Mamdani blames World Bank for poor education standards
http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/629923-Mamdani-blames-World-Bank-for-poor-education-standards.html
Publish Date: Mar 28, 2012
By Francis Kagolo
Renowned scholar Prof. Mahmood Mamdani has blamed the World Bank for the poor quality of university education in Uganda and across Africa.
Mamdani particularly attributed Makerere University’s current woes and fading glory to the World Bank’s ill-fated structural adjustment policies (SAPs) on education.
He said the Bank ill-advised African governments, Uganda inclusive, to shift investment from higher education and focus on primary education in 1980s. He said the policy did not only kill higher education but also murdered the quality of primary education too.
According to Mamdani, “the World Bank convinced the Government that university education was not only elitist but a luxury that society could not afford.”
As a result, the Government focused on primary education and left universities to be funded mainly by the students’ families through the private sponsorship scheme.
“The logic was elegant but populist and faulty,” Mamdani said. “It has had disastrous consequences for higher education, not just in Uganda but wherever it has been applied in Africa.”
He made the remarks during the fourth lecture of the Makerere University Africa lecture series on Thursday.
The lecture was held in memory of Dr. Joshua Mugyenyi, a former Bank of Uganda secretary, whom the former premier Prof. Apollo Nsibambi eulogized as “an intellectual and Uganda’s political liberator for fighting (Milton Obote’s) autocratic rule.”
Mugyenyi participated in the formation of the National Resistance Army (NRA) in Kenya in 1981 which later took over power in 1985.
Mamdani quashed the World Bank’s education policies, arguing that the primary school system could not thrive without a flourishing university system.
“Who would train administrators and teachers for primary schools? Who would design the curriculum? The answer to both questions is: universities,” he stated.
He added: “It is nonsense to think that the benefit of higher education goes only or even mainly to those who teach, work or study there.”
“It is like saying that the benefit of a power dam goes only to the management and the workers in the dam, ignoring the millions whose workplaces and houses, offices and streets, are lit by that power.”
Mamdani expressed discontent that the Government was lagging behind in increasing funding for higher education even after the World Bank realized its mistake and changed the policy in the late 1990s.
He however, said the World Bank ought to pay for its mistakes by funding universities like Makerere whose suffering is a result of its ill-conceived policies.
“The World Bank claims to be a champion of the free market. Well, the first law of the market is that if you make a bad investment, you must pay for it,” he said.
“But the Bank has a long history of making bad investments, yet it has never paid the cost of even one wrong decision. It has simply withdrawn and left its clients to pay the bill. The Bank has the luxury of not living by the rules it forces on others.”
Prof. Nsibambi, however, defended the Government for implementing the World Bank 1980s’ policy on education, saying Uganda would lose out on aid had the policy not been implemented.
The former Ugandan Prime Minister said Madman was unrealistic in his criticism of the Government.
“When the World Bank came up with the policy, Uganda produced a defiant budget in 1987. The Bank then denied us credit. President Museveni had to tactfully accept the SAPs because he was managing an ailing economy,” Nsibambi defended the 1987 education adoption.
The memorial lecture was also attended by a number of ministers and Kenya’s medical services minister, Prof. Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o.
