In 1995/6, I was part of a project that set up a new school in Botswana,Southern Africa. I was deputy headmaster and with the headmaster we had an Australian / Canadian Western wealth of knowledge to set up the school with a curriculum that not only exposed values but educated the children of other countries including our own. They liked nothing more than to hear how children in other countries lived and we would have good pow wows on this subject. To be able to expand a child’s knowledge so he or she can experience the world and have a balanced view of life is the ultimate. Hopefully if they go abroad and return home, they can bring some positive notions as to the quality of life in some other countries where it is great.

In short education is important for Africans not so much for nation building but the human building of character and intellect. I have just read an article on polygamy and this is only one of many customs not conducive to good living. The child sacrifice or “muti” is another. Sure have respect for peoples’ customs but when they make others suffer, no thank you. The other point is that Africa is so imbued with the money making culture that Western type education must proceed with the possibility of the ‘best’ studying overseas as well.

Generally nation building is good if the nation building and its money profits or rewards are shared amongst all in the nation. That has not been the case in the past as too many politicians of the African kind have proved to be unscrupulous dictators. Look at Robert Mugabe today and Idi Amin and the king of Swaziland. They have amassed fortunes and let the poor die or killed them themselves.

Education is important in any country, but the reality these days is that you are not always guaranteed a job if you get through and also it costs a small fortune to get that degree. Here in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, I have noticed there are many African taxi drivers who are qualified in their own country but fail to meet the criteria here. So education is fraught with some difficulties along the way to getting that all important piece of paper which allows you an interview. But that’s about it, the rest is judged on job suitability and personality as to being able to fit into the particular work place that is considering employing you. They are the specifics, so education is in some ways is a magic key to Western success and in other ways a blocker to the passing on of traditional values on the continent of Africa.

Let me give you a specific example of what happened in one country and then another. In Zimbabwe, prior to the construction of the Kariba Dam there were many happy villages in the valley where the flooding was to take place. Education and the pursuit of the means to fuel a moneyed, educated, wealthy, middle class, African society, allowed the Mugabe government to walk all over these simple people and relocate them from sacred ground. The same happened in Namibia when Sam Ngoma would not listen to the pleas of the Himba people in the far north- west, not to flood their sacred valley where they had buried their ancestors. If education means that there is going to be a snob class type attitude towards those that don’t have it, then it is bad.

Summing up everybody in the world regards education as paramount to progress. What sort of progress you want depends on your ambition. If it means corruption, it is not good for nation building. If it means a better more informed way to live life and have a better living standard then there is importance attached to it but in the words of Mark Twain,”Sometimes schooling got in the way of my real learning about the world”.

Ultimately to control the ravages of aids,overpopulation, and to make sure everyone has enough to eat it, has to come from the African leaders themselves who may be able to pass on some thing from their own education. However, as long as you have Thabo Mbeke of South Africa, believing the witch doctor will cure aids, and getting his Health Minister to tell the victims that instead of retrovirals a good rest and cup of tea will fix it, then you go backwards in the notion of education building a healthy nation. Nelson Mandela for all his glorification, was an educated lawyer who killed people through terrorist activities. When he made the most of his high educated status, thinking himself a rock star travelling the world, he forgot his people at the lowest level . He too should have known enough about aids to know retrovirals do extend life for a period longer. Yet his knowledge matched Mbeke’s, out of mind out of sight.

So where do you start? If education is going to benefit Africa at all, the nations’ leaders have to pass it on to the people in a totally unselfish, giving way. If this can be done western type education may be of some benefit to African Nation building.