The politics of education in Tanzania: From colonialism to liberalization

This chapter examines the effects of liberalization on the cultural and ideological reproduction of Tanzania through formal education. It shows how the crisis of ideological hegemony relates to education, in particular the quality of education and the medium of instruction. The chapter discusses universal primary education and the Adult Literacy Program as manifestations of quantitative and qualitative changes in the education system. It highlights some of the effects of the liberalization process of the 1980s on Education for Self-Reliance. The chapter analyzes Tanzania’s colonial inheritance in the educational sphere also examines some of the challenges posed by the Tanzanian state with the introduction of Education for Self-Reliance. Tanzania is one of the few African countries, and indeed one of the few former colonial territories, that actively sought to chart for itself an alternative path of development to that bequeathed it by the colonial state at independence. Education for Self-Reliance was premised on principles of egalitarianism.