The Government, through the Minister for Education, has called on universities to produce their own textbooks, instead of relying on those from the US and Europe.
The Minister was officiating at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) Innovation Week held recently.
At the ceremony, history was written, when a 5-volume comprehensive book of anatomy, written by a seasoned Tanzanian don, Prof David Ngasapa, and the first of its kind in East Africa, was launched. The series was completed after 20 years of toiling.
Prof Ngasapa sought to fill in the gap of university and other institutions of higher education students relying on “yellowing” lecturers’ notes, which differed from one lecturer to the other, and, when they (students) graduated, they left without a reference textbook to guide them in their professional career.
The Minister’s call was timely, and here, students of land-based professions come to mind.
The textbooks or other material used in teaching these courses have their ancestry in the US and Europe.
A student who will graduate as an expert in land and urban development will have his knowledge based on Sjoberg’s “Pre-Industrial City”, Ernest Burgess’s “Concentric Zone Model” of Urban Land use, developed in the 1920s, in the poverty ridden and segregated city of Chicago, US; and American Sociologist Louis Wirth’s 1938 book entitled: “Urbanism as a way of Life”.
The list would certainly include the works of Sir Leslie Patrick Abercrombie FRIBA (Fellow of Royal Institution of British Architect) who was an English architect, urban designer and town planner and is famous for redesigning major British cities after World War II.
He was also an academic professor of town planning at University College London.
Not to forget the works of Germans: Johann Heinrich von Thünen’s 1826 theory that agricultural land use is determined by transportation costs and land rent (profit) relative to a central market, predicting concentric rings of land uses settlements; Walter Christaller and his 1933 central place theory; Ebenezer Howard, an English urban planner and founder of the garden city movement; and many more.
When, and if, the student is introduced to African Urbanism, it may possibly be by way of Anthony ‘O Connor’s: “The African City”, a unique book that tries in a short format to give the reader a comprehensive picture of cities in Africa from early origins to the present. He was British.
There is a dearth of textbooks based on research done in Africa, on special problems that inflict Africa, including rapid urbanization, carried out and published by dons based in African Universities; and covering both theory and practice.
The Minister’s call is timely because universities tend to collect the best brains in a country and have them under their wings. These may be recruited as young academicians; they grow through academic ranks, but also in age: from tutorial assistants to full professors; from 25 years of age to 85; from buoyancy to senility. How many great dons have we seen, some so good at administering and reforming universities, but leaving nothing behind, on retirement?
True, they do research, publish papers, many times in reputed refereed journals; they may have books, or chapters in books under their sleeves; but very few write and publish authoritative textbooks.
Getting these great brains to write textbooks will force them to address local problems, and formulate local solutions instead of relying on problems conceived and solved with reference to different circumstances altogether.
We see our urban areas growing haywire. Can we think of another way of addressing this problem instead of the sacrosanct master planning that we inherited? Can we understand our different land tenure systems, including the ideas of the “commons” (such as rweya, vinyungu, vitimbi, ngitili and communal pastoral lands) and how they can be elevated to address our current problems, instead of bundling them into the colonially determined “customary tenure”?
True, we do not want to re-invent the wheel, but does our knowledge of economics always have to starts with the Scottish don, Adam Smith’s: “The Wealth of Nations”?
In terms of the kind of buildings that we put up, can they reflect African architecture, culture and needs? Why, but we are taught, and can tell various forms of architecture from each other: Greek, Roman, Arabic, Indian, Chinese. Where is African?
Look at our streets: everything there is 100 percent foreign: Bajaj, TVS, Yutong, Howo, Toyota. Japanese, Indian, Chinese. How did they get there? For sure they had their own textbooks. Should we remain just users and spectators?
Given that textbooks are typically used in schools, colleges and universities to provide structured content, and facilitate learning through a systematic approach, it is time that Universities supported research and publications from local budgets, instead of relying on foreign partners.
It is also time that publishing textbooks addressing local problems, was made mandatory in climbing the academic ladder.
