AFRICANEWS

Tanzania

Graduates without a future?

The shift from a planned to a market economy is causing ripples among the poor in Tanzania as the cost of higher education skyrockets and jobs become scarcer.

Jackson Tore, 26, earns his bread and butter from loading stones and sand onto a truck for a paltry US$ 2 per month wage.

"I would not have cared," he says, "if I had not been to school and passed my advanced secondary level education with good grades."

What, asks Tore, is the use of education if one does not get a job?

Tore, though, should count himself lucky to have a secondary education at all. Urged on by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the government is undertaking economic reforms that are pushing education beyond the reach of the ordinary Tanzanian.

For many Tanzanian youth, secondary education now remains an expensive and elusive dream.

"Last term, they asked us to pay US$ 100 (TShs 60,000) as school fees," says Neema Mahuku, a sixth form student at Nganza Secondary School near Dodoma. Next term's fees are even higher and my parents are expected to pay US$134 (TShs80,000). I'll have to quit school as my parents cannot afford that."

And Neema is not alone: many students are finding it impossible to attend secondary school or college. Others are dropping out due to lack of fees.

A secondary school head-teacher in Dodoma, Joseph Bihawana, tells a tale that is not uncommon in other schools: "Of the 30 students we admitted in the special in-take for village students, more than 10 were unable to raise the Tshs 15,000 fees that we demand."

Jacqueline Mkindi, like Tore, is now watching the years of toil through to secondary school melt between her fingers. She passed her advanced secondary certificate and was admitted to an Indian university. But she could not raise the fees and the ministry of higher education said it could not sponsor a student to a private university.

"I can't raise the US$26,000 required for the course," laments Mkindi. Indeed, few Tanzanians can.

After nearly three decades of Ujamaa, former president Mwalimu Julius Nyerere's brand of African Socialism under which primary education was free and higher education relatively cheap, the poor are acutely feeling the crunch of market-based reforms in education.

No clear solution seems to be in sight to the funding woes in the education system.

For the poorest, seeking help from the Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation. The Foundation assists students from poor families meet their education costs but it is hard up for money. Mwalimu Nyerere, for instance, had to auction his trademark walking stock for US$ 7,000 to boost the Foundation's kitty recently. Still, few can benefit from this effort.

Some analysts question the government's zeal in following the IMF and World Bank prescriptions. They say the benefits of the economic reforms, that involve severe cutbacks in social spending - especially in education and health - are minimal compared to the hurt they cause especially to the poor.

Illiteracy is beginning to creep in society and the quality of schools is deteriorating under the cost sharing system. Worse, education is becoming the preserve of the rich few.

Figures released recently by the City Adult Education Department, Dar es Salaam, show an alarming increase in the number of functional illiterates in the capital. The numbers jumped form a mere 40,000 in 1992 to 700,000 at the end of 1996.

Those without the political connections can never hope to get scholarships for higher education.

"With this trend, the poor are not going to get any education," complains Massima Dorkasi, a student.

But even those getting local government-funded scholarships are not getting it as easy as their predecessors. For instance, only 15,000 of the 900,000 graduants from the universities, colleges secondary school last year managed to get government jobs.

For the first time since independence, graduates from the University of Dar es Salaam are not guaranteed jobs in the civil service. The government last year had to stop recruiting the new graduates as part of its civil service reform.

The only option left for many graduants is the highly fluid informal sector. The sector is overcrowded and many lack the start-up capital needed to make a successful entry into it.

John Nindi has taken to selling meatballs at the Mwanza bus stand near Lake Victoria.

"Here I am assured of a few cents," he says."College education is not for me; after all , when I come out, I'll be old and without a job."

Some Tanzanians, however, blame the ingrained habit among their countrymen of expecting the government to do everything for them.

"It is the Ujamaa hang-over," says Miriam Ikaji, a successful kiosk owner in Dodoma. "What the people need is the spirit of enterprise and commitment which has been discouraged in Tanzania for years."

Yet others want the curriculum changed to make it more suitable to the needs of the Tanzanian economy. These changes should produce graduates who are more practical oriented and less dependent on white collar jobs.

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