commercial credit.

8. We give aid because in the widest sense we believe it to be in our interest to do so as a member of the world community. We recognise that it is in the nature of aid that we should accept an economic sacrifice when giving it. To describe as aid transactions which do not entail such sacrifices would incur risk of frustration and ill will. This does not mean that the present economic sacrifices cannot yield benefits to us in the future. It means that these benefits should not be the main motivation for giving aid and that they must not conflict with development.

9. Since the war Britain has adapted herself to great changes. New nations have emerged, and the Empire has been transformed into the modern Commonwealth. The coming years will require great efforts of imaginative adjustment to a world in which new nations seek to use their independence for social and economic advancement. Action is needed both in the public and in the private sphere. The second has been recognised by the remarkable growth during recent years of the work of voluntary organisations, but larger action is needed in the field of public policy. The solutions to the problems of the developing countries are neither simple nor obvious. They will involve new experiments, new methods, new institutions, new relationships. There are many paths to development. Our aim is to help the developing countries to find and pursue them.