Rethinking Nyerere: How Harris-Todaro model falsifies `Education for Self Reliance

Recent reflections by President Jakaya Kikwete when announcing results of the national census conducted in third quarter of last year had plenty of reminders of Mwalimu Nyerere's fears in writing his seminal essay, Education for Self Reliance early in 1967. The president was vividly disappointed with the current size of the population, in like manner as Mwalimu was abysmally worried by rising number of ex-school youths, at that time even those finishing Standard VII (just when the old Standard VIII was being phased out, with plenty of consequences for education quality subsequently) were looking for jobs. Mwalimu came up with Education for Self Reliance as a philosophy to redirect attention of youth as to using education.

What united Mwalimu with JK in his recent reflections is that their respective positions start from rising numbers of youths seeking for jobs, with Mwalimu being essentially a problem of school leavers seeking white collar jobs which he felt the national economy could not possibly deliver, at least not to expectations. In the case of JK it is more or less the same thing but writ large, that large population numbers put pressure on national resources, which is chiefly a matter of feeding the population but also job opportunities. The difference is that the problem for policy makers is no longer ex-Standard VIII finishers but graduate unemployment.

 

While in the case of rising demand for white collar jobs Mwalimu sought a genuine solution in changing attitudes of those going through primary and middle school (at that time), to direct their imagination to village life, no such solutions can even be imagined with regard to rising population. At most this sadness on the part of the president would ignite heightened activities of all sorts of birth control leaflets and vending antiquated medicine for women to stop pregnancies, touching off all sorts of harmful effects including incurable cancers and other tissue breakdowns. Ordinarily it is pro-choice (abortion, contraceptive) propaganda which gets plenty of airtime and space in newspapers, the 'mefaits,' drawbacks, are silently skipped.

 

The problem is how far we are with Mwalimu's 1967 worries and the solution he brought up, and examining the 45 year record since then, how far the worries raised by President Kikwete in much the same vein are founded, and what practical needs or methods exist to resolve the problem, if it can be verified to exist. For one thing, there isn't much difference between worrying about school leavers and prospects for employment, and worrying about population levels, food security and social services. The two can be called 'birds of a feather,' and hence they have the same logic (of a section of the population whose hopes are diminishing, vs population as a whole, whose hopes may according to JK diminish if care is not taken), which also means that what we know of ESR since 1967 applies to population at present.

 

The president regularly warns local people not to sell land to investors, and meanwhile Premier Mizengo Pinda champions Kilimo Kwanza, whose 'pearl' in the strategy is welcoming agribusiness especially in biofuels, which is equally a misnomer.  But more importantly as to his latest reflections, if indeed there is a problem of a rising population, the solution is not US destructive and cancer causing contraceptive pills and ballooning young women's deaths due to abortions but open market economy. 

 

When most land has been bought by local and foreign investors and agriculture is modernised while handicraft takes that place of hand hoe as the main occupation, as many more goods will be needed, population trends will start coming down. The Harris-Todaro model works on the basis of a proper market economy, while Malthusian sentiments and US abortionists constantly seek to 'plan' the population, and they harvest only death; only industrial growth and universalisation of women employment radically influences population growth.

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN