Download Economics, including management, and sociology as academic

Economics (including Management)
and Sociology as Academic disciplines
in Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone,
Tanzania and Zimbabwe: Current
State, Priority needs and Training
and Research programmes
L. Adele Jinadu
Ecuoomics including management and sociology as
academic disciplines in Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone,
Tanzania and Zimbabwe: current state, priority needs
and training and research programmes
First Edition, October 1989
UNESCO - CODESRL4
tzopyrigbtouNEsco
BP. 3311 Dakar, SENEGAL
Typcst and Printed by CODESRL4
Economics (including Management)
and Sociology as Academic disciplines
in Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone,
Tanzania and Zimbabwe: Current
State, Priority needs and Training
and Research programmes
L. Adele Jinadu
I. Introduction
A - Objectives
This report was commissioned by the Council for the Development of
Economic and Social (CODESRIA) “as part of its collaboration with
UNESCO”. The over-all aim is to offer a brief survey of the “state of the
art” in Economics (including Management) and in Sociology/Social Anthropology and to “present the region’s priority needs in these disciplines”, due consideration being given to “sub-saharanAfrican needs”.
The wider context within which this central objective must be situated
is the current crisis of the state in Africa and of the role of the social
sciences in helping to find solutions to it. The social sciences as an intellectual vocation must be policy-oriented, playing a social transformative role. Their theoretical constructs must inform and be informed by
the concrete material needs and experiences of the African continent.
B - Criteria
of Country Selection
The selection of country studies to be undertaken was made by CODESRIA. Two sets of countries were selected as representative samples of English-speaking and French-speaking African countries. This
report focuses on the following English-speaking African countries:
Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
1
C - Background
ces
Factors and Development of Social Scien-
To understand the current “state of the art:. in the disciplines of Economics and Sociology in these countries, it is useful to indicate briefly
some of the historically determined factors that have impinged upon
and substantially shaped their development. Thus, it is instructive to
seek explanations of their current state in the political economy of colonial and post colonial Africa.For example, such a perspective is instructive because it enables one to look at the current practice of Economics
and Sociology as well as of the other social sciences, and of the prospects of their playing a social transformative role, as part of the global
process of sociocultural and intellectual diffusion from the west. To
take another example: the highly statist character of Africa’s political
economy has ensured the virtual monopoly of university education by
the state. A consequence of this is that the growth patterns and orientations of the two disciplines - Economics and Sociology - have not been
unrelated to their presumed relevance to national development as dcfined by policy-makers.
D - ProbIems of Categorization
A basic problem is to categorize the two discipline. The problem is
already indicated in the aide-memoir under which this study was commissioned. Rcfcrcncc was made to “Sociology/Social Anthropology”
and to “Economics (especially Management)“. This already indicates
that categorization of the two disciplines might be problematic in terms
of their focus and their institutionalization in rclcvant departments and
faculties in African Universities and research centres. This is a boundary problem.
A great deal depends on the traditions of faculty structure and disciplinary organizations in the universities in these countries. These traditions, in turn, may have their roots in colonial educational systemsand
in considerations which informed disciplinary departementalization in
the organization of university education and research in the disciplines
in Great Britain.
E - The Logic of Departementalization
The problem of catcgorization is also bound up with the process of
departmentalization of the disciplines. In the five countries, there were
no specilically dcsignatcd dcpartmcnts of Economics or of Sociology/Social Anthropology when the Grst universities were established.
This is why the two disciplines initially served some “apprcnticcship” in
the humanities. By “apprenticeship” is meant their beginnings as units
or sub-units in faculties of Humanities and not as separate autonomous
departments.
The logic of “apprenticeship” led in due course to the establishment
of autonomous social science departments within the faculties of Humanities and later within faculties of Social Sciences. The inexorable
working out of ‘colonial nationalism and the expansion in projected
high-level manpower needs in the penultimate years of colonial rule also contributed to the departmentalization of the disciplines. From small
beginnings, Economics, Sociology and the other Social Sciences assumed increasing importance and relevance to the project of national development and nation-building. This was an instrumentalist notion of
their relevance.
This developmental logic of the disciplines suggeststwo observations.
The first is the preeminent role of social and applied anthropology as
the favoured Social Science under colonial rule in the five countries.
For example, the Colonial Social Science Council was set up in London
to encourage and support social anthropological studies in these countries and other British colonies. The initial primary disciplinary orientation of the West African Institute of Social and Economic Research, established in 1950 and the East African Institute of Social Research, established in 1947,was Social Anthropology, although they were also expected to pursue research in Economics and Politics.
The second observation is that in the post-colonial period in these
countries, Economics has superseded Sociology/Social Anthropology in
the primary importance attached to it among the social sciences. With
economic development as the goal and with the premium attached to
national planning to achieve that goal, it is not too difficult to see why
Economics has come to assume such preeminence. If a law and order
view of government favoured Social and Applied Anthropology in colonial Kenya, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, for example, an economistic or
development-oriented view of government as an agent for enhancing
the welfare of its citizens, made Economics all the more appealing.
II.
State of the art
A - General observations
Some general observations are in order before the country-by-country account of the current situation of Economics and Sociology/Social
Anthropology is given. A primary concern is with the institutional arrangements for teaching and research in the two disciplines in the
context of the historically determined factors already indicated.
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B - Varieties of Institutidnalization
There is a vast variation from one country to the other in the institutionalization of the two disciplines in the five countries. At one extreme
is Nigeria which, with over twenty-five federal and state universities, has
developed vibrant faculties of social sciences and social science research institutes with autonomous departments or divisions of Economics and Sociology in most of them. The variation is due, among other
reasons, to differential resource endowment in the five countries and its
impact on budgetary allocations to universities.
C - Impact of Political
Climate
The character of the institutional frameworks for teaching and research in the two disciplines is also affected by the changing needs and
priorities of their governments as they confront problems of political
development. As a result, the two disciplines as well as the other social
science disciplines have been immersed in the concrete problems facing the five countries.
In other words, disciplinary fragmentation as well as orientation has
been one response to these changing needs and priorities of governments. This is particularly illustrated in the growing importance of such
disciplines as Management, Actuarial Science and Social Work which
are derivative of the core disciplines of Economics and Sociology.
D - Integration
of Teaching and Research
The primary concern with development has meant that the diitinction between pure and applied research.has tended to be downplayed;
and that a strong linkage exist between teaching and research in the two
disciplines. Teaching and research have also tended to emphasize multi-disciplinarity, cross-disciplinarity and inter-disciplmarity in their foci
and substantive concerns.The linkage is also reflected in the pursuit of
certain types of research to produce textbooks and other teaching materials for use in the universities in these disciplines.
E - Research and Consultancy
Work
The two disciplines have witnessed since the 1970’sgreater demand
from the public and private sectors and from technical assistanceagencies and international organisations for specialiied contributions to development problems or projects. Economists and Sociologists in the
universities and research institutes in these countries have been engaged in consultancy projects which are policy-oriented. In fact in some
countries, e.g. Nigeria and Sierra Leone, consultancy units have been
established within universities or research institutes to enable econo-
4
mists and sociologists as well as other social scientists in these universities to undertake such projects. The effect of consultancy work of this
nature on long-term research is at best problematic, since it tends to
encourage focus on short-term national problems, dissociated from
their underlying causes and long-term consequences. A reconciliation
of research needs and consultancy demands is thus a major problem facing the two disciplines in these countries.
F - Trends in Departmentalization
In all the five countries, Economics and Sociology have emerged as
autonomous departments. Each department structures its own degree
programmes and over-all coordination is provided at the faculty level
where the close identity of each discipline with the other social sciences
is emphasized and given organizational form.
A noticeable trend in all‘the countries is special&ion within each
department. This has been partly the result of the expansion in departmental course offerings, But it is also due to specific man-power requirements of the various national economies which saw a shift from a generalist to specialized or career-oriented degree programmes; This
particular trend is clearly evident in all the countries, except Sierra
Leone, in the development of degree programmes in disciplines which
are derivative of Economics-Commerce, Finance, Personnel Management, Business Administration and Sociology - Social Work, Industrial
and Social Relations.
The trend towards departmentalization and to specialization within
departments has been countered to a greater or lesser extent by the vogue for the new Marxist political economy approach to development issues and studies. The linking of research and teaching to policy issues
has also encouraged multi-disciplinarity in spite of departmentalization
and specialization.
G - Trends in Curriculum
Development
The curricula and syllabuses in the disciplines in these countries are
generally informed by development issues in their national, sub-region< (e.g. West Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa), regional (African)
and global dimensions; The state is generally the main unit of analysis
and it is around it that curricula in the two disciplines have tended to be
designed.
The design of curricula and syllabus has also generally been given a
nationalistic,. African-focus -. the transmission and Africanisation of
knowledge, the advancement of scholarship in the service of the community and to meet the needs of the people, and.the provision of highlevel manpower for national development.
5
H - Focus of Graduate Education
Graduate education in Economics and Sociology is offered in all five
countries. Emphasis placed ORthis varies from country to country and
is not unrelated to the demand for it, the state of the national economies and staff strength in the various departments. Also relevant is the
general aim of higher education in these countries.
Graduate education in all five countries aims at the reproduction of
students for employment in the public and private sectors and as university teachers as well. It involves a combination of research and
course work. The extent to which graduate education in the disciplines
within those countries has been pursued as an aspect of the localization
or indigenisation of university staff has varied from one country to the
other, and with it also the dependence on graduate training abroad for
staff development.
I - Extra-University
Institutions
A word should be said about extra-university institutions which offer
training in Economics, Sociology tid related or derivative disciplines
like Management and Social Work. This form of training is all the more
important because of the critical role which management development
and training is assigned in the development plans of the five countries.
As one Nigerian observer has commented: “The current huge national
development plan depends heavily for its successon a large number of
high calibre managers. Indeed it is said that lack of adequate executive
capacity accounted, to a very large extent, for the poor implementation
of the two previous plans”. (“Management for Development”, Feature
Article in The Business Times, Lagos Nigeria, May 16,1978, p. 27).
Here. again, there is great diversity among the five countries in the
character, structure and number of such institutions providing training
for public and private sector management. In Nigeria, there are the
Centre for Management Development, the Industrial Training Fund,
the Institute of Management and Technology, and the Nigerian Institute of Management and the National Social Work Training School to
name a few. In Tanzani a, there are the Institute of Development Management, the Institute of Finance Management, the National Welfare
Training Institute and the Ardhi Institute.
What all this indicates is also that disciplines which are derivative of
Economics, Sociology and the other social sciences have increasingly
assumed important roles in the scheme of things. This importance is
due basically to the popular acceptance of an instrumentalist conception of science and of development.
J - Impact of the Crisis of the State
The ecnnnmic crisis which has rocked the state in these countries has
had a profound impact on the two disciplines and the other social
sciences. This has meant, for example, reduced allocations for teaching
and research, cut down in student enrolhnent, embargoes on academic
staff recruitment, delayed promotions of academic staff, chronic shortages of textbooks and other teaching resource materials and the spiralling costs of such resource materials.
Not surprisingly this situation has takenits toll on the morale of academic staff generally. The temptation to seek alternative employment
or to engage in multiple jobs (“moonlighting”) has been hard to resist.
All this has also been compounded by the relative low remuneration/salary and fringe benefits paid to university teachers when compared to
those received or enjoyed by the higher echelons in the public services,
nor is the matter much helped by the general antipathy towards academia as a protected ivory tower. Nowhere among the five countries has
the effect of the crisis of the state been more devastating on the two disciplines than in Sierra Leone and Tanzania.
III - Current state of the art
What follows is a country-by-country overview of the current state of
the two disciplines in the five countries. Much of the emphasis is on the
institutional framework for teaching and research in the two disciplines,
with passing reference to issues and trends in their development.
A-KENYA+>
Origins of University
of Nairobi
The oldest University in Kenya is the University of Nairobi which is
the successorto the then Royal Technical College of East Africa which
enrolled its first students in 1956 and which at various times evolved into the Royal College, Nairobi cm i961) and the University College, Nai-.
robi (in 1964).
Emergence of Economics and Sociology
The teaching of Economics and Sociology dates back to 1961 when
the then Royal College, Nairobi entered into special relations with the
University of London and began to offer courses in Arts and some of
the social sciences. By 1962, a Department of Economics offering
courses leading to the BA degree had been created. The 1966-I%7
7
academic year saw the creation of a sub-department of Sociology within
the Department of Economics at the University. A full-fledged, separate and autonomous Department of Sociology was created in the 19671968 academic year. Of the other social sciences or related disciplines,
Geography and History were created as full departments in 1956-1957
academic year, while the Department of Government was excised from
the Department of Law and Government and constituted into a full department in the 1965-1966academic year.
Current institutional
arradgement
At the University of Nairobi, there are now, as before, separate departments of Economics and Sociology. The two departments are
constituent units of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at
the university and both offer three year degree programmes leading to
the undergraduate Bachelor of Arts (BA). Also offered are the postgraduate degrees of Bachelor of Philosophy (B.Phil.), Master of Arts
(MA) and the doctorate (Ph.D).
Undergraduate
Degree Structure
The BA degree programmes in both disciplines is spread over a
three-year period. Students pursuing the degree programmes in both
disciplines are expected to offer courses in three subjects in their first
year. Thereafter they can choose one of three options in their last two
years. One option allows them to offer further courses in two of the
subjects in each of their second and third year. A second option allows
them to offer further courses in two of the subject in their second year
and further courses in one of the courses‘ only in their third year. A
third option is one in which further courses are taken in one subject only in the second year and also in the same subject in the third year.
To qualify for the award of the degree, students are required to sit
and pass a total of eight full papers, i.e. four in each of the second and
third year. The degree classification is divided into three classes:First,
Second (Upper and Lower Divisions) and Pass.
Course Offerings: Economics
In Part I, the Department of Economics offers two courses, viz. Elements of Economics, and African Economic Problems. In Part II the
range of subjects offered includes Economic Theory, Economic Statistics, Mathematics for Economics, Comparative Economic systems,
Economic History, Demography, and Accounting and Control. Third
year papers include Economic Development, Advanced Economic
Theory, Agricultural Economics, Economics of Industry and Labour,
Money, Banking and Finance, International Economics, Public Finance, and Monetary Theory and Policy, among others.
8
Course Offerings: Sociology
Course offerings in the Department of Sociology are of two kinds:
those in Sociology proper and those in Social ‘Work. Fist year courses
in the Sociology stream include introduction to Sociology and An&opology. Second year courses in the same stream include Social Structure of East African Societies, Social Theory, Methods of Social Investigation, Demography, Race, Ethnicity and Stratification, Sociology of
Collective Behaviour and Social Movements, etc. Third year options include Social Change and Social Development, Social Psychology, Criminology, Political Sociology, Urban Social Structure, Formal Organisation, Sociology of Work and Industry etc.
The social work course offerings include Principles and Methods of
Social Work and Community Development, and Introduction to Sociology, Anthropology and Psychology (First Year); Methods of Social
Work, Community Development and Social Welfare, Social Psychology
and Human Growth and Development, and Methods of Social Investigation (Second Year); and Social Change and Social Development, Family and Child Welfare, Social Policy and Administration, Health and
Disease, Deviation and Rehabilitation, etc. (Third Year).
Research Components of Undergraduate
Degree
An important feature of undergraduate teaching in both departments
is the emphasis on research. To this end, there are courses in research
methods. For example, undergraduates are encouraged to gain research experience through field work on supervised projects during
their long vacation. The results of the field work are then written up as
third year dissertations in partial fulfillment of the BA degree.
Graduate Education
Both departments offer postgraduate degree programmes. Over the
years, there has been a change in the structure of these programmes.
For example, the MA degree initially required only a dissertation; but
this was changed in 1973 when a two-year MA degree based on course
and examinations was introduced in Economics and Sociology.
The growth of postgraduate degree programmes in the two departments was due partly to pressures from the government for more specialized and more advanced degree programmes than were provided by
the bachelors’ degree. For example, the MA degree in Economics and
the emphasis on So&al Work in Sociology were designed to meet the
’ developmental needs of the government in these two areas.
The growth of postgraduate programmes in the two departments was
also due to the need for the reproduction of academic staff in the two
disciplines. Outstanding undergraduate students are selected for academic staff development training purposes locally and in some cases
abroad.
9
Undergraduate
Education in Management
The teaching of Management courses can be traced to the introduction of commerce subjects into the Faculty of Special Professional Studies at the then Royal Technical College in the 1956/57academic year.
The courses were offered to enable Kenyan students to take the intermediate and final examination of the chartered and corporate accountants and other commercial professional courses.
It was not until 1964 that a Faculty of Commerce was established,
with the first graduate turned out in the 1966/67 academic year. The
origins of the Faculty indicate an awareness of the need to train graduates for middle and upper level management positions in the country’s public and private sectors. The thriving Kenyan economy and the
role of Kenya as virtually the banking, commercial and industrial nervecentre of East Africa further underscored the need for university degree programmes in management and management-related disciplines.
The new Faculty of Commerce at its inception in 1966 consisted of
the following departments: Accounting, Business Administration, Law
and Domestic Science (Home Economics). The departments of Law
and of Domestic Science were excised from the faculty in 1970. The
Department of Law was later constituted into the Faculty of Law; and
the Department of Domestic Science was transferred to Kenyatta University College.
The Faculty of Commerce at the University of Nairobi now has the
following departments: Accounting, Management Science and Business
Administration.
The range of subjects offered in each department emphasizes the interrelatedness between these disciplines and such other disciplines as
Economics, Law, Political Science and Sociology. There is also emphasis on computer and mathematical oriented courses. For example, the
Department of Management offers courses in, among others, Quantitative Methods (First year); Computer Science and Business Statistics
(Second Year); and SystemsAnalysis (Third Year).
Although this interrelatedness has always been stressed and given
concrete expression in the form of cross-listing of courses with Economica, for example, Management and management related courses have
always had, at the University of Nairobi, an independent existence from
the social sciences. This is in contrast to the development in Tanzania,
for example, where courses in subjects which are derivative of the social
sciences (Management and Administration) grew out of the Faculty of
Social Sciences.
Graduate Education in Management
A two-year Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree programme by course-work and examination was begun in the 1972/73aca-
10
demic year. The courses offered include Policy Development and Implementation, Organisations and the Environment, and Marketing Management. Also required of MBA students is an in-depth research paper on a development-oriented problem in one of the major areas of
specialization within the MBA programme.
The MBA degree structure also encourages cross-disciplinary offerings in the social sciences and law. For example, there are the courses
on Budgeting and Financial Administration, and Management of Public Entreprises offered in the Public Administration and Public Policy
specialization in the MA programme in the Department of Government. On the other hand, students in the public administration and Public Policy stream in the MA in Government programme can offer
courses in Labour Relations and Personnel Management in Business
Administration and Commerce. Management related master programmes are also offered in the Departments of Land Development,
and Urban and Regional Planning at the university.
Research Institutes
and Research Orientations
Institutions which. undertake research work and training in Economics and Sociology include the Institute of Development Studies, the
Institute of African Studies and the Population Studies and Research
Institute, all constituent units of the University of Nairobi.
The Institute for Development Studies, established in October, 1965,
pursues multi-disciplinary and multi-purpose research and training on
the social and econonzic dimensions and problems of development in
Kenya and the rest of Africa. It also offers consultancy services to the
Kenyan government and to international governmental and non-governmental institutions and organizations in Kenya.
The research programme of the institute is under the preview and
control of the Board of the Institute for Development Studies which
consults regularly with the relevant ministries of the Kenyan Govern-.
ment in setting research agenda and priorities for the institute. The research findings of the institute are issued in the form of Working Papers, Discussion Papers and Occasional Papers.
The training functions of the institute include the running of a Junior
Research Fellowship programme to enable young Kenyan social scientists undertake research work for their doctoral dissertation. Reskarch
staff of the institute requested to do so are also expected to teach up to
three hours a week in the departments related to their areas of specialization at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Tlte Institute of Aftican Studies began in 1966 as the Cultural Division
of the Institute for Development Studies. It was not until 1970 that it
became an autonomous institute. It is expected to pursue and promote
research in, among other areas, ethnography and social anthropology in
so far as this is related to problems of national development. It is pri-
11
marily a research institute and is not engaged in teaching. But its academic staff are expected to teach course from time to time, as and when
required, in departments of the University of Nairobi that are related to
their fields of specialiiation.
Thepopulation Shcdiesand ResearchInstitute was established in June,
1976, to pursue research and training in population studies, with primary focus on the relationship between population dynamics and development. Focus has therefore been on migration and urbanization, fertility
and development and mortality and development.
The institute offers an MA degree programme in Population Studies
which is intended to train demographers and social scientists for employment in the public and private sectors. The programme which runs
over two academic years is a combination of coursework, examination
and thesis. A Master of Science degree programme in Population Studies is also offered by the Institute. This particular programme is meant
for graduates with a background in Mathematics who may wish to pursue advanced work in the more sophisticated mathematical and statistical aspects of population studies.
In addition to these three research institutes, research in Economics
and Sociology is of course carried out by academic staff in the Departments of Economics and Sociology at the University of Nairobi. For
example, prior to the establishment of the Institute of Development
Studies in 1965, there had been an Economic Research Unit within the
Department of Economics.
Research Orientations
There is a strong tradition of research in Economics and Sociology in
Kenya. Much of the greater focus of the research is applied research on
development related issues in their national and sub-regional (i.e. east
Africa) contexts. While much of this is pursued for primarily academic
purposes, a substantial proportion of it is also in response to demands
from the Kenyan government and the various international agencies in
Kenya.
The underlying idea here is that the social sciences, and particularly
Economics and Sociology can and should provide knowledge that is relevant and useful for national development planning. This is indeed the
leitmotif for the creation of the research institutes and of the National
Scientific Research Council in 1977.
But the crisis of the state in recent years in Kenya has given rise to
the view that the social sciences must not only offer their services to the
government but also to the masses.The view then is that while not necessarily dissociating themselves from government, the social sciences
must also be an integral part of the democratisation of Kenyan society
by placing their knowledge in the service of the masses.This may in-
i2
volve criticising government policies whose thrust may not be compatible with massmobiition
and participation in affairs of the state.
B - NIGERIA
Origins of University Teaching in Economics and Sociology
The 1970-1980decade witnessed a proliferation of Universities in Nigeria and, with it, of the social science disciplines in the organization of
University education in the country. The University College, Ibadan
was established in 1948 under a special relations scheme with the University of London. But it was not until 1957 that a Department of Economics was set up at the University College, although it had been intended to offer it along with the other social science disciplines at the inception of the college.
The delay in offering Economics and Sociology as well as the other
social sciences was due to the antipathy of the colonial authorities towards these disciplines. The logic of colonial nationalism and the British tradition of University teaching in these disciplines in due course
dictated the need to introduce them for degree award purposes in Nigeria. The departmentalization of Economics was followed with the
creation in 1960-61academic year of a Faculty of Economics and Social
Studies at the University college.
Patterns of Institutionalization
This pattern of institutionalization shows more importance was then
and still is attached to Economics than the other social sciences. Thus
whereas Economics was a full-fledged autonomous department in the
Faculty, Sociology and Political Science started off as sub-departments.
It was not until the 196364 academic year that they were constituted into separgte, autonomous departments.
If there was the delay in offering undergraduate degree programmes
in Economics and Sociology at the University College, Ibadan, this was
not so with the newer universities established between 1960 and 1962 University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Ahmadu Bello University, University of
Ife and University of Lagos - all of which within a few years of their inception had separate and autonomous departments of Economics and
Sociology.
Affinities
with Management as Discipline
Another pattern which emerged earlier on in the organization and
institutionalization of the social sciences at the newer universities was
the close affinities of these disciplines with such disciplines as Management, Administration and Accounting which are derivative of the core
13
social sciences. For example, the Faculty of Business and Social Studies
was one of three faculties established when the University of Lagos
took off in 1%2. It offered the BA degree in Business Administration
or Ecoiio&s or Accounting or Public.Administration. It was not until
the mid - 1970’s,in response to the need for middle and upper level Nigerian managers in industry and commerce to take advantage of the
planned indigenization of the Nigerian economy that special attention
was paid to Management course offerings.
Sociology, Anthropology
and Social Work
Another pattern which has emerged over the years is that sociology
and anthropology are regarded as one discipline. Thus courses in Anthropology are offered within departments of sociology. A more recent
development, reflecting disciplinary response to government needs and
demands, is the incorporation of social work courses in sociology syllabuses. This has led to plans, in some cases,to create sub-departments
of social work within departments of sociology.
Current institutional
arrangements
The trend in most Nigerian Universities has been towards the departmentalization of the social science disciplines. The major exceptions
are the Federal Universities of Technology. A feature of the departmentalization of the social science disciplines is separate existence as
autonomous departments; Thus in most Nigerian Universities, Economics and Sociology have separate, autonomous departments of their
own. Like the other social science disciplines, these are usually large
departments in terms of students enrollment and academic staff size.
An innovation introduced at the new Lagos State University, established in 1983,is the organ&ion of the social science disciplines into a
single department made up of the following units: Economics, Geography, Political Science and Sociology.
Faculty Affiliations
In terms of faculty affiliation, the general practice is to constitute the
social science disciplines into a Faculty of Social Sciences. But it is not
unusual to have those disciplines constituted into a joint faculty with the
Humanities on Arts or with disciplines derivative of the social sciences.
For example, Ahmadu Bello University has a Faculty of Arts and Social
Sciences; at the Anambra State University of Technology, there is a Faculty of Humanities, Economics and Management. The Bendel State
University has a Faculty of Arts and Social Scienceswhile Bayer0 University and the University of Maiduguri each has a Faculty of Social and
Management Sciences and a Faculty of Social and Management Studies
respectively. At the University of Sokoto, there is a Faculty of Social
Sciences and Administration and at the University of Ilorin there is a
Faculty of Business and Social Sciences.
14
Degree Structure
Although there has been a trend towards their individual departmentalization, there has also been a trend towards the integration of Economics and Sociology with the other social sciences,with social science
- related disciplines like Management and with the humanities. Curricula and syllabuses in the two disciplines - Economics and Sociology emphasize the interconnection between them and these other disciplines.
The availability of electives and optional subjects enables students in
Economics and Sociology to offer courses in other disciplines. For
example, at the University of Ife Part II B.Sc. (Economics) students can
offer the following electives, among others; Nigerian Government and
Politics; Introduction to Sociology; Principles of Accounting; French
Language; and Nigerian History from earliest times to 1800.
The University of Ife also illustrates the trend in a growing number of
Nigerian universities towards combined or integrated degree courses in
a number of social science and non-social science disciplines. Ife has
combined or joint Honours degree programmes in Computer Science
and Economics; in Geography and Economics; and in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
All in all, the emphasis on the degree structures in Economics and
Sociology, as of the other social sciences, is on diversity and variety. As
Professor Akii Mabogunje explains it, this emphasis on variety and diversity is designed to”... help open the eyes of the students to the
breadth and diversity of the humanities and social sciences and make
them better able to cope with the multi-faceted problems of our society.
(A.L. Mabongunje, “rhe Humanities and Social Sciences”, in J.F. Ade
Ajayi and Tekena N. Tamuno, The University of Ibadan, 1948-1973:A
history of the First Twenty-Five Years, Ibadan University Press, 1973, p.
177).
As the late Billy J. Dudley also explains, “...more varied and more
challenging combinations of disciplines will be evolved in an attempt to
break away from the present, trippingly narrow specialization and to
produce a better and more soundly educated type of graduate, of which
I think our society is so much in need”, (B.J. Dudley, Scepticism and Political VIme, Ibadan University Press, 1975,p. 3).
Undergraduate
The Radical Critique of the Degree Structure
The underlying aim is, therefore, to make Economics and Sociology,
as well as the other social science disciplines, and instruction in them
relevant to the development needs of the country. .Yet how well this has
been done is problematic and has been the subject of sustained criticism by radical Nigerian social scientists who would lie to see the dis-
15
ciplines transcend their colonial and precolonial roots and reflect instead the underlying contradictions of the Nigerian state.
The criticism is directed at the fact that the curricula and pedagogical
thrust of teaching in the social sciences generally and in Economics in
particular is basically informed by the substantive and methodological
concerns aird preoccupations of mainstream, Eurocentric social
science. For example, a number of Nigerian economists and other social scientists associated with the Nigerian Academy for Marxist Studies and some academic staff at the Ahmadu Bello University, the University of Nigeria and the University of Port Harcourt have since the
mid - 1970’s canvassed for the need to situate the teaching of Economics, Political Science and Sociology in a historical materialist theoretical framework. The immediate cause of their concern is to be found in
the deepening contradictions of Nigeria’s political economy and of the
failure of dominant mainstream western social science to explain them
adequately. Claude Ake’s Social Science as Imperialism (Ibadan University Press, 1979 states this critique quite well.
Course Offerings: Economics
The usual duration of an undergraduate degree programme in Economics as in Sociology and the other social science disciplines is between three and four years. The 3 - year programme is being gradually
phased out in line with a national policy on education which envisages
four-year undergraduate programmes.
In view of the large number of departments of Economics in the
country, it is impossible to offer the kind of overview that was offered in
the case of Kenya or the other countries covered in the report where
there is, in each of these other countries, only one dominant University.
As a result what follows is a representative sample of course offerings
in Economics at the Ahmadu Bello University and the University of
Port Harcourt. These two universities will also serve as representative
samples of course offerings in Sociology and Management.
At the Ahmadu Bello University, the courses offered for the B.Sc degree in Economics include Micro-Economics and Introduction to Mathematics for Economists (Part I); Economic Analysis, Nigerian Economy, Elements of Statistics, Introduction to Theory of Statistics, Labour Economics and Industrial Relations, Economic History, Elements
of Accounting, Monetary Economics, Comparative Economic Systems,
Theory of Socialist Economy and Introduction to Computer Programming (Part II); and Applied Statistics, Introduction to Econometrics,
International Economics, Public Finance, Development Economics,
Political Economy, Urban Regional Economics, Project Evaluation,
Operations Research and SystemsAnalysis.
In addition to these and other courses in Economics, students reading for the B.Sc. (Eton) degree are expected to offer two papers in
16
each of two other disciplines in Part I and one paper in a subsidiary
subject, normally from one taken in Part I, in each ‘of Part II and Part
III.
As the itemization of course offerings above shows, the’ B.Sc (Eton)
degree programme at the Ahmadu Bello University places emphasis on
the application of quantitative analysis and statistics in the study of
Economics, although there is also some emphasis on economic organi&ion and comparative economic systems.
At the University of Port Harcourt, courses in Economics include the
following; Political Economy of Capitalism, Mathematical and Statisti;
cal Methods, History of Economics Thought, Political Economy of Development, Introduction to Accounting, International Economic Relations, Political Economy of Socialism, Advanced Mathematics, Public
Finance, Introduction to Computer Systemsand Organization, Monetary Systems,Unemployment and the Conditions of Workers in Nigeria, Agricultural Development and Policy, Multi-national Corporations
in Africa, and Regional Development and Integration in Africa.
Here while there is some emphasis on econometrics and quantitative
analysis, there is a much more pronounced concern with practical and
concrete problems of the Nigerian economy. It is in this sense that the
courses are development-oriented, situated as they are within the
context of underdevelopment. This much is also true of course offerings
in the other social science disciplines at the University. And because of
the multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary nature of development, students reading for the B.Sc. (Eton) degree are encouraged to take
courses in other disciplines as part of their degree requirements.
To ensure this, students do not get an opportunity to specialize until
their third and fourth years. They take basically the same courses, in
Year I and Year II with other students in the Faculty of Social Sciences.
These course are designated Foundation Courses, covering such topics
as Polity and Economy of Nigeria, Foundations of Social SciencesI, the
Social System and Elements of Political Economy (1st Semester, Year
I); Language and Culture of a Nigerian People, Political Analysis I, the
Human Environment, and Foundations of social sciences II); Africa
and the Wbrld, Politics of Developing Areas, African Traditional Institutions, Community Service, and Economic History (1st Semester,Year
II); and Science, Technology and Society, Human Organisation of
Space, Political Economy of Underdevelopment, and Political Economy of Capitalism (2nd Semester,Year II).
Course’ Offerings; Sociology
At the Alamadu Bell0 Universig the B.Sc. (Sociology) degree programme is spread over three years. In the first year (Part I), students
are expected to offer six courses, two of which are required Sociology
courses in Introduction to Sociology and Structure of Nigerian Society.
17
The other six courses are made up of the courses in each of two other
subjects, at least one of which must be another social science subject,
usually Economics or Political Science.
B.Sc. (Sociology) students are examined in their second year (Part II)
in two required papers, Statistics and Methods of Research. They are
also examined in three other sociology papers chosen from a range of
options which includes Nigerian People and Culture, Demography, Rural Society, Political Sociology, Complex Organixations, Criminology,
Sociology of the Family, Sociology of Islamic Societies, Sociology of
Law and Economic Anthropology, among others. The students may, alternatively, offer up to two optional papers from subsidiary papers normally in subjects offered in Part I.
In the third year (Part III) the students are required to a Research
Essay and a paper in History of Sociological Thought. They are also expected to offer three Sociology papers from a number of options including Group Dynamics, Analytical Demography, Urban Sociology, Sociology of Industry, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Development,
Social Stratification, Comparative Institutions of non-Industrialized Societies, Social Policy and Planning, Medical Sociology, Industrialized
societies and Cultures and Quantitative Methods. Alternatively, stydents are given the option of taking one paper in one of the subsidiary
subjects taken in Part I or Part II.
At the University of Port Harcourf, in addition to the Foundation
courses taken by all Social Science students as described earlier on,
those students who wish to continue with sociology in Year III and
Year IV must offer the following papers: Socialization, Conformity and
Deviance (or an elective), Theories of Society, Peasant Societies (m 1st
Semester of Year III); Bureaucracy and Complex organizations, Class
Analysis; Urbanization and Labour Migration and Community Service
(2nd Semester, Year III); and the Sociology of Development, Population and Demography, and a choice of two papers from Quantitative
Sociology, Sociology of Religion and Sociology of Education (in 1st Semester, Year IV); a research paper and seminar in three of the following: colloquium on poverty, colloquium on the social structure of Nigeria, colloquium on the sociology of industrial relations and individual
research.
Research Component of Undergraduate Degree Programmes
The undergraduate degree programmes in economics and sociology
at the Ahmadu Bello University and the University of Port Harcourt to
a greater or lesser extent emphasize research work. The objective is to
encourage creativity and independent work based on the gathering of
empirical data. At Ahmadu Bello University, B.Sc. (Sociology) students
must take a compulsory paper in Methods of Social Research in Part II
of the degree examination and are required to submit a Research Essay
18
on a topic chosen in consultation with academic advisers in the department in Part III. Those who wish may also offer the optional Part III
paper in Quantitative Methods.
At the University of Port Harcourt, the Foundations of Social
Sciences I and II which all students in the Faculty of Social Sciences
must offer in Year I focus on the theoretical and methodological foundations of the social sciences. Topics covered include the nature of
science, the nature of scientitic explanations, concept formation, the
existential determination of knowledge, research design, attitude survey
and the application of mathematical and statistical methods of the social sciences.
The research elements of the undergraduate degree programmes also find expression in the compulsory paper on Mathematical and Statistical Methods for Economics students in Part III and in the compulsory paper on Quantitative Sociology for Sociology students in Part III.
Further expression is given to the research component of the degree
programme in both disciplines in Part IV where students are required
to do a Research Paper and attend colloquia/seminars in a number of
topics.
The Community Service Courses which undergraduate are expected
to offer at the University of Port Harcourt also have a research component. A basic objective of these courses, offered in Year II (1st Semester) and Year III (2nd Semester) is to link staff, students and the immediate local community of the University in an organic relationship
which is designed to solve practical problems stated in concrete, practical terms. The projects undertaken by the students are thus expected to
involve the application of theoretical knowledge to the solution of practical community-related problem through field work and in many cases
participant observation.
A further observation that should be made here is that, especially at
the University of Port Harcourt, the research components of the undergraduate degree programme in the two disciplines are rooted in the application pf social science methodologies and theoretical/conceptual
frameworks to problems of development in their national (i.e. federal),
state and local dimensions. In the case of Ahmadu Bello University, the
greater focus tends to be on problems of rural development.
Undergraduate Education in Management
There ‘is a dose-affinity between Economics and the other social
sciences, especially Political Science and Sociology, with Management.
The development of Management within the universities in Nigeria
and elsewhere in Africa is closely linked with middle and high-level managerial man-power needs of their economies as these countries seek to
indigenise or.+fricanise employment in their public and private sector.
19
From small beginnings in the form of in-service training programmes
and refresher courses to improve competence of serving officers in the
public services, Management-oriented courses have proliferated and
have been integrated into regular degree programmes in faculties of social sciences or constituted into separate, autonomous departments in
such faculties or in separate faculties of management or administration?.
No less an important reason for this development is the relevance of
the utilization of quantitative techniques and systems analysis to help
solve management related problems of efficiency and production in various sectors of the national economy. The trend has been further influenced by the proliferation of business and management schools and
degree programmes in the western, industrial&d countries, most especially the USA. The vogue for Management courses in this respect merely continues the general trend of the replication of academic fads originating in the west in African countries.
At the University of Port Harcourt the Department of Business Studies
is part of the Faculty of social sciences. Those who wish to pursue an
undergraduate degree programme in the department must pursue the
Foundation Courses, like other social science students in Year I and
Year II.
Third year level courses which students in the department must follow are in most cases similar to those available to students in the Department of Economics. These are Mathematical and Statistical Methods, History of Economic Thought, Political Economy of Develop
ment and Theory of Accounting (1st Semester); and International Economic Relations, Political Economy of Capitalism, Political Economy
of Socialism and Advance Mathematical and Statistical Methods (2nd
Semester). There is also an option for Industrial Training during the
long vacation.
Courses which are offered in Year IV are the following: Financial
Management, Theory of Management and Organization, Introduction
to Computer Systems and Organization, and Personnel Management
(1st Semester). Research Paper and Seminar, and three of Problems of
Small Business, Sociology of Industrial Relations, Principles of Marketing and their Application to Nigeria, Business Accounting, and Multinational Corporation in Africa (2nd Semester).
At the Buyer0 University there is a Faculty of Social and Management
Sciences, of which the Department of Management Sciencesis a constituent unit. The department offers degree programmes leading to B.Sc.
(Accounting) and B.Sc. (Business Administration). The degree structures in both programmes are built on a social science foundation and
emphasize interdisciplinarity through the availability of optional subjects in other departments.
20
Courses offered in the department include introduction to Nigerian
Public Management, Principles of Accounting, Business Mathematics,
Pr’inciples of Economics, Nigerian leconomy, and two other courses in
the Faculty of Social and Management Sciences other than Economics
and Management Sciences (Part I).
For the B.SC (Accounting) degree the following are the subjects offered in Parts II and III: Company and Public Accounting, Cost Accounting, Business Statistics, Business and Administrative Law, Organisational Behaviour and one of Data Processing and Information System
and Economic Analysis (Part III); and Advanced Accounting and
Theory, Auditing and Taxation, Managerial Accounting, Company
Law, Public Finance and any one of Financial and Investment Management, Production Management and Marketing Management.
Courses offered in Parts II and III of the B.SC (Business Administration) degree programme include Principles of Management, Principles
of Marketing and Cooperatives, Business Statistics, Business and Administrative Law, Company and Public Accounting and one of Data
Processing and Information Systems and Economic Analysis (Part II);
and Production Management, Personnel Management and Industrial
Relations, Financial and Investment Management, Public Administration and Finance and any two of Marketing Management, Money and
Banking, Small Business Management and International Business.
The above listing shows that at the University of Port Harcourt and
Bayer0 University, there is a close affinity between Economics and Management in terms of courses offered and course designations.
Graduate Education
Graduate education in economics, sociology and management is offered in most of the Nigerian Universities. An objective is the training of
future academic staff in these disciplines. To this end the relevant degrees are the M. Phil and Ph. D. in most cases.
Another objective is to prepare students for higher administrative,
executive, professional and management positions in the various sectors
of the national economy. The relevant degrees are usually the M. SC.,
MPA (Master of Public Administration), and the MBA (Master of BusinessAdministration) and the Master of Social Work (MSW).
In addition to the degree programmes for the training of higher administrative, executive, professional and management cadres, there is
another formaf graduate training in these disciplines - the Diploma
programme, whose duration ranges from three months to one year.
Economics
At the Ahmadu Bello University the M.Sc (Economics) degree programme includes three compulsory subjects, Economic Theory, Quan-.
titative Techniques, and the Nigerian Economy: A comparative study
21
and options chosen from, among others, Monetary Economics, Public
Fiice,
international Economics, Agricultural Economics, Advanced
Econometrics, Human Resources and Economic History.
sociology
At tie Ahmadu Bell0 University, M.Sc. (Sociology) students offer
compulsory courses in Theory and Theory-Construction, and in Research Methods and Quantitative Analysis. Areas of specializations
from which students can choose include Criminology and Legal Studies, Development Studies, Industrial Sociology, Medical Sociology
and Political Sociology. The University of Lagos and the University of
Nigeria each offers a two-year Diploma Programme in Social work.
Management
A Postgraduate Diploma in Public Administration is offered by the
Faculty of Administration at the Ahmadu Belle University. Students in
the programme must take four compulsory papers in Theory and Practice of Administration, Human Resources Management, Development
Economics and Public Financial Management. They must also choose
one optional paper from the following: The Nigerian Economy, Local
Government and Administrative Law, Statistics and Modern Management Technique, Urban Development Administration, Public Enterprise Management, University Administration, and International RelatiOnS.
Also offered by the Faculty of Administration at the Ahmadu Bell0
University is the M.Sc. (Accounting and Finance) programme. Students
in the programme are examined in the following compulsory subjects:
Advanced Accounting Theory, Advanced Management Accounting,
and Corporate Finance and Investment Policy - and one elective from
Public Financial Management, Management Practices, Local Government Financial Management and Accounting, and Managerial Economics/Operations Research, among others.
The University of Port Hat-court offers within its Graduate School of
Management and Business Administration a two-year MBA programme which covers all functional areas of management. The first
year of the programme provides the students in the programme with
basic foundation managerial skills in a number of core courses in Micro
Business, Accounting, Quantitative Methods, Organizational Behaviour, Industrial Economics, Operations Research, Information Systems and Business Law. Thereafter, they can specialize in one of the
following areas; General Management, Finance, Public Finance and
Accounting.
Extra-University Training in Management
It is appropriate here to refer to a number of extra-university bodies
which offer training and courses in Management. These bodies are the
22
Nigerian Institute of Management, the Institute of Personnel Management, the Nigerian Institute of Supervisory Management and the Institute of Public Relations. There are also management consultancy firms
which run their own management development programme.
The Nigerian federal government has expressed an active interest in
and commitment to management education by establishing such bodies
as the Industrial Training fund, the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria and the Centre for Management Development. It has also established the Nigerian Council for Management Development to coordinate the activities of the various private and public institutions engaged
in management development training.
As indicated earlier on, this interest in management development
training and education has grown out of the need for managerial manpower in the wake of the planned indigenisation of the commandiig
heights of the Nigerian economy. But this development has not been
unproblematic. Among problems encountered are the increasing mobility of managers and the paucity of local training materials for developing the managers.
Research Institutes
As indicated earlier on, research is generally linked to teaching in
Economics, Sociology and Management. The underlying assumption is
that teaching is one medium for imparting knowledge generated by research. While research is undertaken within the various departments of
Economics, Sociology and Management, research within and outside
the university system is also carried on in special institutes set up for
that purpose.
Basic as well as action or policy-oriented research is carried on within the departments and research institutes. The link between research, teaching and policy-making which the focus on basic and applied research illuminates is further strengthened by the fact that the
various Nigerian governments (federal and state) have always drawn on
teachers and researchers in Economics, Sociology and Managements as
well as in the &her social science disciplines to advise them on policy
matters.
It must also be pointed out that much of the research in these disciplines is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. The following is a partial listing of research institutes engaged in research in Economics, Sociology and h&nagement in Nigeria.
The Nigetian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER) located at the University of Ibadan, is one of the leading research institutes in the social sciences in the country. Indeed t.he 1%2-l%S National Development Plan envisaged NISER as the major national institute
of applied research on the country’s development problems. Multidisciplinary in character, NISER has carried out extensive research on pro-
23
blems ,of economic, physical and social development and planning, foreign trade, public finance and agricultural and industrial development.
The establishment of a Consultancy Services Unit within NISER in
1970 broadened the scope of NlSER’s work to enable it undertake project evaluation ,and feasibility studies for various sectors of the Nigerian
economy.
TheCentrefor Social and Economic Research(CSER) of .the Ahmadu Bello University was established in 1970 as a multidisciplinary research institute made up of economists, sociologists, social anthropologists, statisticians and political scientists to conduct research into various socio-cultural and economic dimensions of national development.
Its research focus has been mainly in the areas of industrial development and rural development
The Institute forAgricultural Researchof the Ahmadu Bello University
has a Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology to
undertake so&-economic research in agriculture. To facilitate this, the
department has two research sections: Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology. The department also offers an M.Sc. degree programme
by coursework and thesis in Agricultural Economics, extending over 18
to 24 months.
The Institute on Population and Manpower Studies at the Obafemi
Awolowo University (formerly the University of Ife) was established in
1968 as a demograph$ research and training institute with the primary
objective of conducting research into population, manpower and other
related problems. Some of this research has included investigation into
the determinants of population growth, urban-rural migration and associated problems; and the economic determinants of labour development and manpower resources and determinants. The institute combines research with teaching in demography and with providing consultancy services.
The Industrial Research Unit at the Obafemi Awolowo University is
attached to the Department of Economics at the university. Its research
staff is drawn from that department and from the departments of agricultural economics, geography, chemical engineering and pharmacy. Its
primary objective is to study industrial activities in the following states
of the Nigerian federation: Ogun, Oyo, Ondo;Bendel, Kwara and Lagos. To this end, its has conducted research on the activities and problems of selected large, medium and small scale enterprises. It has also
set up an Industrial Management Development Service.
The Problem of Funding
It is clear from this sample of research institutes in the country in
Economics, Sociology, Management and related fields that there is a
rich variety of such institutes in the country. But the availability of funds
is crucial to research. A major source of such funds is from Nigerian
24
government (Federal and state) agencies - ministries, departments and
parastatals. But research money coming from these sources is small.
For example, it has been claimed that “as a percentage of GNP, total R
and D in the scientific and technical fields come to the miniscule figure
of 0.1” and the situation is worse in the social sciences where “so little
is spent... that one wonders if it can have any impact at all”. (Uma Eleazu, “Think Tanks and National Development”, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Public Lecture, 10th May, 1978,p. 6).
External funding agencies which have provided grant support to
these research institutes include the United States Agency for International Aid, the Rockfeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Population Council of New York and the United Nations and its specializcd
agencies.
Research Orientations
The dominant model or conception of development which has coloured research (and even teaching) in Economics and Management in Nigeria is an economistic one which equates development with economic
growth. This kind of materialist perspective has been embraced by policy-makers and it has thus enabled economists easier accessthan other
social scientists to the policy-making process.
Underlying this economistic conception of development is an engineering or technicist reduction of important questions of development
and nation-building to engineering or technical ones to be solved by social engineers. This reduction has also led to research preoccupations
with an ad hoc, pragmatic approach to development issues which does
not view such issuesin their long-term, global and wider perspectives.
This trend has been facilitated by the increasing utilization of more
technical and econometric analytic tools as well as the adoption of neoclassical paradigms in the study of the economy and society. Emphasis
has tended to be placed on crude figures while questions about social
relations of production, the contradictions they generate and the direction of the industrialization process are neglected. It is as if constructing ‘more’ roads, ‘more’ hospitals, ‘more’ schools and delivering ‘more’
of other social goods is all there is to development.
But there has in recent years, especially since the mid-1970’s, been a
contra - .tendency to the technicist, pragmatic and neo-classical, approach. This contraitendency is rooted in a particularly African variant
of the new ‘Marxist’ political economy and it is increasingly reflected in
teaching and research in the social sciences in the country.
A review of this new development in the historiography of Nigerian
social science is Tade Akii Aina’s Indigenization, Perspectives and
Trends in Recent African Social Science”, (in AAPS Newsletter, April
1986, pp. 7-9) which summarizes the conceptual framework and sub-
25
stantive focus of a number of Nigerian social Scientists who have utilized this mode of analysis:
Situating Nigeria’s political economy within the broader canvass of
the hegemonic capitalist world system to which it has been incorporated as a peripheral appendage, this contra-trend has been concerned
with analysing the dependent nature of Nigeria’s capitalism, how it has
contributed to the crisis in the country and the constellation of class
forces and class antagonisms it has created.
This contra-trend in social science research in the country and which
is also now strongly reflected in teaching in the social science disciplines in the universities arose out of an ethico-practical concern with
the deepening contradictions of the Nigerian state and the world system generally and of the glaring irrelevance and failure of dominant
mainstream, Eurocentric theoretical models to adequately explain
these realities.
C - SIERRA LEONE
Origins - Introduction
The Federal University of Sierra Leone was established in September, 1966 with Fourah Bay College and Njala University College as its
constituent units. But university education in Sierra Leone dates back
to the affiiation of Fourah Bay College to the University of Durham in
England in 1876. The origins of the university teaching in Economics,
Sociology and Management should therefore be sought in the nature
and character of this afffiation.
The affiliation presaged a development from the emphasis which the
College had hitherto placed on religious education and preparation for
the ministry and pastoral work to a more broadly based secular and humanistic one, out of which the social sciences in due course emerged.
Thus Professor N.A. Cox-George, in his The Development of the Social
Sciencesin Fourah Bay CoZZege
(Freetown: Atlantic Printers Ltd., n.d.),
has traced this development and the factors influencing it.
Origins: Economics
At the University of Durham, the teaching of Economics and Commerce did not begin until 1913 and it was not until 1946that a Bachelor
of Arts degree programme in Social Studies was introduced at the main
campus of the University of Durham in Durham.
The first courses in Economics for students reading for the Bachelor
of Arts degree were begun in 1943.The first set of students to read for
the Bachelor of Commerce (B. Corn.) degree, under an agreement with
26
the Newcastle campus of Durham University, began their degree programme in the 1944-45academic year.
Cox-George has observed that “the institution of Social Sciences and
’ in particular of economics education with the coming of the B. Corn.
Course was not greeted with any fanfare. Rather with unveiled hostility
and subtle resistance... Nevertheless... it injected new blood into the intellectual stream”, (i%e Development of the Social Sciences in Fourth
Buy ColZege,p. 5) Among subjects and courses that were introduced
with the establishment of the degree programme were, in addition to
Economics, Accounting, Law, Economic History and Political and
Constitutional History.
The B. Corn. and later the B.A. (Eton.) degree programmes were
from their onset conceived to be relevant to the needs of Sierra Leone
and West Africa and were also given a practical orientation and application. This was due in no small measure to the social anthropology background of such pioneer lecturers in the department as Robert K.
Gardiner.
Although the range of social science courses offered in the B. Corn.
and the B.A. (Eton.) degrees was narrow, limited as they were to Economics and Political Science, the degree programme attracted students
from other West African English-speaking countries like the Gambia,
the then Gold Coast and Nigeria (includiig Southern Cameroon)
where, even with the establishment of university college in 1948 at Accra and Ibadan, there were then no such degree programme in the late
1940’sand 1950’s.
Origins: Sociology
An outstanding omission for quite sometime from the social science
offerings at Fourah Bay College was Sociology. It has been assumed,
following the practice in some British universities, that Sociology as
well as Politics should be taught as part of the degree programme in
Economics. But it was not until 1%9 that the Department of Sociology
wa;created at Fourah Bay. Following upon it was the introduction of
Demography in 1971 under a technical assistance programme under
the sponsorship of the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP).
Faculty Organiz&ioh
ana Degree Structure
Fourah Bay College now has a Faculty of Economic and Social Studies which offers the degree of Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Economics and Social Studies. Students in the faculty are expected to specialize in one of the following disciplines: Accounting, Economics, Political Science and Sociology.
The degree programme extends over four years, although this can be
reduced to three years .for students with at least two advanced level
27
passesin approved subjects. The preliminary year courses to be offered
by all students in the four-year programme, consist of Mathematics, Logic and Scientific Method, Foundation Course andIntroduction to the
Social Sciences.
At the other university college in Sierra Leone, Njala UniversityCollege there is no faculty of social sciences.But it has the following social
science-related departments: home economics, geography and environmental studies, and agricultural economics and extension.’
Course Offerings: Economics
At Fourah Bay College, a new four-year degree programme leading
to the B.Sc. (Eton.) Honours was begun in the 1982-83academic year.
Before the change, students had pursued a General Degree programme in Economics with specialization in another social science discipline. Exceptional students could then proceed to an honours degre$
in Economics. The Department of Economics found it cumbersome
and inefficient to run two undergraduate degree programmes simultaneously.
In addition to the Preliiary
Year courses itemized earlier on, stu:
dents in the honours degree programme in Economics must offer the
following courses; Elements of Economics, Elementary Methods,
Quantitative Methods I, Introduction to Business Management and an
elective chosen from another department (in intermediate, i.e. Second
Year); Micro Economic Analysis, Macro Economic Analysis, Quantitative Methods II, Development Economics and one other subject chosen
from among Rural Sociology, Sierra Leone Constitution, History of
Economic Thought, Demography, Introduction to Population Studies,
Economic Geography and Law II (in Fiial Honours I, i.e. Third Year);
and Applied Economics, Advanced Economic Theory and Analysis,
two papers in a special subject chosen from Money and Bankiig I and
II, Public Finance and Public Policy I and II, Economic Development
and Planning I and II, International Economics I and II, Agricultural
Economics I - Agricultural Policy and Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Economics II - Farm Management, Quantitative Economics: I
- Mathematical Economics, Quantitative Economics: II - Economics including Linear Programing and Operational Research, Comparative
Economic History I and II, Demography I and II and Business Administration and Management I and II. A dissertation of between 8,000 to
12,000 words relating to the special subject (in Final Honours II, i.e.
Fourth Year).
Course Offering: Sociology
The intermediate Year courses which Sociology students must offer
are the followings: Introduction to Sociology and Social Anthropology,
Elements of Economics, Elementary Statistical Methods and two other
28
subjects selected from any faculty and approved by the head of depart1
ment.
In the Final Honours I (i.e. Third Year) the following courses are offered: Comparative Social Systems,African Social Systems,Sociological Theory and Methods, Demography and Urbanixation, and one optional course or other subject chosen from any faculty.
The papers in which students are examined in their Final Honours II
(i.e. Fourth Year) are : Social Stratification, Rural Sociology, Sociology
of Development, one optional course chosen from Sociology of the Family, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Industry, Social Welfare Administration and Social Work and Social Psychology, and a dissertation.
Course Offering: Management/Accounting
The B. SC. (Econ.j degree with specialixation in Accounting is the
major degree programme in a management-related discipline, although
B.Sc. (Eton.) students are offered the option of specialising in Business
Admimstration and Management. The courses in which the Accounting
students are examined are the following: Accounting I - Principles of
Accounting and Elements of Costing, Economics I - Elements of Economics, Law I - Sale of Goods and Contract, Statistics - Elementary
Statistical Methods and Quantitative Methods and Data Processing (in
intermediate year); Financial Accounting, Management Accounting,
Management Mathematics, Economic Analysis I and Law II - Commercial Law (in Final Honours I, i.e. Third Year); and Accounting
Theory, Financial and Management Accounting, Economic Analysis II,
Law III - Company Law and Partnership, and a Dissertation.
Research Component of Undergraduate Degree Programme
The dissertation requirement built into the Final Honours II Year
Examination in the departments of Economics, Sociology and Accounting compels students in these departments to pursue research on a topical issue of development. This requirement is complemented by the
various courses in theory and research methods which the students are
also expected to offer.
Although not strictly research-oriented, mention must also be made
of the programme through which Final Honours I and II students in the
depaftment of Economics, for example, undertake, during the long vacation proceeding the beginning of their courses, sandwich or attachment programmes in industry. An objective of the programme is to
link theory to its practical application through the experience the students gain-while on attachment.
Graduate education
Although it is the oldest university in Anglophone Africa and although, as indicated earlier on, undergraduate degree programme in
the social science began there much earlier than elsewhere in West
29
._-_-.-I-_-._
Africa, graduate education in Economics, Sociology and Management
is relatively weak at Fourah Bay College.
The department of Economics offer an M-SC. (Eton.) degree programme in Agricultural Economics by course work and dissertation.
The programme reflects both the needs of the country and the research
interest and focus of academic staff in the department. It is expected
that the products of the programme will secure employment in the
Agricultural Integration Development Projects in the country or else
will be recruited for the department Staff Development Fellowship
Programme as future academic staff members.
The Department of Sociology has a graduate programme which is,
however, not active; This is because of the paucity of students and the
weak academic staff strength in the department.
Research Institutes
Research Institutes in the social sciences are few in Sierra Leone and
are mainly located at Fourah Bay College. There is the Institute of African Studies which was established in 1962 with the principal aim of undertaking research on the sociology and culture of Sierra Leone. Its focus has since extended to demography and economic history.
Also within Fourah Bay College is the Demographic Research and
Training Institute (the Demographic Unit), established during the 197172 academic year to conduct research in demography, to teach demography in related, departments and to train demographic personnel for
the government of Sierra Leone.
At Njala University College, Social Science - related research in rural
sociology, agricultural prices and production is undertaken by the Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension.
An effort to integrate and centralise research and consultancy work
at Fourah Bay College and Njala University College was launched with
the creation in January 1985 of the University Research and Development SewicesBureau (URDS). The objective of URDS is the encouragement of applied and policy-oriented research on specific, short-term
problems of national development. It also provides a link between university researchers and the government of Sierra Leone and international institutions and agencies.
It is therefore designed and structured to engage in research and development, consultancy and technical advice, information gathering
and dissemination training and project initiation, evaluation, and development. To this end, it is divided into ten units: Advisory Service in
Technology Research and Development (ASTRAD), Economic, Social
and Cultural Studies, Education, Energy Studies, Food and Agriculture, Language Studies, Medical and Health Studies, Pure and Applied
Science, Rural Development, and Science and Technology Policy.
30
The economic, social and cultural unit or division is made of experts
in econometrics, economic development, sociology, anthropology, taxation statistics and financial control. The rural Development Division includes experts in community development, rural sociology and rural technology. The other divisions also have experts in Economics, Sociology and Management.
Needless to say that, outside of the university system, where individual academic staff members undertake their own research, there are
also ministerial and extra-ministerial agencies with research staff and
research projects. For example, the Central Statistics Office in Freetown has conducted research in the areas of demography, censuses,population distribution, migrations and urban&ion.
Orientation
and Trends in Teaching and Research
What then are the orientations, trends and problems which can be
observed in the current teaching and research in Economics, Sociology
and Management in Sierra Leone? Let us begin with orientations and
trends.
The undergraduate and graduate degree programmes in Economics,
Sociology and Management have a development orientation. The aim is
to train graduates who would be adequately equipped to tackle problems of development in whatever areas of public life or public service
they found themselves. The objective is partly to locate problems of development in their national, African and global contexts.
As a result the degree programmes have a practical, problem solving
content. This is indeed the rationale behind the dissertation requirement in the undergraduate degree programmes in the three disciplines.
Class assignments also emphasizc this practical, problem-solving orientation.
The degree programmes also have a multidisciplinary orientation.
For example in each of the departments of economics, sociology and
accounting,students are expected to take at least one course in another
social science discipline. In the preliminary year, all students in the Faculty of Economic and Social Studies take the same courses, including
Logic and Scientific Methods and Introduction to the Social Sciences.
The objective of this multidisciplinary orientation is to locate develop
ment within its multi-faceted dimension.
There is also now a noticeable trend towards making the Faculty of
Economics and Social studies more “management” oriented. More and
more students in the faculty are opting for such management courses as
Business Administration and Management offered by the Department
of Economics and Financial and Management Accounting in the Department of Accounting. Indeed, these two departments - Accounting
and Economics - are the most popular in the faculty among students in
terms of their choice of specialization.
31
With respect to research, the trend has been for individual lecturers
to pursue their research with funds from external agencies channeled
through the University. The result has been that, prior to the creation
of the University Research and Service Bureau, much of the research
was uncoordinated and tended to lead to duplication of research projects. Because of the dependence on external sources for research
funds, the research carried out sometimes reflect priorities set by these
sources or is reactive to them. The situation can be problematic, however, because the priorities set down by these external sources can
conflict with those of the government. The general feeling among Sierra
Leonean social scientists appears to be that the external funding agencies must adjust to research priorities set down by the government.
Research which has been undertaken or is being undertaken by researchers in the Department of Economics includes, Structural Adjustment and its Impact on the Industrial Sector in Sierra Leone; Migration and Population; Comparative Analysis of Technology Transfer
from North to South and South to South; and CassavaGrating Impact
on the Economy. A working Paper on Domestic Trade in Sierra Leone
was prepared for the Economic Commission for Africa; and a Study of
the Relative Advantage of Clay-Bricks and Sandereate Blocs in the
Construction Industry in Sierra Leone has been prepared as working
paper No.l& in the World Employment Working Programme Series.
Problems in Teaching and Research
The three disciplines, Economics, Sociology and Management, as
well as the other social sciences and academic work in general are beset
with daunting, almost intractable problems in Sierra Leone. The problems at bottom have a fundamental source in the crisis of the Sierra
Leonean economy. But the problems also have deeper roots in the historically determined marginalization of the social sciences in the organization of university education in the country, although over the years
Economics and Accounting seem to have fared better than Sociology
and the other social sciences.
Nonetheless the fact of marginalization is a reality for all the social
sciences. This is underscored by the higher priority accorded the pure
and physical sciences which receive by far the largest share of state allocation to the University. The allocation to research and development
in the social’sciences as a percentage of the national budget is miniscule, being less than 0.05%.
This marginalization is reflected in the chronic and debilitating academic staffing problem which the three departments are facing. In the
Department of Economics, there were in October, 1986 six members of
academic staff and three teaching assistants, in a department with an
enrollment of between 500 and 600 students, teaching 23 courses. In the
department of sociology there were three lecturers and two teaching
32
assistants. And in both departments, all ,the lecturers are junior academics most of whom are yet to attain the Senior Lecturer grade or tq re-
ceive their doctorate degrees.
The chronic staffmg problem has had adverse repercussion on graduate programme in the three departments and on the research work
of academic staff. In sociology and political science, for example, the
graduate programmes in these disciplines have virtually been discontinued because of staff shortage. In all the social science departments,
research has suffered because of the heavy teaching load of the few
academic staff.
The marginalization of the social sciences has had an adverse impact
in another respect. It has fed apathy and cynicism on the part of academic staff. Morale is low and few see bright prospects in the academic
vocation. The result is what may be described as a process of “internal”
brain drain whereby lecturers and researchers isolate themselves from
national problems and seek lucrative employment in other sectors of
the national economy.
To all this must be added a general problem of higher education in
Africa, made more serious by the world recession and the economic
crisis. This is exemplified by the shortage of teaching resource materials
like textbooks and audiovisuals aids. A case in point is the Department
of Economics which has no computer to help with its course in Econometrics.
The foreign exchange c&ii of the country and the devaluation of the
country’s currency have added to the resource scarcity problem. For
example, many lecturers have been unable to buy books or subscribe to
journals for upward of three to four years. The University bookstore is
virtually closed down partly because it lacked the foreign exchange to
by books from abroad. Teaching and research suffer as a result.
The situation is also aggravated by the isolation of the social science
community in Sierra Leone from the African and international social
science communities. This itself is symptomatic of the state and status
of the social sciedces within Sierra Leone. Efforts are now being made
to correct this situation.
Attention is also now being paid to another problem which has characterized the social sciences in Sierra Leone. This is the organisation
of departmental and/or faculty seminars and the publication of journals
and newsletters for networking purposes among the social science community in the country. In the Department of Sociology, there is an Association of Sociologists and Anthropologists whose objectives include
holding of seminars and publication of a journal or magazine.
A faculty~seminar series is being actively discussed and is viewed as
an important development. Also being actively considered is the publication of a Social Science journal as a forum for exchanging views on
33
problems of development and policy-making in Sierra Leone and elsewhere.
The preoccupation of the social science community in Sierra Leone
with these structural and institutional problems is a continuing challenge to its ability to play, a positive developmental role. This is the
more reason why the African social science community must pay more
attention to it.
D - TANZANIA
Origins in Makerere College
The origins of University education in Economics (including Management) and Sociology in Tanzania must be sought.in the inter-territorial roots of university education in Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda and
Zanzibar. The granting of a university college status, under the special
relations scheme to the University of London, to the then Makerere
College in 1949 was a significant development in this respect. Earlier
on, the Higher College for East Africa, into which Makerere College
had been constituted in 1937, offered degree courses in arts up to the
intermediate level and first year students were required to take a compulsory course in social studies.
When the new University College of East Africa (Makerere College)
took off in 1949 it did not have a Faculty of Social Sciences but social
science subjects - Economics and Politics and Sociology - were taught
in the Faculty of Arts. A Faculty of Social Sciences was subsequently
created in 1963, comprising of the Departments of Economics, Political
Science and Public Administration and Sociology (including the social
work and community development training scheme). But the departmentalization of these social science disciplines preceded the establishment of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Makerere. A Professor of
Economics was appointed in 1955 and the B.Sc. (Eton.) degree programme was begun in the 1958-59 academic year, and departments of
Political Science and Sociology were created in 1957 and 1961respectively.
Research in Economics (including Management) and Sociology in
Tanzania also has its roots in the inter-territorial organization of social
sciences research in and about East Africa. Close liis were in due
course forged between the social science departments at Makerere and
the East African Institute for Social Research. Thus when the Faculty
of Social Sciences was created at Makerere in 1963, the East African
Institute became one of its constituent unit with responsibility for the
fledgling African Studies Programme and the M.A. in African Studies.
34
Origins in University
Dar-es-Salaam
College, Dar-es-Salaam
and University
of
The idea of inter-territoriality in higher education was in due course
buffeted by centrifugal nationalist sentiments, particularly ii~‘Uganda
and Tanganyika. The inauguration of the University of East Africa in
1%3 led to the establishment of constituent university colleges in Dares-Salaam(Tanganyika), Nairobi (Kenya) and Makerere (Uganda).
This was followed in July 1970 with the break-up of the University of
East Africa and with it the emergence of autonomous national universities in three countries. As a result, University College, Dar-es-Salaam
was renamed University of Dar-es-Salaam in 1970.
A Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences was established at University
College, Dar-es-Salaam in July 1964. By July 1966 it had eight departments which included Economics (created in 1964) and Sociology
(created in 1966). A Department of Management and Administration
had been created in the faculty by 1970,although this was later to be excised from the faculty and constituted into a new Faculty of Commerce
and Management in 1979.
Degree Orientation
and Structure: General Observations
The undergraduate degree programme at the University College,
Dar-es-Salaam placed emphasis from its inception on East African
problems. This was linked to or rather derived its rationale from the
conceptualization of the University as an institution which should serve
its immediate national and sub-regional environments. Doing this required the design of appropriate and relevant curricula and syllabuses.
University education in independent Tanganyika (and later Tanzania) was further influenced by the socialist ideology of the ruling party.
In the social sciences, this meant that these disciplines must reflect the
concerns and needs of socialist Tanzania, helping in the process to
combat the development of elitist attitudes among students.
Course offerings: economics
At its inception, the B.A. (Eton.) degree programme at the University College, Dar-es-Salaam, placed emphasis in the Part I examination
on the teaching of economic theory and principles of economics in their
application to development problems in East Africa. Parts II and III of
the degree programme provided more in-depth treatment of economic
theory and economic growth, a survey of economic organization in western market economics and in Eastern centrally planned ones, and problems of economic development in the third world. Other courses offered included economic policy and planning, statistical and accounting
methods and agricultural and industrial development in East Africa.
Optional courses were offered in international economics, public linance and credit, economic history and labour and social problems.
35
Major reviews of the B.A. @con) degree structure were carried out
in the 1971-72 academic year and also in the 1979-80 academic year.
The changes were part of a wider restructuring of degree programmes
in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences aimed at students in the faculty of offering career or problem-oriented degree programme in the
social sciences.
By the 1982-83 academic year, the B.A. (Eton.) degree had been di:
vided into three sub-streams made up of Planning Industrial Development, and Agricultural and Rural Development, of which students are
expected to special& in one in their final year in the programme. Regardless of their proposed sub-stream of specialization, all fust and second year students offer a common set of courses as follows: Development Studies, Elementary Mathematics and Statistics, Introduction to
Economic Analysis and Contemporary Issues I and II (Year I), Economic Theories, Economic Statistics and Quantitative Methods, Political
Economy and Underdevelopment, Rural Development and Agricultural Economics and Industrial&&ion and Industrial Economics (Year
J-0.
In Year III, those in the Planning sub-stream are expected to offer
Economic Policy and Planning, Programming and Planning, Money
and Public Fiiance, International Economics and two other papers
chosen from a list of five including Regional Planning and Manpower
Planning. Students in the Industrial Development sub-stream are examined in Economic Policy and Planning, Financial Management, Production and Distribution Management, Transport Economics and Industrial Location or Topics in Industrial Economics, and two other papers chosen from a list of four options including international economics and workers participation and control. Those in the agricultural
and rural development sub-stream must offer economic policy and
planning, tropical agriculture and farm management, agricultural management and three papers chosen from among the following options,
money and public finance, programming and planning, regional planning and rural development strategy.
Course offerings: Sociology
When the Department of sociology was created in 1966, it offered
first year courses in introduction to sociology and sociological methods
with focus on East Africa; The second year courses included classical
and modern theories of sociology, rural sociology and sociological methods. In the third year, it was planned to offer the students a wide
range of optional courses.
Following upon the faculty re-organization of degree programmes in
the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in the 1971-72 academic year
and in 197980, the undergraduate degree structure in Sociology was
restructured to ahow for specialization in the second and third years in
36
one of four areas: Rural Development, Industrial Sociology; Social Welfate, and Cultural Development, although these are core courses which
cut across these four specializations and which all students, irrespective
of their specializations, must offer.
All first year students must offer the following compulsory courses:
Development Studies, Methods of Social Research and Introduction to
Social Development. They must also choose three optional courses.
The compulsory core courses in the second year are Development Studies, Theories of Development I, Sociology of Work and Industry, Rural Sociology, and Methods of Social Science Research. Other Second
Year courses are: settlement patterns in rural communities, and agricultural economics (Rural Development Specialization); industrial society and the rise of the working class, political economy of underdevelopment, and agricultural systems,location and planning (Industrial Sociology specialization). Social Administration and Social Welfare, and
social policy planning (Social Welfare specialization); and social structure of T amania, African Civilization and culture, and either African
Literature 2 or Traditional Forms of Theater in Africa (Cultural Development Specialization).
The Third Year compulsory core courses are the following: Theories
of Development 2, Urbanization and Urban Life, Comparative Socialist
Development, and Dissertation. Other Third year courses, by areas of
specialization are: Socialist Rural Development, and Agricultural Systems, Location and Planning (Rural Development); Industrial Relations, Workers Control and Labour Law, and Comparative Industrialization Patterns (Industrial Sociology); Social Psychology and Sociological Aspects of Criminology (social welfare); and studies in comparative
civilization, and the sociology of culture (Cultural Development).
Course offerings: Management
The Faculty of commerce and management at the University of Dares-Salaam is made up of departments of Accounting, Finance, Marketing and General Management in which students are prepared for the
degree of bachelor of commerce. There is considerable overlap in the
undergraduate courses offered in these departments by the Department of Economics.
The First year courses, which are compulsory for all undergraduate
students in the Faculty, consist of Development Studies, introductory
Political Economy, Elementary Mathematics and Statistics, Principles
of Accounting, Principles of Management and Administration and Introduction to Commerce.
. In the second and third years, all students take the following compulsory courses: Development Studies, Economic Theories, Quantitative
Methods for Business Decisions, and Managerial Accounting (second
37
year); and Business Politicies and Decisions, and Financial Management and Project Appraisal (third year).
In addition to these compulsory core courses in the second and third
years, undergraduate students are given the option of specializing in
one of the following areas: Marketing, Finance, Personnel, Accounting
and Production.
Research Component of Undergraduate
Degree Programmes
The undergraduate degree programmes in the three disciplines include elements of research work. In sociology, for example, students
are required to offer compulsory courses in Methods of social research
(first year) and Methods of social science research (year II). The dissertation which they are required to submit in year III is expected to be
based on empirical research on a topical issue of development.
Graduate Education
Graduate education is offered in Economics, Sociology and Anthropology and in the Faculty of Commerce and Management at the University of Dar-es-Salaam The graduate programme in each department
is research oriented and includes the by course-work and the Ph. D by
thesis. The department of political science offers as part of its MA. degree programme a specialization in development management. In the
department of Sociology the graduate programme courses offered are
patterned on the structure of the undergraduate programme in the department. In the Faculty of Commerce and Management a degree programme in Master of Business Administration (MBA), based on teaching and practical attachments, is offered. It also includes practical
projects.
Research Institutes
Social science research was emphasized at the inception of the University College, Dar-es-Salaam. The concern of its founding fathers
with development led to great importance being attached to applied research. This instrumentalist conception of research as applied research
was underscored by the focus of social science research institutes established at the University College between 1964 and 1970.
The Economic ResearchBureau (ERB) was established in December
1965 as an integral part of the Faculty of Arts and Social Science to carry out research on economic and social development and on the teaching of economics. The Bureau of ResourceAssessmentand Land Use
Planning (BRALUP) was set up in July, 1967 to undertake research in
resource analysis in population distribution, regional and national planning, land use and in water, soil and climatic resources. The Institute of
Development Studies established in July 1973 as a successor to the Department of Development Studies also conducts research in the social
sciences.
38
Social science research is encouraged and carried on in the departments. Each department is allowed one research fellow. This arrangement in fact underscores the close, integral link between teaching and
research. Some researchers at the two bureati - ERB and BRALUP and IDS hold joint appointments in social science departments; others
help teach undergraduate and graduate courses in the departments;
and academic staff in the departments are sometimes involved in research projects or consultancies undertaken by the Bureaux and IDS.
Social science research is also conducted by research units in various
government ministries on problems of immediate concern to the respective ministries. One such research unit is Directorate of Research
and Planning in the Ministry of National Culture and Youth.
Extra - University
Management
Teaching in Economics, Sociology and
This is offered by a number of extra - university institutions in the
country for interested officers in the public services who wish to study
for professional diplomas or undergo in-service training and refresher
courses and other forms of continuing education in such areas as management, rural community development, accountancy, business administration, public administration, tax administration and financial management, and social work.
Some of these institutions are the Institute for Development Management at Msumbe, the Institute of Finance Management, the Ardhi Institute, and the National WerfareTraining Institute.
Orientations
and Trends in Teaching and Research
A feature of the degree structure and syllabuses in Economics, Sociology and Management is that while these disciplines have been departmental&xl, the trend has also been towards special&&n within each
department in the organization of degree courses and degree requirements.
The degree structure, especially at the undergraduate level in the
three disciplines emphasize interdisciplinarity and multidiiciplinarity,
as in the common-core of interdisciplinary courses, East African Society and Environment (EASE) which was begun in 1971.as a successor to
the Common Course experiment introduced in 1964. EASE 1, offered
in thq, first year, examined the socio-economic and political problems of
East Africa in their national, regional and global contexts. EASE 2, in
year II, focused on the application of science to development while
EASE 3, in year III, provided students with the opportunity to study
strategies of development in East Africa.
When EASE was phased out in 1978, it was replaced by a.two-year
compulsory course in development Studies serviced by the IDS. The
39
first year course is on “Development in Historical Perspective” and the
second-year course titled, “The Challenge of Development”.
Another feature of the degree structures at Dar-es-Salaam is.that
they attach considerable importance to practical work in industries, the
parastatal organizations, government ministries and departments,
schools and private sector institutions. To this end, field work has been
integrated into the degree structures with the introduction of a fourth
term devoted entirely to it. The objective is to enable students to utilize
their theoretical understanding by applying it to concrete, practical
problems of development.
This practical orientation is an illustration of the concept of community service to which the University is committed. This required the
design of appropriate curricula and syllabus and the discouragement of
elitist attitudes among University students and academic staff. This
practical orientation is also reflected in changes introduced in 1976 in
the wake of the Musoma Resolution in admission requirement to undergraduate degree programmes. Thenceforth, the university stopped
admitting candidates who had just successfully finished their Form VI
examinations. To be qualified, candidates seeking admission must have
had a minimum of two years and preferably several years working experience in addition to possessing the minimum admission qualification
for direct entry to the University.
The degree structures in the three disciplines have also been influenced by other aspects of Tanzania’s political economy. For example, the
expansion of the public sector in the wake of the nationalisations carried out in the 1960’s and the consequent bureaucratic proliferation
and Africanisation necessitated the training and production of more
specialized graduates than was possible under the then existing curricula.
In this sense,curricula changeswhich led to the rejection of the 32~2
degree structure in which a student offered three subjects in year I and
two in each of year II and year III were related to specific man-power
needs of the national economy in such areas as planning, industrial development, agricultural and rural development, management and administration, statistics, resource assessmentand social development administration, among others.
As for research in the three disciplines, their practical orientation has
already been noted. Research projects, agenda and priorities are aggregated from the national level to the departmental level. This is done in
order to ensure that research relevant to research agenda and priorities
set by the Tanzania National Scientific Research Council, which is also
responsible for research coordination in the country, is carried out.
Research in the three disciplines is at least of three kinds. Fist, there
is Project Research, usually funded by the University as a departmental
40
or Bureau prcject or which may be funded,by an external source approved by the University. Such project can be interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary. Secondly, there is Personal or Individual Research undertaken, usually with the approval of the University, by individual academic
staff in the three departments and in the two bureaux. Thirdly, there is
Consultancy of Project Appraisal Research undertaken for government
ministries and departments, parastatals or other outside extra-university agencies by a department, Bureau or groups of academic staff members.
What has emerged out of the development of research in the three
disciplines in Tanzania is that the intellectual focus of much of it is development-oriented. Another characteristic of this research, closely related to its development orientation, is that it tends to be in response to
initiatives from government and therefore it tends to address itself to
policy recommendations. This itself arises from government demand
for social science research in the belief that knowledge and findings deriving from it can help solve development problems.
Problems in Teaching and Research.
A basic problem in teaching and research generally at the University
of Dar-es-Salaam is the relationship of the University to the government and ruling party. The intervention by the state in the late 1970’sto
clamp down on the left and “super-leftists” in the University had a decidedly sobering effect on the intellectual climate there. As a recult, there
has been a marked departure from the Marxist orientation which dominated the teaching of the social sciences in the 1960’sand 1970’s. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the teaching of economics where
the emphasis is now on a more technical, neoclassical approach to the
subject.
Another problem derives from reduction in government subvention
to the University. This has created immense resource scarcity problems
which ih turn make teaching and research all the more problematic.
There are chronic shortage of textbook, paper, stencils, type-writers,
office space, Xerox and other duplicating equipment and departmental
vehicles - all caused and compounded by the serious foreign exchange
crisis facing the country. Also’ affected is funding for research and
conference travels.
Further compounding the situation is the fact that conditions of service for teaching and research staff in the University are so bad that
morale is at its lowest. Some have sought other jobs elsewhere such as
secondment locally or abroad. Others have resorted to multi-jobs off ,
campus to supplement their salaries. In this latter case, less time is available for teaching and research and this results in a decline in their quality.
41
In the circumstances, the wastage or outflow from the departments is
not matched with a net inflow of new staff and researchers. This situation is particularly bad in the Department of Economics where there is
now no core term of teachers. Another result is that thii situation has
led to th, exodus of more senior staff from the university. The departments are therefore generally manned by junior members of academic
staff.
Another problem is related to this. This is the problem of training.
Under the severe, debilitating conditions described above, graduate
training inevitably suffers also, The academic profession is not attractive to young new graduates; and those who wish to pursue it are starved of teachers and resources. And the economic crisis of the state has
made training abroad problematic also.
E - ZIMBABWE
Origin: Introduction
When resolution was passed in the Legislative Assembly in October
1946 on the establishment of a University in Southern Rhodesia, the
view was expressed that the University should emphasize social, administrative and commercial studies. The Rhodesia University Association had been formed to pursue the idea of a University in Southern
Rhodesia. The preponderance of business and professional interests in
its membership ensured that training in commerce, economics and accountancy would be high on its list of priorities. In fact the association
had begum to conduct classesin Accountancy in 1952before the formal
inauguration of the University College of Rodhesia and Nyassaland in
1955.
As for social ‘science research this also received emphasis in the
conceptualization of the mission of the proposed University. The CarrSaunders Commission, impanelled in 1952 to look into higher education for Africans in Central Africa (the Rhodesias and Nyassaland), recommended the establishment of an African Studies Department as a
interdisciplinary research department in the social sciences and especially in race relations which would continue the tradition of inter-disciplinary research-which had been begun in 1937 in the region with the
creation of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute for Social Research in Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia.
Origins: Economics, Sociology and Management
The Faculty of Arts in the new University college included the departments of Economics and African Studies. In virtue of the character
and content of the courses taught in the Department of African Studies, it would have been more appropriately called the Department of
42
Sociology/Social Anthropology. The fust Professor appointed to the
department in 1955 was Clyde Mitchell, formerly Director of the
Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and an accomplished social anthropologist. It was at his insiitence that the name of the department was thanged to the Department of Sociology in 1964. The first Professorial appointment in the department of economics was made in 1955.
A separate Faculty of Social Studies was created in 1962 with four
constituent units or departments - Economics, Government, Law and
Sociology. The following other departments and research-oriented centres were added to the Faculty in due course: the Departments of Accountancy, Business Studies, and Psychology, the Rhodes-Livingstone
Institute of social research and the centre for inter-racial studies (later
to become the centre for applied social sciences) and the regional and
urban planning centre. The two centres were established to combine
teaching mainly at the graduate level with research.
The demand for training in social work/administration led to the introduction of degree and diploma programmes in Social Work. But this
development has not led to the creation of a Department of social work
at the University. The programmes are now offered under special arrangements with the school of social work in Kopje, Harare and which
is affiliated with the Department of Sociology at the University.
The creation of a new Faculty of Commerce and Law in 1980 led to
the transfer of the Department of Law, Accounting and Business Studies from the Faculty of Social Studies to the new Faculty. The organiration of the teaching of law, accounting and business studies in the
same faculty was probably influenced by their common origin in the
preparatory teaching in the subjects begun by the Rhodesia Universitv
Association in 1952.
Course offerings: Economics
The BSc. Honours (Economics) degree programme was introduced
in 1960. For the Part I examination of the degree, students were examined in Economics, Government, History and two optional subjects. For
part II, the &dents were required to choose one special subject from
analytical and descriptive Economics, Government, Monetary Economics, Social Anthropology and Sociology and to follow course of instructions in it for two years. This was the degree structure before independence in~.19SO:Much has changed in the structure of the degree
programme m the thr& disciplines since then.
In the Department of Economics, students reading for the B.Sc.
(Eton.) degree offer the following courses: Economic Principles I, Introduction to Economic Statistics, Mathematics and Computing
Science for Economics, and two optional papers (first year); and ten
courses, made up of five in each of the Second and Third years, of
which the following are compulsory: Economic Principles II, Interna-
43
tional Trade and Development Theory, Political Economy and Advanced Economic Theory. Options from which the other six courses can be
chosen include Agricultural Economics I and II, Comparative Economic Development, Economic Planning, History of Economic Thought,
Industrial Economics, International Economy, Introduction to Econometrics, Labour Economics, Monetary Economics, Mathematical Economics, Accounting I and II, Business Administration and Development Administration,
Course offerings: Sociology
Prior to independence, there was a B.A. (Hons) degree programme
in African Studies which required students pursuing it to include African Languages and sociology and Social Anthropology in their choice
of three subjects. The B.Sc. (Sociology) degree now offered is divided
into two areas of specialization of which students must choose either
Sociology and Social Anthropology or Personnel Administration.
Students in the programme are expected to take five courses in each
year. Papers in which they are examined include Introduction to Sociology, Introduction to Social Anthropology, Introduction to Comparative Social Institutions, Social Psychology, Introduction to Psychology
and the Third World (in the first year); and Social Research Methods,
Social Theory, Industrial Sociology, Social Change, Political Sociology,
Urban Sociology, Economy and Society, Social Policy and Social Administration, Ideas and Society, Rural Development, Race and Ethnic Relatisns, and Philosophy of Marxism
The Department of Sociology also offers the Bachelor of Social work
(BSW) and the BSW (Hons) Clinical social work degree programmes.
The compulsory core courses in the BSW (Hons) Clinical social work
degree are Sociology of Medicine, Mental and Behavioral Problems,
Recognition and Management of Psychiatric Illness, Social Policy and
Mental Health, clinical social work methods, selected interdisciplinary
issues, field work I and II. Optional courses, of which two are to be taken inciude Development Psychology, Learning and Behaviour, Human
Motivation and Personality, and Rural Development.
Course eerings: Management-related disciplines
The faculty of Commerce and Law offers Bachelor Degree pro-
grammes ,m the following management-related disciplines: accounting
(Bacc.), Business Studies (BBS) and Bachelor of Science in business
studies and computing science. Students pursuing any of these degree
programmes must offer fifteen courses spread over three years (i.e. five
courses in each year).
The courses offered in the Bacc degree programme include accounting I A, Quantitative Analysis for Business, Economic Principles, Business &aw I and Business Administration (first year); Accounting II A,
44
Auditing I, Business Law II, Managerial Finance I, and Tax Law and
Practice (second year); and Accounting III A, Auditing II, Management Accounting and Control, and Managerial Finance II (third year).
For the BBS, students are examined in Business Administration, ACcounting I, Economic Principles, Quantitative Analysis for Business
and one of Business Law, Commercial French and Introduction to Psychology (first year); compulsory courses in Managerial Finance I, Principles of Marketing, Business Economics or Business Policy, Management Theory and five options, chosen from a broad range of courses including Production Management, Personnel Psychology, Industrial
Law and Industrial Relations, Management Accounting, Managing Organizational Dynamics, Small Enterprise Management, international
business management, and business and society (Second and third
Yed.
Students in the B.Sc. (Business studies and computing science) programme are examined in Business Administration, Accounting I, Economic Principles and Introduction to Computing Science (Part I); Data
Structures, Advanced Programming, Information Processing and two
of Management Theory, Marketing I and Managerial Finance I (part
II); and SystemsAnalysis, SystemsApplications or Operating Systems,
Business Economics, Business Policy, and one other approved course
(part III).
Graduate Education
The following graduate degree and diploma programmes are offered
in Economics, Sociology and Management-related disciplines: B.Sc
(Econs) Special Honours, M.Sc. (Eton), B.Sc. (Sociology Anthropology) Special Honours, B.Sc. (Sociology) Special Honours, M.Sc. (Social
Anthropology and Sociology), Master of Social work (MSW), M.Sc.
(regional and urban planning), and Bachelor of Accounting, Special
Honours.
In the Faculty of Social Studies, there are also opportunities for graduate students to pursue the Master of Philosophy (M. Phil) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) degrees. These are essentially research-oriented degrees pursued under the supervision of academic staff in the various departments,
. .
For the M.Sc. (Eton) students pursue courses in Advanced Economic Theory, Political Economy of Development and Applied research
methods in Economics. They are also required to offer one of the following options: - Econometrics, Economic Planning/Planning Analysis,
Labour Economics, Political Economy and Mathematical Economics.
The course structure for the M.Sc. (Social Anthropology and Sociology) degree include two compulsory core papers in Issues in Anthropological and Sociological Theory and Issues in Research Methodology
and two optional papers chosen from among Sociology of Develop-
45
___l__--_l_.
-
..__.“--l~ll-.--
.
ment, Social Policy and Social Administration, Sociology of Religion,
Urban Sociology, Industrial Sociology and a Dissertation.
The MSW is divided into three branches of specialization - Social
Administration, Social Research, and Social Work Education. Students
in the programme take one compulsory core course, two courses - one
theoretical, the other practical - in their specialization, and a dissertation on a topic in their area of specialization.
Research institutes
The Centre for Applied Social Science (CASS) is the major social
science research institution of the University of Zimbabwe. It is both a
teaching and research unit. Its research focus is on interdisciplinary
studies on problems of national development, It also undertakes shortterm consultancies.
The major extra-university social science research institute in the
country is the Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies (ZIDS),
which was inaugured in 1982.It was conceived as both a research and a
training institute to help advance and facilitate Zimbabwe’s transition
to socialism. Its research division is made up of the following departments - Agriculture and Rural Development, Education, Culture and
Social Studies, Southern African Studies, Science and Technology, Industry, Mining and Labour Studies, Business and Fiance, and History
and Political Studies.
It also has a Training Division whose objective is the development of
research methodology within a political economy approach.
Orientations and Trends
Research and teaching in the three disciplines are character&d by a
concern with development. As a result, development has tended to be
defined in terms of overcoming problems arising from the political economy of settler rule in the country.
Research and teaching in the disciplines have also placed develop:
ment within a broader international political economy framework. The
emphasis in this respect has been two-fold; First, developmental issues
in Zimbabwe have been discussed within the context of the political
economy of Southern Africa. Particular concern in this respect has
been with the structurally determined hegemonic predominance of
South Africa within the region; Development has therefore been defined as regional independence from the economic and political stranglehold of South Africa. Thus focus is on the Southern Africa Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), one of whose basic objectives is to re-route their international trade away from South Africa.
The other emphasis is on the land-locked position of Zimbabwe. Development problems in the country are thus placed in a comparative
perspective which focuses on similar problems facing other landlocked
46
countries in the region. In this way, interrelationship between domestic
policy and foreign policy is highlighted and related to the important
role which Zimbabwe is playing in SADCC and the Preferential Trade
Area of Eastern and Southern Africa.
Because of the development focus, much of the research carried out
is policy-oriented or applied research. This kind of research is of
course also carried on at the Centre for Applied Social Science (CASS)
and the Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies (ZIDS). But some
of this research is also of theoretical significance.
Problems
An important problem which the three disciplines and the other social sciences are now trying to resolve is that of relevance to the developmental strategies and priorities of an independent Zimbabwe. This
becomes all the more problematic since the University grew out of and
was nurtured into maturity in colonial, racist Rhodesia. The task before
the University is thus one of designing curricula that will facilitate the
socialist transformation of Zimbabwe.
An examination of the degree structure and brief course descriptions
in the three disciplines as outlined in the 198.5Prospecr~s of the Univer- ’
sity of Zimbabwe does not convey much of a radical departure from
conventional mainstream western social science. The problematic issue
in so far as University education for socialist reconstruction and transformation is concerned is, in a sense, about content and form, what is
(being) taught and how it is (being) taught.
What is not yet clear is how the three disciplines and the other social
sciences are facing up to this task. But the trend seemsto be, especially
in Economics and Management-related disciplines, towards a type of
teaching characterized by liberal neo-keynesian interpretations of development. This much was elaborated upon earlier on.
Another problematic trend is the involvement of academic and research staff, especially in Economics, in consultancy work for the private sector. This has provided badly needed sources of foreign exchange from the various international agencies who have turned their
seaWlight on Zimbabwe since its independence. But it has also had
some not too salutary effects on the direction of research and teaching
in the three disciplines.
For example, consultancy work has tended to be preoccupied with
immediate policy problems’as identified by the international agencies.
What suffers as a result is medium - or long-term research. Also neglected are diachronic studies which place development in a historical
perspective.
Another problem facing the three disciplines and the other social
sciences is the need for relatively senior and experienced academic teaching and research staff. The great appeal, in terms of status, salaries
47
and emoluments of employ&ent in the civil service, the parastatals and
in the private sector, has drained thk ,University ,of experienced and
more senior staff in these disciplines. This continues to be a problem
inspite of the recent review of University salary structure and attempts
to place a virtual embargo on the transfer of academic staff to the civil
service and parastatals
48
IV - PRIORITY
NEEDS
Introduction
The discussion in the previous section has sought to indicate the current status and institutional framework of teaching and research in
Economics, Sociology and Management in Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra
Leone, Tanzam‘a and Zimbabwe in the context of the historically-determined forces which have shaped and still shape their character and development.
Indeed the current status of these disciplines in the five countries is
closely linked to that of the other social sciences in other African countries. It is within this context that a discussion of the priority needs of
the disciplines must proceed. In other works, the problems which necessitate the identification of priority needs to solve them are due to the
nature of Africa’s political economy and the historical patterns of the
introduction of the disciplines and the other social sciences to Africa.In
other words, the multinational character of the three disciplines and
the other social sciences, and indeed of the intellectual vocation as
such, and the processes, characterized by unequal exchange, thrddgh
which they are diffused provide the background against which the character of the problems and nay proffered solutions must be set.
It is also because of the global dimension of the problems that it becomes vital to view solutions to them on a coordinated continental
scale. The goal must be a social science that serves African needs, that
is relevant to the continent. That’the social sciences have not been able
to do this adequately is itself due to the contradictions arising out of
their colonial origins and the character of the international social
science community as yet another superstructure for the hegemonic domination of the West.
In the ensuing discussion, the problem areas identified for priority
considerations are: resource constraints, direction in teaching and research, graduatelpostgraduate training within Africa, and theprofessionalization of the discipline. The nature of each problem area is sketched
and a brief indication of measures or strategies to combat it is then given.
Resource Constraints
A major problem in teaching and research in the three disciplines in
the countries studied is the chronic shortage of teaching and research
resource materials. This problem can indeed be generalized for the
other social sciences and disciplines in African universities.
For example, the Experts’ Meeting on the Formation of Social
Science Policies in Africa South of the Sahara, held in Kinshasa, Zaire
49
in October 1979 and the Conference of the CODESRIA Working
Group on social sciences and development in Africa, held in Port Harcourt, Nigeria in July 1980,both illustrated the continental character of
the problem and suggestedsolutions to it.
This resource material scarcity is itself a manifestation of Africa’s underdevelopment and peripheralization in the global economy. It has also contributed in no small measure to the marginalization of the disciplines and the other social sciences in relation to their counterparts in
the West.
Concretely, this resource material scarcity has manifested itself in
shortage of funds to import textbooks, journals, printing and duplicating materials, and to facilitate attendance at international conferences
etc. The other face of this is of course the prohibitively high cost of
these resource materials even when they are available, owing to the
phenomenon of imported inflation. In this respect, therefore, the problem merely reflects the wider materialist base of the current international division of labour.
Why is this, then, a problem for the three disciplines and the other
social science? The answer is partly that the resource scarcity impairs
the accessof African social scientists to the international social science
community. Yet access is important for a well-informed, critical
confrontation without which an alternative Afrocentric social science
cannot emerge to challenge and change the unequal exchange that currently characterizcs relationships between the centre and periphery of
that community.
What needs to be done? First, African governments should be urged,
at the level of African regional organ&ions, to liberalize foreign exchange regulations for the importation of educational resource materials. This way, something could be done about the prohibitively high
cost of some of these resource materials.
Secondly, measures can be taken and pursued to encourage and generate the production of textbooks, monographs and other educational
resource materials by Africans and within Africa. This can help in two
ways. It can contribute to self-reliance and the conservation of foreign
exchange. It can also help advance African social science through the
utilization of African data as illustrative materials in social Q&X; textbooks.
It is gratifying that in some of the countries discussed here, efforts at
the local production of teaching materials have been undertaken and
are encouraged by the linking of teaching and research. A number of
continental and regional governmental institutions and professional associations BREDA, CODESRIA, AAPS, OSSREA have also embarked on textbook publication projects.
50
This trend must be encouraged. But where efforts must also now be
concentrated is in develbping and nurturing effective ,and efficient distribution networks for these textbooks, so that they will not be localized
or their availability and impact confined to a few countries within each
region.
Directions in teaching an$ research
Part of the crisis of African social science is that its mainstream, in so
far as it is a reproduction of mainstream social science in the West, has
generally failed to provide an adequate and comprehensive framework
for analyzing African social formations. It is therefore important to reexamine existing dominant paradigms in the teachingof the three disciplines in Africa and to re-design the intellectual research agenda.
African social’science has begun this process of redefinition and
reexamination of its teaching z+d research agenda with the ultimate
goal of dissociating itself from mainstream western social science. This
is in fact the @ndament$. dbjective of CODESRIA and a number of
other social.s&ience.researchand professional organizations in Africa.
It is in this context that ‘challenges have been posed primarily from
Marxist politidal economy perspectives to prevailing dominant orthodoxies lie structural-functionalism, systems analysis and the moderni&ion school in the social sciences.
New questions are posed, intellectual foci and emphasis have shifted
to underlying substructural forces’which mainstream social science has
deliberately obscu&d or mystified. In the words of the report of the
CODESRIA Working Group on social Sciences and Development,
meeting in Port Harcourt, Nigeria in July 1980, an Afro-centric social
science should have as its focus a “dialectical conccptualization of underdevelopment and development (which) should emphasize historical
evolution, structural and sectoral transformation, the roles of social
forces and conflict, the opeiational content of self-reliant development
and global social democracy”.
While the focus of a substantial part of teaching and research in these
disciplines is now generally in this political economy perspective, some
new directions or priority areas must nevertheless be pointed out. This
need arises from certain lacunae in the utilization of the new perspective.
For example, concern with contemporary issues/problems has tended, by and large, to lead to what are essentially a historical analyses of
these problems. Only fleeting attention is paid to political history, to diplomatic history, to economic history and to the survival of precolonial
social formations in teaching and research in the disciplines. In short,
the dissociation of history from the social sciences must be corrected
and new emphasis placed upon it by African social science.
51
“...^.
I..- -
A second problem in teaching and research in these disciplines is
their insularity. By this is meant the preoccupation of their practitioners
in these countries with natiqal development and with the nation-state.
This is due primarily to some of the resource material scarcity referred to earlier on and which has tended to force African social scientists
to focus on their immediate localities.
The priority need in this respect is to provide encouragement and incentives for African social scientists to start studying other than their
own countries; This can be done, for example, by strengthening network linkages within and between the variqus regions through the exchange of information, faculty and students and the provision of fellowships and scholarships for this purpose.
Graduate/Postgraduate
Training within Africa
A related priority need is graduate training within Africa. This need
was underscored by the Conference of the CODESRIA Working
Group in July 1980 and the Experts’ Meetini in Kinshasa in October
1979,to which reference was made earlier on.
This need presupposes a view of training in the social sciences not
only to meet manpower needs for the public and private sectors but also to reproduce academic staff and researchers. For indeed there is a
correlation between a uniirersity’s contribution to knowledge and the
development and institutionalization of graduate education. In another
respect, research is closely linked to the nature of graduate education.
For these reasons, the development and expansion of graduate education in the disciplines within African universities is crucial to their
ability to meet and serve the continent’s need and help solve its pro.
blems..
Emphasii must now be placed on this aspect of the reproduction of
academic staff and researchers in the disciplines. To this end, there is,
great need for developing and improving upon the capacity for training
at the doctoral and post doctoral levels.
Because of this weak capacity at the doctoral and post doctoral levels, prospective academic staff and researchers and even senior ones
have tended to go abroad for further training or to spend their sabbatical leave. This way vertical linkages with institutions in Europe and
North America are strengthened to the detriment of much-needed and
preferred horizontal linkages among African universities and research
institutions. This state of affairs cannot but militate against an Afrocentric social science. It will lead to the entrenchment and continued
domination of the mainstream social science in the west and perhaps,
may also contribute to the brain-drain from Africa.
In other words, the horizontal linkages which training within Africa
will establish will engender a common perception of problems of development in Africa, exchange of information about how they can be sol-
52
ved and foster a critical attitude towards the dominant western mainstream social science.
Professionalization
of the social science
The development of professional associations of the three disciplines
is important for a number of reasons. Their establishment or strengthening where they already exist is therefore another priority area.
The functional role of such associations is multiple. First, they can
provide a salutary and much-needed communication link between social scientists and the community they serve, particularly the policy-makers and bureaucrats in African countries. Secondly, the annual meetings, conferences, seminars and workshops organized by them as well
as their journals and newsletters can provide their members and colleagues in other countries with useful avenue for the diffusion and exchange of information about the nature of on-going research, for the
discussion of theoretico - methodological developments and issues in
the discipline as well as of critical issues in national development.
Above all, the associations can provide criteria for the assessmentof
substantive contribution to the advancement of scholarship in the disciplines and therefore contribute to their progress.
V - TRAINING AND RESEARCH
PROGRAMMES
Training
and research programme
in priority
areas
In this section, an attempt is made to indicate short-term and medium-term measures to deal with the priority problem areas outlined in
the previous section. The suggested measures involve more than just
the identification of research and training programmes, they also include a number of policy measures which African governments should
be encourage&o pursue and the role of African and African-based international organizations in persuading African governments to pursue
such policies. What initiatives these organizations can take are also indicated.
To begin with at the policy-level, some of the measures already suggested are repeated for emphasis. Specific training and research pro-.
grainmes are then suggested and outlined.
53
- -_LI-F-
--.--.*
-
Liberalization of Foreign kxchange
A priority area identified in section II is the resolution of the re-
source material scarcity. Its nature and character was indicated therein.
A much sustained effort needs to be mounted to prevail on African go-
vernments to liberalise foreign exchange regulations for the importation of educational resource materials.
A meeting of African educators and policy-makers under UNESCO’s
auspices for example, to discuss the nature and character of the problem and to suggeststrategies for dealiig with it, might be convened.
Production
and distribution
of textbooks in Africa
The imperative need for encouraging the publication of Economics,
Sociology and Management textbooks within African and by Africans
was suggested above. The justification offered was that it would have
the strategic advantage of contributing to self-reliance and of ensuring
the utilization of African examples as illustrative materials. That way,
African social scientists would also be encouraged to turn their attention to an important but often neglected task- the writing of textbooks.
But there is another justification. Access by indigenous African social
scientists to the expatriate publishing house which enjoy a virtual oligopolistic control over the publishing industry on the continent has been
extremely limited. This limited accesshas been further compounded by
the small market for textbooks in the disciplines. This makes their production from a profit-oriented perspective commercially unviable and
unattractive to the publishing houses.
Within Africa,CODESRIA, BREDA, AAPS, AAWORD and OSSREA have been encouraging the production of textbooks in the social
sciences.Such efforts should be further encouraged and their scope expanded.
A major problem that remains, however, is that of distribufion. If the
publication project embarked upon by these organ&ions is to achieve
its objectives, then distribution networks within Africa must be strengthened.
To this end, there may be need to convene a meeting of the various
professional associations in Africa and some of’the publishing houses
to discuss how best to facilitate the distribution within Africa of textbooks arising out of the various publication projects.
Strengthening
social science networks in Africa
Teaching and research in the social sciences in Africa cannot be separated from the development of network linkages among institutions
and social scientists in the various African countries. This is all the
more obvious in the area of integration of research and the diffusion of
research output. The one-integration of research-concerns African so-
54
cial scientists themselves, the other-diffusion-concerns them as well as
the wider community they serve.
The integration of research is necessary to avoid duplication and to
direct the attention of African social scientists to the work of others engaged in similar research.
To meet this need, there is a case for the publication of a compendium of on-going research and the creation of a data or resource bank
to make readily available summaries of research findings in the disciplines to the African social science community. Such a data or resource
bank should be able to distil, synthesize and summarize the findings
and major policy implications, where applicable, of completed and ongoing research undertaken by African social scientists in non-technical
jargon. The summaries should then be sent to the relevant ministries in
African countries.
This is another measure which should be considered. Here again,
there may be a need for such institutions and organizations as CODESRIA, AAPS, AAWORD, OSSREA and SAUSSC to meet to discuss
the modality of creating the compendium and data bank. For example,
as an ad interim measure, the discussion can focus on how the journals
and newsletters of these organizations can serve the compendium and
data bank functions.
Graduate training within Africa
The need for the encouragement of graduate training within Africa
as an area of priority was elaborated upon in the preceding section. To
facilitate this, especially at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels, advantage must be taken of the evolving linkage networks among African social scientists to identify universities and research institutions where
there are strong and well-established doctoral and postdoctoral programmes to which young social scientists or new graduates can be sent
for further work in the three disciplines.
Suggestions for specific training and research programmes:
what kind of training and research programme?
A badly needed kind of training and research programme is the re-
training of teachers and researchers in the three disciplines so that they
can keep abreast of developments and innovations in their disciplines
and in other social science disciplines. This becomes important since
most of them have not probably initially undergone special training as
teachers and researchers, other than skills an experience acquired in
the process of working for their postgraduate degree.
But, of course, a good Master’s or Ph. D. degree holder is not also
necessarily a good teacher. In fact most of them had no teaching experience prior to their assumption of duty in their universities back home.
55
__- -._,
Y-d---
_..
It therefore becomes necessaryto create mechanisms and institutions
for this kind of re-training programme. The aim, as indicated above,
should be to provide selected African social scientists an opportunity to
update and improve on their teaching and research skills. There are
two areas of training which should be considered, i.e. “TeaclaingSocial
ScienceSeminar and “Methodology of Social ScienceSeminar”.
Teaching social science seminar
A seminar on “Teaching Social Science” should be organized for a
six-week period (divided into two separate groups, each of 3 weeks duration) in each year at an institution of higher education in Africa.
The aim of the seminar should be to enable young and mid-career social scientists (teachers and researchers) to improve their teaching and
pedagogical skills. Another aim should be to focus on the analysis and
discussion of recent trends in the social sciences.This will additionally
help to improve their skills as social scientists and as teachers and researchers.
A further aim is to facilitate networking among the participants at the
seminars. The exchange of ideas and perspectives on the problems of
teaching and research in the social sciences in Africa that the seminar
will ensure should facilitate networking among the participants.
Another aim of the seminar should be the production in due course
of a newsletter or bulletin with the title TEACHING SOCIAL
SCIENCE BULLETIN or TEACHING SOCIAL SCIENCE NEWSLETTER. Such a bulletin or newsletter, if given the widest circulation,
should serve the useful purpose of regularly keeping teachers and researchers abreast of developments in the social science disciplines. This
way those who cannot attend or who are not selected to attend “The
Teaching Social Science” seminar will at least find some useful resource
material or information in the bulletin.
Content of teaching social science seminar
The content of the “Teaching Social Science” seminar should be determined after appropriate consultations with various social science departments in Africa to determine critical areas of need and deficiency.
In working out the details of the content of the courses, the objectives
should be to focus on pedagogical and substantive issues and developments in these disciplines end to provide background information or into education to them. As far as is possible, the focus should also be on
problem-solving and situating the ‘issuesdiscussed within the specific
conditions of Africa.
The methodology of social science seminar
The second area of training should be provided by a “Seminar of the
Methodology of social science”.
56
There should be two such seminars-each of three weeks duration every Ye=.
As with the “Teaching social science” seminar, the aim should be to
allow young and mid-career social science teachers and researchers to
improve their skill. In this specific case, the objective should not be on
teaching as such but on the improvement or acquisition of techniques
of social research and familiarization with developments and trends in
social science methodology.
The seminar should also facilitate networking among African social
scientists and such networking can be consolidated with a SOCIAL
SCIENCE METHODOLOGY NEWSLETTER OR BULLETIN designed to keep African social scientists regularly informed of developments and trends in the methodology of the disciplines.
Contents of methodology semlnar
Here again, as in the case of the “Teaching social science” seminar,
the content of the seminar should be decided upon after appropriate
consultations have been carried out with the relevant departments on
the continent to determine areas of need.
In the design of the content of the seminar, the underlying aim must
be to offer a kaleidoscope of the changing and evolving methodologies
and strategies of inquiry employed in the disciplines and how these relate to African realities. The seminar must not, in other works, be viewed primarily aSone of teaching and acquiring techniques.
Th cultural context of the application of methodology must receive as
much attention. There must be a concern, in designing the content of
the seminar, with the appropriateness of particular methodologies to
serve African needs. The ethical and ideological dimensions of the methodologies of social science research must also be kept in view
Organization of the two seminar
Two issues related to the organizations of the two seminars must now
be briefly indicated. These are the issue of the selection of participants
and that of instructors for the seminars.
Selection of participants
Each seminar should consist of 40 participants (i.e. 20 for each 3week stream). A percentage of the number must be female. Each selected participant must have a minimum of two years and a maximum of
ten years teaching or research experience, plus a good undergraduate
degree. They must also be Africans who are currently employed on the
academic staff of social science departments or research institutes on
the continent.
Each seminar should, as far as possible, be bilingual (English and
French). This may require two teaching groups or sessions for each
three-weeks stream of each seminar, namely one session in English (10
57
. .
I_____._,__
^_
-“--__l....--
^_,_
_”
,“.“”
-.x_
students) for the Anglophone countries and another session in French
(10 students for the Francophone and Lusophone countries). Where
possible joint sessionscan also be arranged.
The composition of the student participants must reflect a regional
balance (i.e. 4 each from Central, East, Southern and West Africa) as
well as a linguistic balance between anglophone, francophone and lusophone Africa.
Selection of instructors
The selection of seminar instructors should be based on the content
of each seminar and the kind of expertise required. But their composition should not exceed six instructors per seminar. This means that for
each seminar, the instructors selected will be for the six weeks’ duration
of the seminar. However, in selecting the instructors, regard must be
had for regional and linguistic balance. But there should also be one female instructor.
58