EDUCATION IN SOMALIA: HISTORY,
DESTRUCTION, AND CALLS FOR RECONSTRUCTION
ABSTRACT
In pre-colonial traditional Somalia,
education was dispensed through informal systems of communal interaction. With
the arrival of colonialism in the mid-late 19th century, formal
programmes of learning were slowly but steadily established. These were limited
in scope and were essentially designed for the purposes of colonization. With
independence in 1960, the education sector developed very quickly with pre-1991
civilian and military governments building hundreds of schools, training tens
of thousands of teachers, adopting the Latin script for the writing of the
Somali language, and successfully implementing nation-wide literacy programmes.
But with the collapse of the Somali state in 1991, all modern systems of
learning in the country were destroyed by the fighting factions, and Somalia
has since been a country without any formal programmes of education. This paper
first looks at the history of education in Somalia, then it describes and
analyses the nature as well as the magnitude of destruction, and ends with an
urgent appeal to the international community to come to the rescue of Somalia’s
children, and help resuscitate and reconstitute the country’s structures and forms
of learning.
Introduction
The entire fabric of the Somali society
has been damaged, the existence of the whole nation has sunk into a deep, dark
sea of unimaginable human and material disaster, and the communal mind of the
people is in a coma.
(Afrax, 1994, p. 233)
Since the collapse of the Somali state in
January 1991, Somalia has been a country without any level of organized systems
of learning. This is obviously the result of the division of the country into
clan-based fiefdoms (Samatar, 1991b) the secession of the northwest from the
rest of the country (Samatar, 1992), and the ensuing civil war that has claimed
the lives of hundreds of thousands of Somalis (Michaelson, 1993; Sahnoun,
1994). In this process of social disintegration, schools, technical training
centres and university facilities and resources became among the first
casualties of the senseless mass destruction of the country’s total
infrastructure. The physical destruction of the facilities was, at times,
peculiarly coupled with the targeting of the educated cadre among the warring
factions. As a result, underdeveloped Somalia seems to have embarked on the
treacherous road of de-development, defined in this sense as reversing the
limited trend of development by deliberately destroying everything that could
function in, and sustain a civil society.
These observations, serious as they may
sound to the concerned reader, will pale in comparison with the bleak future
that awaits Somalia’s children. The first and the most vulnerable victims of
the civil war and war-triggered famine in post-state Somalia were and are still
the children with an estimated 3000 of them dying every day in early 1992
(Sahnoun, 1994). This cruel trend was fortunately reversed with the launching
of Operation Restore Hope by the USA under the auspices of the United Nations
UN (Lyons & Samatar, 1995). But as that undertaking and all other UN
operations are now derailed, Somalia, along with any concern for the future of
Somalia’s children, is no longer on the active agenda of the international
community. In the case of the USA, and as Michaels (1993) points out in her
article ‘Retreat from Africa’, Somalia may forcefully satisfy its role in an
Africa that is fast falling off the policy map in the US State Department, the Executive
Branch and Congress. As far as the European Union (EU) is concerned, there may
be some limited efforts such as the November 1996 Lake Nakuru (Kenya)
Conference on Somalia. The EU’s initiatives should have been complemented
lately by other reconciliatory schemes undertaken by, among other African
countries, Ethiopia and Egypt, for example. Apparently, all these efforts,
which were limited in scope in the first place, fell short of producing any
tangible reconstruction and development programmes.
The central question of this article thus
becomes: where will Somalia, without any forms of organized systems of
learning, go from here, and what are the chances of reversing the current
trends of de-development? The country’s
children are now, for all observable intentions, ‘aspiring’ illiterates in
today’s interdependent, technologically advanced and global economy-oriented
world. Moreover, and without minimizing the descriptive aspects of the problem,
Somalia’s children are actually being denied their right to one of the
fundamental principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the
declaration (UNESCO, 1991), it is stated that:
1. Everyone
has the right to education, and education shall be free, at least, in
elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory.
Technical and professional training shall be made available, and higher
education shall be equally accessible on the basis of merit.
2. Education
shall be directed to the full development of human personality, and to the
strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. (p. 16)
This article attempts to take an
analytical look at this almost hidden but crucial issue with the deliberate
view of giving a socio-historical as well as a futuristic perspective of what
could happen in Somalia if the critical situation of education in the country
is not dealt with. The general character
of learning systems discussed here conforms to a definition of formal education
as the ‘deliberate, planned experiences designed to transmit certain values,
knowledge and skills’ (Ghosh, 1994, p. 3).
Education in Pre-colonial Traditional Somalia
As elsewhere in most of Africa,
pre-colonial traditional Somalia was not familiar with ‘modern’ national
systems of learning. This was for the most part due to the prevalent
socio-political and economic arrangements that were in place. The Somali
nation, as it is known today, is essentially a 20th century
phenomenon, and pre-dating it were a group of several major clan families
residing in the area that is now called Somalia. Peculiar to this notion,
though, is the possibility that Somalis may have always partially fulfilled the
general academic definition of nation. In this sense, a nation is a ‘social
group that shares a common ideology, common institutions and customs, and a
sense of homogeneity’ (Connor, 1994, p. 92).
In a setting like this, one may expect
the existence of a similar, if not systematic, regime of education that is
formulated and implemented, albeit informally, across tribal lines. But that
has not been the case as arrangements in this regard were limited to a specific
clan in a given area. This last point may make more sense when we include the
definition of nation as also involving ‘a feeling of oneness, of sameness, of
belonging, or of consciousness of kind’ (Connor, 1994, p. 93). With the incorporation of this last
point into the core characteristics of nationhood, it may be difficult to rely
upon the general homogeneity of the Somalis as a particular asset that would
have protected them from the debilitating ethnic/tribal conflict that is
currently ravaging many parts of Africa’s post-bipolar political landscape.
Despite the resemblance of their physical
appearance, shared cultural beliefs and norms, common language, and sometimes
the claim of common ancestry (Lewis, 1967; Cassanelli, 1982; Laitin &
Samatar, 1987; Samatar, 1991b), the
important psychological bonding among the several major clans may not have been
there. The first informal systems of learning in traditional Somalia may be
likened then to what Keto (1990), discussing the South African situation,
describes as the training of the young by the elderly in history, manners,
methods of exploiting the environment, responsibilities and military and fighting
skills. Again this should have been clan specific, but because of cultural and
language homogeneity, the general characteristics may have been the same.
Later, non-sedentary nomadic schools were introduced with religious men
teaching children how to read, write and memorize the Koran, the Muslim Holy
Book. According to Lewis (1967), the pupils in that setting were learning by
rote from wooden tablets, enabling some to acquire some familiarity with the
Arabic language.
In terms of how traditional Somalia
designed and dispensed education was conducive to the relative socio-economic
and political ‘development’ of its recipients, one should realize that these
systems were positively impacting on the life chances of those who were
receiving them and graduating from them. That does not necessarily mean that
the systems were perfect. What this should indicate, though, is that since
these were not imposed from outside, their formulation and implementation were
both responding to needs identified locally, and through time and experience,
recognized as responsive and responsible to those needs. In the larger African
context, Rodney (1974) refers to these advantages:
The
following features of indigenous African education can be considered
outstanding: its close links with social life, both in a material and spiritual
sense; its collective nature; its many-sidedness, and its progressive
development in conformity with the successive stages of physical, emotional and
mental development of the child. There was no separation of the education and
the productive activity. Altogether, through mainly informal means,
pre-colonial African education matched the realities of pre-colonial African
society and produced well-rounded personalities to fit into that society. (p. 239)
In terms of the qualitative or
quantitative differences in the provision of traditional and Islamic education,
we could say that it was essentially of male-oriented dispensation. Later,
girls were also admitted to these Koranic schools (Lewis, 1967). The
preferential treatment for boys was basically continuing the gender-biased
decision-making process where only adult men had a say in community affairs
(Touval, 1963). Moreover, as the sheikhs (religious scholars) were
self-employed in this manner and were living on fees (in the form of ration,
sheep, cattle, camels, etc.) collected from the pupils, the economic situation
of subsistent pastoralists may not have allowed them to send all sons and all
daughters to these schools. Obviously then, the sons would have had the
educational priority in the patriarchal Somali society.
The dominant gender-biased
socio-political arrangements had apparently led to the creation of, albeit
selectively, ‘democratic norms and the rejection of all claims to domination
which may have been conducive to a tradition of anarchy, not in its current
connotations of disorder and lawlessness, but in lacking any institutionalized
roles’ (Laitin & Samatar, 1987, p. 43). Lewis, in his seminal work, A
Pastoral Democracy: a study of pastoralism and politics among the northern
Somali of the Horn of Africa (1967), looks at this issue:
In
settling social, political and economic matters, all adult men are classified
as elders with the right to speak at the councils. As a trait of [the larger] human
organization, though, the political equality of all men does not guarantee a
level playing field for opinions: status may have depended on wealth, inherited
prestige, skills in public oratory and poetry, political acumen, age wisdom and
religious knowledge. (p. 196)
Traditional systems of education,
especially when the religious element is de-emphasized, were based on value
systems that were communal. In that sense, they were designed and implemented
for the limited and temporally relevant forms of social administration and
other matters of communal arrangements. Moreover, these systems of learning
were symmetrical with the development needs and the relational patterns of a
society that was socio-economically advancing at a pace that was resourcefully
and ecologically congruent with its needs and expectations. At a more critical
level of analysis, one may even extrapolate the implications of Freire’s (1991)
Conscientization to that situation. In Freire’s terms, when people see
themselves in their education, they question their surroundings, analytically
view the world, and acquire the potential to develop.
Colonialism in Somalia
The social and economic motives of
colonialism in Africa have been presented through history in different
versions. Colonial governments and their apologists have made an argument for
colonialism that paints itself as a civilizing, developing and emancipating
force designed to hasten the incorporation of the backward regions of the world
into the realm of modernity (Mudimbe, 1988, Bayart, 1993). The other side of
the argument, and the one that should be forcefully propagated in this article,
is that colonialism was a planned response to specific historical and
socio-economic moment of the Western world with the paramount objective of
acquiring new lands and exploiting them (Rodney, 1974; Mudimbe, 1988). In terms
of the historical trajectory of colonialism, Cesaire reminds us:
The
great historical tragedy of Africa has not been so much that it was too late in
making contact with the rest of the world, as the manner in which that contact
was brought about; that Europe began to propagate at a time when it has fallen
into the hands of the most unscrupulous financiers and captains of industry.
(Cesaire, 1978, cited in Mudimbe (1988,p. 2))
Colonialism in Somalia, although
quantitatively less ambitious than many experiences in many parts of Africa,
was nevertheless, qualitatively a conformist in the general scheme of
appropriation of resources and the subsequent exploitation of peoples and
lands. Lyons & Samatar (1995) contextualize the familiar theme of colonial
interests, and how these had crept into Somalia:
Interests
in India led the British to occupy the port of Aden in Yemen in 1839-40 as a
strategically vital point of contact with the sub-continent. Then Aden’s needs,
particularly for meat supplies, soon brought the adjacent northern Somali coast
with its abundance of sheep, goats, camels and cattle to London’s attention.
Later, the British also claimed territory inhabited by Somalis in Northeastern
Kenya. (p. 11)
The British were followed by the French
who captured former French Somaliland (now the Republic of Djibouti), the
Italians who completed their colonization of southern Somalia in 1893, and the
Ethiopian emperor, Menelik annexing western Somalia with the consent of the
European powers in the late 19th century (Habte-Selassie, 1987; Sauldie,
1987; Lyons & Samatar, 1995).
Colonial Education in Somalia
Colonial education in Somalia was, as
elsewhere in Africa, designed and pragmatically implemented for the
administrative and low-level technical needs of the imperial powers. To that
effect, as Rodney (1974) points out, the colonial school system ‘was to train Africans to help man the local
administration at the lowest ranks, and to staff the private capitalist firms
which meant the participation of few Africans in the domination and
exploitation of the continent as a whole’ (p. 240).
To qualify this last argument, one may
have to refer to some previously unintended benefits from colonial education,
especially the training of some of the continent’s most prominent nationalist
leaders. These leaders, one could argue, primarily because of their Western
education, organized the liberation struggles that have eventually led to
Africa’s independence. To name a few, these included Julius Nyerere of
Tanzania, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Robert Mugabe of
Zimbabwe, Somalia’s first President Aden Abdulle Osman and first Prime Minister
Abdirashid Shermarke, as well as the current President of South Africa Nelson
Mandela. And this will still be the case even when one realizes that some of
these leaders have eventually been rightly accused of having installed
dictatorial regimes, thus thwarting democratic systems of governments and
truncating the development potential of their peoples.
In Somalia, colonial education
demonstrates a systematic conformity to the general colonial education system
with imperialist governments training low-level administrative personnel to
help them administer the colonial territory effectively. As education is shaped
by the social forces that surround it, colonial education then signifies the
type of learning that is conducive to the general themes of subordination,
exploitation and inverse development relationship between the colonized and the
colonizer (Rodney, 1974; Memmi, 1991). Ironically, though, colonialism was
‘justified as an attempt to make the non-industrialized societies (which were
seen as primitive) advance to a more developed stage’ (Ghosh, 1994, p. 4).
One of the first formal colonial schools
operating in Somalia was opened by the Italian Dante Alighieri Society in 1907
to teach Somali children the Italian language (Laitin, 1976). Later, more
colonial schools were opened with the number of pupils reaching 1265, but with
Somalis not going beyond grade 7 (Laitin, 1976). This testifies to the
overriding character of colonial education where, despite the claim of
civilizational, developmental and educational motives, the essence of that
education ultimately fulfils the real objectives of imperialism. In the case of Somalia, as elsewhere in the
colonized world, a grade 7 education was apparently sufficient for
administrative and low-level technical duties assigned to the natives. The type
and the level of education that should lead to critical citizenship and social
analysis would have been a danger to the longevity of colonialism, and
apparently, colonizers were not unaware of that.
With the beginning of the struggle for
Somalia’s independence in the mid-1940s, and with the formation of the Somali
Youth Club (SYC) in 1943, which became the Somali Youth League (SYL) in 1947
(Laitin & Samatar, 1987), modern education was a priority on the agenda of
the new liberation organizations and their leaders. Some of the SYC’s main
objectives, according to Markakis (1987), were ‘to promote modern education and
to adopt a script for the Somali language’ (p. 53).
The prioritization of modern education
and the implementation of a local language script are, as Gellner (1983) and
Kedourie (1993) point out, important factors for identifying, upholding and
sustaining a modern national system. In Somalia’s case, the situation was more
urgent in terms of using education as a tool to diminish the role of tribalism
and tribal conflict which, when unchecked, could lead to the current
nation-state destruction in Somalia and elsewhere. The Somali liberation
groups, therefore, were seeing education as an indispensable building block to
fight clanism and to create a clan-transcending Somali nationalism (Markakis,
1987; Laitin & Samatar, 1987).
Education During the Civilian Rule, 1960-1969
Despite the physical and motivational
barriers to education during colonialism, the Italian colonial government was
required, under UN Trusteeship between 1950 and 1960 to prepare Somalia for
independence, and in the process to educate the Somali population. Article IV
of the Trusteeship Agreement, for example, specifically required the setting up
of modern education systems for Somali children and adult learners (Laitin,
1976). With this, Somalis embraced the values of modern education in the 1950s
as an important vehicle for national development (Afrax, 1994). And, as Somalia
became an independent republic on 1 July 1960, mass education was promoted as
the country’s best available venue for socio-economic advancement. As a sign of
the times, Abdillahi Qarshe, a prominent Somali singer/composer, buoyantly sang
this popular nationalist song:
Aqoon la’anni waa iftiin la’aane
waa aqal iyo ilays la’aane
Ogaada, ogaada, dugsiyada ogaada
O aada, o aada
Walaalayaal o aada.
(Lack of knowledge is lack of enlightenment
Homelessness and no light
Be aware, be aware of schools
And go to schools, go to schools
brothers and sisters, go to schools).
(Abdillahi Qarshe (1961) cited in Afrax
(1994, p. 244)
Immediately after independence in the
early 1960s, the positive image of the educated person and what he or she could
contribute to the process of nation-building and progress were conspicuous in
the Somali culture (Afrax, 1994). In this sense, and as elsewhere in Africa
(see Marvin (1975)), education, beyond its utilitarian niche, may have been
seen as building character and promoting positive image within the community. Any subordination of education to economic
calculations in the African case could have been, therefore, ‘a crude
oversimplification of the fact that many people in the continent see education
as providing a broader foundation for adult life, and not necessarily just the
certificates for the highest paying jobs’ (Marvin, 1975, p. 444).
With 18,000 Somalis enrolled in different
schools in the 1961/62 school year, and a university institute with law and
economics departments set up by the Italians already in place (Laitin, 1976),
the future of Somali education looked promising. If there were any serious
shortcomings then, it may have been the lack of script for the Somali language.
As the case has been in most post-colonial Africa, the languages of instruction
in independent Somalia remained Italian and English, the colonial languages.
These two languages were complemented by the Arabic language which was
basically confined to several schools run by the Egyptian government. And
although the civilian government had indicated its willingness to constitute a
script for the Somali language (Laitin, 1976), nothing was done when that
government was overthrown by a military coup d’etat on 21 October 1969.
Education During the Military Years, 1969-1990
With old tribal loyalties taking centre
stage in the Somalia of the late 1960s, coupled with an overriding public
desire for a change in the way the national government was being run, the
military takeover was warmly welcomed by the general population (Lewis, 1994;
Lyons & Samatar, 1995).
This type of the sometimes tumultuous
reception of new military governments in some developing countries may be
explainable by accepting the assumptions of at least one version of political
analysis. Arat (1991) while discussing this issue, concludes that the army,
which is seen in most countries as the best organized and the most professional
public institution, is usually accepted as an alternative to a weak and corrupt
state system.
The first years of the military regime
were characterized by the formulation as well as the exhortation of a number of
so-called ‘revolutionary’ programmes. To start these, the new Supreme
Revolutionary Council (SRC) introduced what it termed as ‘scientific socialism’
to be the country’s guiding ideology (Pestalozza, 1974, Lewis, 1994). That
announcement was followed by other rhetorically powerful but not enduring
self-help, self-reliance and national military training: programmes (Lewis,
1994).
One major programme that was introduced
and implemented by the military government, and indisputably its national
development landmark, was the institution of the Latin script for the writing
of the Somali language in 1972 (Sheikh-Abdi, 1981). Somali, as a written
language, brought with it the Somalization of state functions and administrative
sectors, followed by its gradual implementation as the medium of instruction in
schools (Pestalozza, 1974). The writing of the Somali language coupled with a
mass literacy campaign in the rural areas (Somalia: a country report, 1982) was
also responsible for sharply increasing the rate of literacy which immediately
went from a dismal 5% to an estimated 55% (Laitin & Samatar, 1987) in the
mid-1970s. The 1974/1975 literacy campaign programmes physically involved the
mobilization of 100,000 students and civil servants, who were sent ‘to the
countryside to live, learn and study with the nation’s large nomadic population
for a period of six months or more’ (Sheikh-Abdi, 1981, p. 171). As all of that
was complemented by an exponential rise in primary school enrolment, and as the
majority of Somalis now write in that script, the writing of the Somali
language was one measure of the national development programme that was
productive and enduring.
Other advancements on the education front
included the expansion of the university institute which was renamed the Somali
National University (SNU) in 1970. With pre-state collapse student figures of
4650, SNU established itself as a full-fledged institution of higher learning
with 11 faculties: law, economics, agriculture, education, veterinary medicine,
medicine, industrial chemistry, geology, languages, journalism, and engineering
(International Handbook of Universities, 1993). At the lower levels of
schooling, the substantial growth in enrolment was hastening the printing of
new materials in Somali, while at the same time, the new language script was
being adopted for use in technical and scientific fields (Somalia: a country
report, 1982).
These developments in creating a script
for the Somali language for the first time in Somalia’s history, were
positively responding to the core issue of national identity, social
emancipation and the de-emphasizing, at least partially, of one tenet of
colonialism, i.e. the colonial language. That will still be the case even if we
are cognizant of the world’s current economic and technological interdependence
which actually has increased the prominence of English as the undisputed lingua
franca of business and politics.
It would also be less sentimental to
argue, therefore, that in Somalia, as elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, language
is seen as one of the most precious national resources (Laitin, 1976). Laitin
(1976) maintains that ‘yet the process of nation-building and modernization in
most African states, and very often mass education and political administration
are conducted in a language that is foreign to the citizens of these states’
(p. 1). Fanon (1967), sees language as the crucial force that sustains culture
and supports the essence of civilizations. To Fanon (1967), ‘a man who has a
language consequently possesses ,he world expressed and implied by that
language’ (p. 18).
What is conspicuously evident, though,
and especially in Somalia’s case, is that sometimes, if not always, necessity
overrides any prevailing nationalist ideology. That was practically the case at
the SNU where ‘given the comparative lack of reading and research materials in
Somali, and the relatively few Somalis with graduate degrees, most university
courses were conducted in Italian’ (Somalia: a country report, 1982). The most important exception in this regard
was the College of Education where English was the medium of instruction.
The written Somali, despite the premium
it was placing on social development, did not dissuade the military government
from succumbing to Somalia’s chronic ailment: tribalism. As the euphoria over
the revolution’s ‘glorious’ objectives was replaced by combined economic and
political difficulties, the military regime turned to clan manipulating and to
the classic tactics of divide and rule (Lyons & Samatar, 1995). In hindsight, it may now be sound to see that
as the beginning of Somalia’s journey to state collapse and national
disintegration which were both fully realized in early 1991.
Political Repression and Education in the 1980s
The effects of political repression on
education in Somalia were many and multi-faceted. According to the United
Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 1991). Somalia’s literacy
rate was 24% (36% for males and 14% for females) in 1990. This dismal literacy
situation was compounded by the fact that in 1988, the rate of access to radio
receivers per 1000 inhabitants was 40, while that for television receivers for
the same number of inhabitants was 0.4 (UNESCO, 1991). And to get a clear picture of how the
situation was deteriorating, the gross enrolment ratios for 4-23 year olds was
14% in 1980; by 1988, that had slid back to 7% (UNESCO, 1991).
As the economy was weakened by Somalia’s
border war with Ethiopia in 1977-1978 (Lyons & Samatar, 1995), the military
regime did not introduce any national development programmes for
reconstruction. Instead, and especially since the coup attempt by dissident
military officers in April 1978, and the subsequent execution of 17 officers
(Sheikh-Abdi, 1981), the government embarked on crushing what it called
‘domestic enemies’. Among the most prominent elements of this internal campaign
was the proliferation of nepotism and favouritism. With this came, among other
management misfortunes, the corruption of the education system where the
de-development-oriented maxim yaad taqaannaa (who do you know) replaced the
development-oriented maxaad taqaannaa (what do you know) in admissions,
scholarships, fields of specialization and types of employment after
graduation.
The tragedy of corruption in
military-ruled Somalia was not unique to the country’s learning systems, nor
was it limited to Somalia in chronically underdeveloped Africa (Brittain,
1994). Africa whose share of world trade in manufactured goods fell from a
dismal 0.4% in 1965 to a disastrous 0.2% in 1986 (Kennedy, 1993), seems more
peripheral than ever. Africa’s quasi- moribund economic situation is
complemented by what Bayart (1993) portrays as the completely corrupted state
structure and functions in the continent. The combined forces of economic
collapse and institutional corruption have, in the words of Brittain (1994),
forced ‘100,000 African professionals and
intellectuals to flee their continent in search of better opportunities, thus
bleeding their countries of the talent, education, and energy that would offer
a chance of reversing the trend of de-development’ (p. 22).
In Somalia’s case in particular, the
problems of corruption and mismanagement were compounded by the phenomenon of
cold war induced disproportionate armament. Because of border conflicts the
country inherited from the colonial legacy, and because of super power
opportunism, Somalia was one of the most militarized countries in the world.
Consequently, social programmes such as education and health care were
relegated to negligible status in expenditure. In effect, the 1984 estimates,
as the percentage of state expenditures, show that the Somali government was
spending 36% on defence and security, while it spent 10.5% on social programmes
including education, and only 8% on economic issues and development (Samatar,
1988).
The combination of internal conflict,
superpower opportunism, economic decay, institutional corruption, and
eventually the end of bi-polarity and the inauguration of the New World Order,
could all explain the collapse of the Somali state in 1991. These could also
rationalize why, with the collapse of the state, the only things Somalis could
find in abundance were American- and Soviet-made assault rifles, artillery
pieces, tanks, missiles and fighter jets. All this military hardware seemingly
was useful as Somalis decided to kill one another, and destroy, at times with
rocket science accuracy, all social and economic infrastructure of which
educational institutions and facilities were among the first casualties. At the
end, Somalia, even within the context of Sub-Saharan Africa, may be
educationally and, therefore, developmentally more marginalized than other
countries. In this regard, the World Bank (1995) reports that while the median
level of illiteracy is 56% per Sub-Saharan for Africa, it is 81% for Somalia.
This is complemented by a median infant mortality rate of 93.1% for Sub-Saharan
Africa and 120% for Somalia, and a median life expectancy of 52 years for
Sub-Saharan Africa and 47 years for Somalia (World Bank, 1995) [ 1].
The Destruction of the Education System in Post-state Somalia
With the collapse of the state in January
1991, the country immediately succumbed to the opportunistic tendencies of a
dozen or so competing factions mostly created and led by special interest
warlords. The warlords, having learned their political lessons from the former
military dictatorship, all wanted, rationally or irrationally, to occupy the
seat of the presidency. State, in this context, is defined as the law enforcing
agencies of the country (Gellner, 1983). More broadly, it could also be seen as
representing a political entity that functions within a set of prescribed
boundaries that are primarily designed and maintained to deal with the
organizations of human associations (Samatar, 1994). In the Somalia of the
early 1990s, the conspicuous absence of the state was complemented by the lack
of any genre of national leadership that was able to see beyond the tribal
spectre of events. In lamenting the paramountcy of this leadership vacuum,
Mirreh (1994) concludes that the ‘single most important factor responsible for
Somalia’s catastrophe is the nature of the opportunistic leadership that is
there’ (p. 23).
In terms of what happened to Somalia’s
schools and systems of learning after the collapse of the state, the scenario,
tragic as it is, may still have a ‘cluster’ of historical parallels. In early
civilizations, many treasuries of learning such as schools, universities and
libraries were either destroyed during wars, or were intentionally burned down,
demolished or converted into less dignified facilities or residencies. In all the cases, the perpetrators of these
acts of senseless destruction, to be described in our context as deliberate, or
at times, ‘innocent’ forays of de-development, were the invading groups, who,
for all possible explanations, were enemies of what they did not understand:
the value of knowledge and learning. In a more generalized manner, the almost
permanent relationship between education and social development (Nyerere, 1968;
Thompson, 1981; Fagerlind & Saha, 1985; Mandela, 1994; Tilak, 1994) was
apparently lost on the invading factions.
In Somalia’s case in particular, the
deliberate destruction of schools, university lecture halls, libraries and
laboratories, sometimes complemented by the targeting of the educated cadre
among the warring factions, may sadly remind one of different, albeit less
promising, historical epochs. One such historical moment that could serve as a
relevant example in this regard was the desmaction of the Alexandria Library in
Ancient Egypt. That library had the hitherto unprecedented collection of
400,000 volumes, and it was destroyed by the Roman army commander Julius Caesar
in 48 BC (Jackson, 1970).
The Current Tragic Situation
With no organized systems of learning in
place now, millions of Somalia’s children, young adults and adults are all at
the mercy of whatever informal education ‘bestows’ upon them. Informal
education, seen in this context as what is randomly learned from the general
societal situations, may sometimes, and depending on the situation, enhance
social development. In Somalia’s case, though, the country’s situation in the
last 7 years or so would lead us to believe that informal education is not only
destructive at the moment, it also seems to be legitimizing a host of negative
consequences, and in the process, it is self-perpetuating. Hence, and to use
Bayart’s (1993) term, it is of longue duree.
The overwhelming destructive nature of
informal education in current Somalia is conspicuous in the lives of millions
of former schoolers and would-have-been schoolers who are no longer in the
business of future-building. Instead, Somalia’s youth are fast adopting the
culture of thuggery, war-like attitudes toward life, clan and sometimes
sub-clan rightings, and survival on the fringes of an otherwise disintegrating
society. The social formation that is taking place within the lives of
Somalia’s children in these situations, therefore, is conspicuously capable of
diffusing in them a wanton desire to destabilize the human and physical
environments in which they must function. As Samatar (1991a) points out:
Even
if the unthinkable happens, and the warring factions manage to honour the terms
of the cease-fire agreement, Mogadishu is unlikely to see peace. The reason is
not far to seek. Of the estimated 20,000 armed militia roaming Mogadishu, only
about 5000 are commanded and controlled by the two main warlords. The remaining
15,000 are thugs who are answerable to no one. So many hungry, Qaat-crazed
youths armed with assault rifles are likely to use their weapons as a means to
gainful employment. They will continue looting, pillaging and terrorizing the
city. (p. 141)
The 15,000 former potential students may
now be hundreds of thousands all over the country. In terms of any changes that
have affected their lives, one could only guess that whatever has been
happening to them is impacting on their lives more negatively than positively.
More importantly, the qualitatively discouraging effects of the situation are
not the results of any deliberately planned schemes by the youngsters
themselves. As adults, we should be cognizant of the fact that children are social
beings who will do mostly what they are socialized to do. In today’s Somalia,
children are not being socialized, at least not formally, for responsible and
accountable future roles.
Moreover, as these young ‘fighters’
become fully anaesthetized to life in the potentially fatal lane, they may be
more hostile to any peace and reconciliation efforts. To them, a government
that restores law and order, would reduce the demand for their services as
potential gangsters, robbers and bandits (Finnegan, 1995). It may be safe to
assume, therefore, that as long as the psychological dispositions of these
children are in the current state of affairs, they may prefer to see the
current political situation maintained. After all, this is what these children
know, and anything different may seem alien and dangerously unpredictable.
The impact of the several efforts to
rehabilitate some learning centres by UNESCO and a few other international
organizations (UN Humanitarian Affairs Department, 1993), and some efforts by
some independent Islamic societies could be, if not practically insignificant,
woefully inadequate. In effect, most of these programmes hardly got off the
ground. Hence, there is the possibility of the current bleak situation
perpetuating itself for many years, if not decades to come.
In terms of the present condition of
former centres of higher learning, the buildings are, at least, not useless.
They have been overtaken by former pastoralists after the majority of the city
dwellers fled the urban centres. The flight of the urbanites was instigated by
factional fighting in and around the major cities (Samatar, 1994). The lack of
doors and windows (already looted) in most of these buildings does not seem to
bother the new occupants who, having been used to living in small huts in open
spaces, may now be savouring the luxury of the concrete buildings. This is also
true for most of the city’s nicer houses, where in the words of Finnegan
(1995), the people who are now inhabiting these homes are from the countryside,
and are, therefore, ‘enjoying their first sojourn in the city’ (p. 68).
As far as the effects of the physical and
ecological transformation of the educational institutions are concerned,
Finnegan (1995), for example, describes the current condition of the former
College of Education:
The
low-rise, modern looking building of the former College of Education is now a
displaced persons’ camp. The classrooms and dormitories were full of families;
the walls were blackened by cooking fires ... The library was a world of dust.
Books were piled everywhere, on sagging shelves, on toppling heaps. Some were
stained and disintegrating, but most were intact. Every title I saw seemed,
under the circumstances, absurdly ironic: ‘The Psychology of Adolescence,’
‘Adolescents Grow in Groups,’ ‘Primitive Government,’ ‘The Red Badge of
Courage.’ Sunlight drifted through high windows on the west wall. A cow mooed
somewhere. The dust was so deep that it
was as though the desert itself was creeping through the walls, burying the books
in fine sand. (p. 76)
Conclusion
The Somalia described in this article is,
technically speaking, a familiar one. People have seen the spectacle of the
country’s horrors on television, in the printed media, and more importantly on
the faces of the victims of the whole tragedy. Because of that, international
aid efforts have been organized, military operations have been launched, and
reconciliation talks among the warring factions have been held. But all these
efforts, useful and, at times, life-saving as they were, did not incorporate
into their agenda any strategy to save the future of Somalia’s children. So by
taking now a much needed break from the political debate, let us ask ourselves
what should and could be done about the education situation? Definitely, the
children deserve better, and the situation, if it continues as it is, may be
‘objectively’ signified as heralding the end of any foreseeable pragmatic hope
for towing Somalia back to the waters of the community of nations.
One potential programme may be the
incorporation of education rebuilding strategies into the agenda of
international organizations that are delivering aid to Somalia. Another project
that may have more impact could come from deliberate initiatives by UNESCO.
Such efforts could be complemented by contributions from different countries
around the world.
Even if all aid was previously expected
from Europe and North America,
new venues of support and international
responsibility must now also be
sought from wealthy nations in Asia, the
Middle East, and from Australia
and New Zealand. The agreed-upon programmes
to be collectively implemented may initially contain a ‘cluster’ of projects
that would primarily respond to the re-opening of elementary schools in those parts
of Somalia that are politically stable, and that have demonstrated a genuine
desire to re-start institutional rebuilding. With the
establishment of this basic phase of
education, new projects could be designed for intermediate and secondary
schools, followed by the re-tooling and the re-opening of the country’s young,
but proud and aspiring university system.
With the formulation or, at least, the
practical discussion of educational intervention projects in state-less
Somalia, one could assume that such efforts would have a high probability of
success. This should be so, for parents and the wider community would now fully
understand that it is time for their children’s future to come ahead of
factionalism, warlordism and, therefore, underdevelopment and marginalization.
After all, factional political struggle is a failed scheme, and it may not be
long before Somalis realize that it could be too late for millions of the
country’s future citizens unless something is done quickly.
On the other hand, and especially if
nothing is done, we would just continue watching the spectacle of horror in
that sad land in the Horn of Africa. And as years go by, we may discover the
swelling numbers of yesterday’s and yesteryears’ innocent children coming of
age, not as high school graduates, university freshmen and juniors, or young
professionals and aspiring academics, but as illiterate or at best,
semi-illiterate militia people who could situationally hasten the ongoing
marginalization of an already alarmingly peripheral Somali society.
The responsibility to rescue Somalia’s
children and, therefore, any future for Somalia, is on the shoulders of the
world’s citizens. This is not to say that by expecting help from others,
Somalis are abdicating their responsibility and blaming the rest of the world
for their country’s current socio-political and economic mishap. What it should
mean, though, is that Somalia’s problems did not take place in a global
socio-cultural vacuum, but were a product of forces that have been at times out
of the control of the country’s citizens. If and when the call for rescue is
heeded, therefore, there could be an ample chance for a situational turn-up.
If, on the other hand, the case continues as it is, there may be one very
plausible scenario. The people of Somalia may slowly self-emancipate in their
own way, and begin the long and hard trek of reversing the current trends of
de-development. One should expect, though, that it would not come to that, for
the projects we are discussing are urgently needed and require, above all else,
a massive amount of resources that are not available in today’s Somalia. But if
that becomes the only alternative, one may justifiably hope that it will not be
too late for 21st century Somalia and its people.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Ratna
Ghosh at McGill University for her valuable insights regarding an earlier
version of this paper.
NOTE
[1] The World Bank data, although
produced in 1995, contains information for earlier in the 1990s. The latest
year this data applies to is 1993.
Correspondence to: Ali A. Abdi, Faculty
of Education, McGill University, 3700 McTavish Street, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1Y2,
; e-mail: c3cp@musica.mcgill. ca>
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By ALI A. ABDI
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