Rural Education and Training in Tanzania *

Probably no country in Africa has made a greater effort than Tanzania to evolve a development strategy that is directly relevant to the practical problems confronting it. The present chapter, which serves to illustrate Tanzania's original approach to these problems, deals with one important prerequisite for rapid development in the rural areas: the adaptation of formal education and other kinds of rural training to the country's employment requirements. This adaptation is already under way; its purpose is to promote a faster growth of production, raise the national income, ease the problems of primary school-leavers and ensure more efficient utilization of the rural labour force. It would not be appropriate here to attempt a general evaluation of the policies adopted, since Tanzania ¹ did not begin to make any substantial changes in the educational system inherited from pre-independence days until March 1967, when the guiding principle of ‘Education for Self-Reliance’ was laid down. Furthermore, while the basic policies have been determined and accepted, the methods of achieving the objectives are still being reviewed and improved in the light of experience and according to need. Before going on to describe these policies, it may be useful to outline the setting in which they have to operate.