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1
TEACHING OF POLITICAL SCIENCE IN EAST AFRICA: A NARRATIVE
By
Walter O. Oyugi (PhD)
Department of Political Science and Public Administration University of Nairobi [email protected]
Paper Presented at the International Political Science Association Conference
International Political Science: New Theories and Regional Perspectives Montreal, Canada
April 30th – 2nd May 2008
2
TEACHING OF POLITICAL SCIENCE IN EAST AFRICA
By
Walter O. Oyugi (PhD)
Professor
Department of Political Science and Public Administration
University of Nairobi, Kenya
I. INTRODUCTION
This essay presents a narrative of the development of Political Science in East Africa since
its inception in the terminal decade of colonialism. The narrative is confined to the
experiences of the three East African countries, namely: Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The
reader may wish to know that the three former British colonial possessions established very
close working relationships among themselves from the period after the First World War
when Tanganyika was incorporated into the British sphere of influence in East Africa
following the defeat of the former colonial power—Germany—during World War I.
In tracing the historical development of the discipline since its inception, we focus on the
state of the discipline at different times with accent on the theoretical and ideological
influences which have informed the teaching of the discipline in the region. In the process,
the factors which have over the years influenced the orientations and the substance that have
found expression in the teaching in the various sub-areas of the discipline are also discussed.
Finally, the paper assesses the current situation before presenting a brief scenario of what the
discipline is likely to be in the coming decades.
3
The focus is on the three public universities which were established either prior to or
immediately after independence, since it is in these universities that the discipline has taken
roots over the years.
II. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The emergence of Political Science as a subject in the University curricula in East Africa is
closely linked to the late development of higher education in the region. Throughout the
colonial period, the British colonial authorities contributed very little towards the
development of African education, preferring instead to delegate that responsibility to the
missionaries. It is the missionaries who were up to late 1940s, responsible for the
development of both primary and junior secondary schools that existed during that period.
However, it is the period after the Second World War which saw some expansion of
secondary education, a development which was occasioned by the decision of the colonial
governments in the three territories to establish what became known as ―government
African secondary schools‖ to supplement the efforts of the missionaries. This belated
development was part of the broader British colonial policy in the post-World War II, period
according to which colonies were supposed to be prepared for self-government and
eventually independence. The availability of educated manpower therefore received some
attention. But even at this point, the idea of university education as such touched the
imagination of the colonial authorities only tangentially.
The origin of the first institution of higher learning in East Africa was therefore linked to the
need for trained manpower in a number of functional areas. Most importantly, these areas
included education, health, veterinary services and agriculture. Therefore, the first higher
education institution to be established in East Africa—Makerere College in Kampala,
Uganda—was in its formative years primarily concerned with producing what in the context
of today, would be referred to as certificate or ordinary diploma fellows. Holders of the said
qualifications in education were expected to take up teaching positions in upper primary and
secondary schools while their counterparts in the other fields joined government service as
junior officers.
4
It was not until 1950/51 academic year that undergraduate degree programmes were
established at Makerere. At once Makerere emerged as the focal centre for higher education
in East Africa and parts of Southern Africa (i.e., Zambia and Malawi). With the
establishment of degree programme, Makerere at once became a University College of East
Africa affiliated for the purposes of degree award, to the University of London. The
upgrading of the institution necessitated both the diversification and the expansion of the
curricula. It is against this background that the Department of Political Science was
established in 1961 (see e.g., Nsibambi 1989).
Makerere remained the only degree awarding institution in the region up to 1961 when the
then Royal Technical College in Nairobi was transformed into a second University College
of East Africa under the name of Royal College Nairobi. But the birth of the University
College at Nairobi did not see the introduction of social sciences immediately. Social science
departments came on board a little later, with Political Science department in particular being
established in 1965/66 academic year. Earlier on, the University College of Dar-es-Salaam
had also been established in 1962, thus, becoming the third University College of East
Africa.
With all the three countries attaining independence between 1961 and 1963, the need to
delink from the University of London was felt. At once, the three countries decided to
establish what would become known as the University of East Africa. The new university
began to operate from 1963/64 academic year. Partly because of parochial national interests
and disagreement regarding the governance of the new university, the three countries
decided to go their own ways by dissolving the University of East Africa on July 1, 1970.
This development saw the three colleges being transformed into fully-fledged national
universities. This happened without severing the then existing links. For some time, students
from the three countries continued having the right to be admitted, on application, to any of
the three campuses depending on the courses they wished to pursue. This was especially
important considering that some specialization were non-existent in some universities. For
example, it took some time before Makerere and Nairobi established their respective
faculties of law. However, sooner rather than later, and with the emergence of ideological
5
difference among the three East African countries, accompanied by political crisis in Uganda
following Amin‘s coup in 1971, the links were virtually cut by the mid-1970s; which meant
therefore that the three universities could only admit nationals from their respective
countries. All this was happening in spite of the fact that there existed the East African
Economic Community established in 1967 and which was required to manage all the
common services jointly owned by the three countries. University education was one such
service.
III. THE TRAJECTORY OF THE DISCIPLINE
a) Emergence of the Discipline
The point has been made that Political Science was first introduced in the social sciences
curricula at Makerere in 1951. It did not have an identity of its own and remained just one of
the subjects being offered in the Faculty until 1961 when the Department of Political Science
incorporating Public Administration was established. Three years later, the Department was
established at the University of Dar-es-Salaam following the establishment of the Faculty of
Social Sciences there. Nairobi followed suit within a year when the Department—known
until recently as the Department of Government—was established in the 1965/66 academic
year. What is common about the establishment of these departments is that pioneer
leadership fell in the hands of expatriates. In all the three cases, the initial leadership of the
departments fell in the hands of the British and/or American academics, with Colin Leys
being the pioneer at Makerere, David Kimble at Dar-es-Salaam and Smithburg at Nairobi.
All were British.
Within a very short time, the leadership of the departments at Makerere and Dar-es-Salaam
fell in the hands of Americans, with James Coleman moving to Makerere and Carl Rosberg
to Dar es Saalam. By the late 1960s, Colin Leys had moved to Nairobi as head of the
department. There was nothing unusual about this, for there were no locals at that point in
time who had the requisite qualifications and experience to head the department. But the
situation obtaining in Political Science was not unique. The leadership of all the social
sciences departments then existing was in the hands of the expatriates either British or
6
American. Much of this had to do with the British colonial policy regarding higher education
when their presence in the region lasted. To begin with, the institutions of higher learning in
East Africa were not sufficiently staffed to offer other than undergraduate courses, which is
why those wishing to pursue post-graduate studies had to do so outside the region. For the
greater part of the colonial period, the British colonial authorities were not keen in
supporting further studies by Africans in British universities; but when they later decided to
do so, it appears Political Science was not a priority area. As a result, as recently as the mid-
1960s, only one East African—Ali A. Mazrui—had obtained a PhD in Political Science from
a British university. Thus, when Political Science was introduced as a teaching subject in the
universities in East Africa, no other East Africans were readily available to take up teaching
positions in the discipline.
The dominance of the British expatriates in the social sciences in the formative years at once
influenced the choice of the approaches to the study of the discipline for over a decade. The
approach was both historical and empiricist, and largely ideographic in focus (see e.g.,
Coleman and Halisi1983). This was taking place at a time when in the United States, the
Comparative Politics movement had already taken shape. From the 1960s, the teaching of
Political Science in most of the Anglophone Africa, where the discipline had already abeen
part of the social sciences curricula, would be captured by Americans. In the case of East
Africa, it would be a combination of Americans and British. The presence of American
political scientists all over the world in the post-World War II period would mark the
beginning of what has been referred to in the literature on the teaching of the discipline as
the ―globalization of American Political Science.‖ This globalization was supported by the
fact that Americans constituted the largest population of political scientists in the world
from the 1960s. And as Mackenzie (1971) was later to observe, three-quarters of political
scientists in the world by 1970s were Americans as seen in the scholarly production of
books, journal articles and dissertations. It is this numerical strength of American political
scientists that facilitated the so-called globalization of American Political Science.
7
b) Americanization of the Discipline in East Africa
The movement (globalization of American political science) was supported by American
Political Science Association as well as the American Social Science Research Council. The
two organizations received massive injections of research funding from American
foundations notably Rockefeller and Ford Foundations (Coleman and Halisi 1983). It is
through this movement that many young American political scientists found themselves
initially as researchers in different parts of Africa. It is they who would later return to Africa
as faculty members to spearhead the movement. It is through these pioneers that
prospective graduate students were linked with the American foundations with interest in
funding graduate studies in North America. At some point, a special fund was also
established with the prompting of the State Department, through the Institute of
International Education (IIE), then based in New York, to provide scholarship for deserving
African students to pursue their post-graduate studies in American universities. Some of
these would benefit from the presence of the same American scholars in the region in
identifying the institutions of affiliation.
Earlier on, a few had found their ways to the United States on their own initiatives especially
from the late 1950s. It is this group that returned in the mid-1960s to become the first
generation of university lecturers in the region. But they were quite few. It is a combination
of these locals and the expatriate mentors who provided the fertile ground upon which the
American Political Science thrived, not just in East Africa, but in the wider African
continent.
In East Africa, the beginning was rather modest. Political Science as taught in the three
universities was in the initial period confined to a few sub-areas of the discipline and to a few
courses in each of those sub-areas. Most of the courses offered in the formative years (1950s
and 1960s) were drawn mainly from the Comparative Politics area. This was partly because
of the orientation of the staff on the ground. Courses were mainly designed to cover given
regions of the world, as for example, the courses on Government and Politics of
Industrialized States, Government and Politics of Selected Regions, among others. Although
the rubric of the offering was comparative, the actual approach was ideographic. Even in a
8
situation where the course lent itself to comparative analysis, more often than not, the
presentation would be sequential coverage of individual countries in the chosen region.
Easton‘s systems theory and Almond‘s structural-functional model were popularized in
teaching and research (Hyden 1989, Coleman and Halisi 1983, Mujaju 1989).
The presence of a combination of American political scientists together with the first
generation of African political scientists on the ground provided the setting for the
Americanization of Political Science in East Africa. This found expression through teaching
and use of books and journals from America. More often than not, it is American
foundations, notably the Rockefeller foundation, in the case of East Africa, that either
provided the funds or the books that were used in the teaching of Political Science in the
region. In a seminal work cited above, Coleman and Halisi submit that the American
Political Science movement was influenced by the following factors: the evangelical
commitment to the spread of democracy through the export of liberal constitutionalism and
American pluralism, and the concomitant belief in universalism and scienticism, i.e., a
corresponding attraction to generalization and grand theory and the human tendency to
believe that generalization of one‘s own culture has universal validity. This is to suggest that
the mission of American Political Science was the exportation of American political values
and American economic values. To paraphrase them, it was an exercise in the exportation of
American capitalism and American liberal political culture. At the second level, and as
indicated above, was the belief that the application of theories and models developed to aid
the study of politics in America were relevant regardless of the societies and cultures in
which the transplantation was to take place. This was happening at a time when grand
theories were already well-developed. These theories were exported and applied in the
teaching of politics without any adaptation to cultural realities on the ground (Jinadu 1987,
Anyang‘ Nyongo 1989, Ake 1979). One is referring for example to Easton‘s system theory
and Almond‘s structural-functional framework. Indeed, one would not find a course in the
area of Comparative Politics (incorporating Area Study) in which works by Easton and
Almond were not among the major texts.
9
c) Attempted Rejection of American Political Science
From the late 1960s, new trends in the analysis of politics began to emerge in East Africa,
but without necessarily dislodging American Political Science whose purveyors were strongly
entrenched on the ground. Two things happened in the East African region that gave rise to
the development to be narrated presently. First, was the Tanzanian factor. With the birth of
Ujamaa Socialism in 1967 and the effort by the Tanzanian leadership to construct socialist
strategies for her national development, Tanzania became an attraction for scholars from far
and wide. These were scholars with some misgivings about the import of Americanization of
the discipline. The emergent Tanzanian situation provided an ideological setting in which
approaches hitherto regarded as profane, namely, Marxist and neo-Marxist Political Science,
would begin to find expression in the scholarly papers, seminar discussions, public lectures,
and to some extent in the social science curricula. The irony, however, is that the movement
touched Political Science only marginally. The leading proponents of this approach at Dar-
es-Salaam were found in history with the late Caribbean scholar Walter Rodney as the
leading light following his publication of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. The first local
convert—Issa Shivji— was also not a Political Scientist but a law scholar. In the meantime,
research and teaching of Political Science had been extended to the Institute of
Development Studies also at the same university. It is in this institute and not in Political
Science, where some of the emerging ―radical‖ political scientists were later to be ‗housed.‘
This movement would find expression at the University of Nairobi from the late 1970s when
two young Kenyans who had just returned from Chicago and Princeton universities joined
the Department of Government with a bang! They characterized the curriculum then in use
as ‗bourgeois‘ and immediately called for its overhaul with a view to introducing courses in
political economy. The political economy they had in mind was Marxist political economy.
Earlier on, a course on Marxism and Development introduced in the early 1970s by
Professor Colin Leys had been quickly removed from the curriculum when he (Leys) ceased
to be the departmental head. The same Leys had introduced a similar course at Makerere
which was also removed soon after he moved to Nairobi. The point being made here is that
there was ideological contestation emergent in the post-independence period in the region
10
which pitted the proponents of American Political Science and those against it. Locals and
expatriates were to be found on both sides of the divide – especially in Dar-es-Salaam.
The second development that contributed to the attack on the dominance of American
Political Science was the founding in 1973 of the African Association of Political Science
(AAPS) with the interim base at the University of Dar-es-Salaam. The birth of the
association brought with it an attempt to search for an authentic African Political Science
(whatever that meant). If the so-called American Political Science was associated with
activities of members of American Political Science Association, the unstated argument
appears to have been, if that was the case in America, then couldn‘t the members of AAPS
also identify theories/approaches to the study of Political Science that would address
uniquely African cultural and material conditions! AAPS was formed in Dar-es-Salaam at
time when a group of supposedly radical Political Scientists both expatriate and non-
expatriate had established their base at the University of Dar-es-Salaam. The search for
uniquely African theoretical approaches might not have succeeded but the movement raised
a number of pertinent issues and questions. These questions were also being raised by other
Africanists not necessarily based in Dar-es-Salaam or even in East Africa for that matter. To
illustrate, American version of Political Science was being subjected to extensive critique
with special reference to the various concepts and framework associated especially with
modernization and political development. Both modernization and political development
were criticized for being focused on westernization of Africa, and for imposing capitalist
values of development (Ake 1979, Jinadu 1987, Anyang‘ Nyongo 1989, Oyobvbaire 1983).
In a similar vein, Easton‘s political system framework and Almond‘s structural-functional
approaches were being criticized for favouring system maintenance, stability and equilibrium
and for being the hand maidens of dominant elites and the then existing structures which
were coercive and exploitative (Lemarchand 1973). This position was shared by many others
(Jinadu 1987, Ake 1979, Anyang‘ Nyongo 1989). Indeed, Ake contended that the
modernization paradigm was an imperialist threat which had to be contained and abandoned
(Ake 1979).
11
In the East African region, however, the attempted rejection of Anglo-American Political
Science did not, for the greater part of the 1960s and 1970s, result in the design of courses
anchored in historical materialism as Marxist political economists would have wished. In
fact, the University of Dar-es-Salaam, which housed most of the rejectionists, failed to
persuade the Department of Political Science to initiate courses in Marxist Political Science.
This was the case largely because they were unable to capture the leadership of the
department. And when the course offering was re-organized in the 1980s, of the 15 courses
appearing in the curriculum, only three could be said to be in the area of political economy,
which then left room for the individual lecturers teaching those courses to choose which
framework to use—Marxist/neo-Marxist or non-Marxist. The courses in question were:
Political Economy of Underdeveloped Areas; Tanzanian Socialism and African Political
Thought; and Imperialism and Liberation (see University of Dar-es-Salaam Calendar
1982/83). And by 1995/96 academic year, two of the three courses had disappeared from a
curriculum of 23 courses with only Political Economy of Underdeveloped Areas remaining.
By this time, epitaph to Tanzanian socialism had been written with the departure from the
political scene of Nyerere.
At the University of Nairobi, Marxist/neo-Marxist revival in Political Science in the late
1970s did not survive upon the exit from the department of the same two young scholars
who had resurrected it (Anyang‘ Nyong‘o being one). Similarly, at Makerere, Professor Yash
Tandon‘s attempt to introduce Marxist/neo-Marxist framework in the teaching of
International Relations failed to win converts. The departure of Tandon in the early 1970s
after Amin‘s coup marked the end of the effort. The reader may wish to be reminded that
the leadership of the Department of Political Science at Makerere between 1964 and 1972
was in the hands of Prof. Ali Mazrui, who had no time for radical approaches to the teaching
of the discipline.
The irony, therefore, is that the movement against American Political Science ended up
being a movement in support of an already existing methodology of social sciences
analysis—Marxism/neo-Marxism—without discovering the searched-for African-own
approach to political analysis. What is more, teaching in the area of political economy, where
rejectionist approach had been attempted, ended up adopting an analytical approach with
12
strong roots in Latin American, namely, dependency/underdevelopment. The works of Paul
Baran (1957) and Andre Gunder Frank (1967) come to mind readily. Ten years after the
formation of AAPS, the need for a uniquely African Political Science was still being flogged
(see e.g., Oyobvbaire 1983) before what appeared to be a final surrender from the 1990s was
experienced.
IV. THE INSTRUMENTAL ROLE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
At the intellectual level, and as already alluded to in the foregoing pages, Political Science
was expected to play two important instrumental roles. From the point of view of its pioneer
promoters, it was viewed as a creative instrument to move Africa out of its ―backwardness‖
in the manner economic development and modernization of traditional societies in sociology
were supposed to do. This view saw the emergence of a focus in the region on development-
oriented courses such as Politics of Development, Bureaucracy and National Development,
Development Administration, among others.
At the level of research, again, the concern of the promoters was mainly with studies about
the efficacy of political systems and institutions insofar as they have bearing on
development; and if not on development, on issues of interest to the home countries of the
foundations then funding social science research in East Africa. For example, most of the
research in the social sciences financed by IDRC of Canada, since it began operating in East
Africa, are geared to support the development agenda of Canadian International
Development Agency. And with regard to the American-based foundations, research
interests were those that interested the State Department as expressed through the United
States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example. In other words, social
science research was intended to propagate Western socio-economic and political values
(liberal democracy and capitalism). And the offering of the scholarships referred to above
was partly prompted by the need to ensure that the then ongoing flow of young East
Africans to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (especially from Kenya) was counteracted.
Thus, there was the struggle for the mind and hence the values of future leaders of East
Africa.
13
When established, initially in the 1950s, Political Science was one of the many subjects
taught at the universities with no special premium attached to it as such. But in the post-
independence period, with fully-fledged departments established, the role of the departments
at once became an issue. In Makerere, where at independence the discipline had experienced
a decade of existence, its role in society did not attract the attention of the state as much as it
did in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi. Part of the explanation in the case of Makerere might be
the fact that after independence, the department fell in the hands of a liberal pro-Western
scholar whose main interest in engagement with the state was to provide public fora where
the university dons and intellectually-oriented members of the government could engage
each other in discussing topical issues. When at one such open forum on ―the role of
intellectuals in African revolution‖ an influential senior member of the regime submitted that
intellectuals should be socially and politically committed, the then head of department—Ali
Mazrui—argued that commitment should not be confused with conformity (Nsibambi
1989).
But as the only institution of higher learning (1950-80) at the time, the government expected
Makerere to be a major source of ideas and manpower for national development. With
regard to manpower supply, Political Science did not have a special status because as a
department, it had very little ownership of the students that went through it. The students of
Political Science were in the majority of cases also enrolled in courses in sister departments
in a degree programme that required them to take courses from three departments in the
first year, two in the second, and again two in the third year (3-2-2 structure). Therefore, they
were not perceived in a singular manner as a major source of manpower supply to the
economy. Nonetheless, the university on its part, expected the department to identify good
students who could be mentored to take up teaching duties in future. To do that, Makerere,
as indeed was the case with the other universities in the region, developed a specialization
according to which students with good overall performance in the faculty and demonstrated
excellence in Political Science, would be encouraged in the second and third years to take all
their courses in Political Science. Upon successful completion, they would be taken on as
staff development fellows and subsequently assisted to secure scholarships for further
studies in Britain or North America. They were expected to return to the university as
14
members of the department or as research fellows in the Institute of Social Science Research
to which all social science departments were then affiliated to.
In Dar-es-Salaam, the Department of Political Science found itself on the spot with the
emergence of ideological shift at the leadership level. As a department, Political Science was
being expected to provide ideological leadership but which was not readily forthcoming.
With the establishment of the Institute of Development Studies, an alternative to the
department had emerged. At once, the institute became the focal point of ideological
―innovation.‖ The institute was mainly staffed by political scientists, sociologists and
economists. Perhaps it is necessary to explain why the Department of Political Science at
Dar-es-Salaam managed to get away with the lack of enthusiasm in designing courses
oriented to socialist development. The situation would have been different had Nyerere been
an afro-Marxist. Nyerere was a practicing catholic who believed in a unique brand of
socialism (Ujamaa) based on African family-hood and not on Marxist doctrine (Nyerere
1968), for Nyerere, according to one observer, loathed scientific socialism (Resnick 1981:
284 fn 16). That gave some departments room for maneouver and Political Science was one
such department.
The fact that the department was not enthusiastic in designing socialist-oriented courses
even compromised its standing as a major source of manpower for the government. The
point should be made, however, that like the rest of the universities in the region, the
department did not own students but simply contributed to the pool that graduated from
university as products of the Faculty of Social Sciences.
It was at the post-graduate level that the department seemed to have been responsive to the
expectations of the government, with regard to the training of high level manpower. This
was realized with the introduction of an MA programme by course work, examination and
thesis. The programme was organized around two streams: Public Administration and
International Relations. Depending on the number of students, the best one or two would
end up being recruited into the staff development scheme in the university and the rest
would join the relevant ministries and state corporations to fill positions that required post-
graduate training—mainly policy analysis positions. Those who had graduated from the
15
International Relations stream would not necessarily be recruited as diplomats. If recruited
as cadet diplomats, they were required to undergo a specialized course in diplomacy. The
course was for the better part of the 1970s and 1980s being offered at the University of
Nairobi. Students in the programme were being sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs.
Nairobi‘s experience is rather unique in comparison with Makerere‘s and Dar-es-Salaam‘s.
To start with, the department was established at a time when there was a lot of tension in the
body politic. This tension culminated into a fallout between the president and his vice-
president leading to the formation of an opposition party—Kenya Peoples‘ Union—in 1966.
The prevailing political atmosphere, therefore, forced the department to operate very
cautiously by avoiding any posturing that might have been construed as anti-state. Indeed, it
was with this realization in mind that the founders of the department opted for a ‗softer‘
name for the department when they called it Department of Government instead of
Department of Political Science. The story has been told of the professor who started the
department recalling that if the department had been named Political Science, its financing
might have been jeopardized when the estimates of the university were forwarded to the
relevant ministry. Thus, from the start, the department was not associated with any special
role in the scheme of things as it were. Like sister departments in Makerere and Dar-es-
Salaam, it did not have students of its own and whenever it did, they were quite few—not
more than two or three in any given year (being the products of the 3-1-1 honours
structure).
But something happened in Nairobi which made the department special in some respect.
This had to do with the recruitment of cadet District Officers by the Public Service
Commission of Kenya from the graduating lot in the social sciences. Year in year out,
throughout the 1970s and part of the 1980s, the Commission would descend on the campus
immediately after the final year examinations to recruit cadet District Officers from the
graduating class. Preference would be given to those who had done courses in the Public
Administration area. It is this practice that over the years made the Department of
Government one of the most ―popular‖ departments in terms of student numbers. But even
after the government stopped the practice with the emergence of Structural Adjustment
16
Programmes which discouraged guaranteed employment for university finalists, the number
of students opting to do Political Science remained stable, and increased in subsequent years,
of course, under the mistaken belief that upon graduation they would still stand a better
chance of joining the Provincial Administration as District Officers. For those with interest
in International Relations, the prospect of becoming cadet diplomats upon graduation
remained high.
With the establishment of the University of Nairobi in 1970, the department did not only
offer undergraduate studies, but also post-graduate studies (initially by thesis alone both at
the Masters and the PhD level). To be admitted into the programme one was expected to
have obtained first class or upper second class honours. This was a practice which was
inherited from the University of London and later the University of East Africa. However, in
1976/77 academic year, the department introduced Masters programme by course work,
examination and thesis. The programme involved taking two courses selected from three
sub-disciplines of the department in addition to a year long methodology course. The second
year was devoted to research and thesis writing. On completion of the programme, one or
two of the best students would normally be encouraged to stay on as staff development
fellows. However, with passage of time, the university moved away from the practice, by
opening up the opportunity for other Kenyans, in consideration of the fact that after the
1970s, there were many Kenyans returning from abroad with, sometimes, better
qualifications. It became a policy of the university to give such returnees a chance to be
considered by advertising the vacant positions in the local press. Doctoral degrees
throughout the university continue to be offered by research and thesis writing.
V. THE STATE OF THE DISCIPLINE TODAY
Political Science still remains one of the three popular social science disciplines in the region
besides economics and sociology. The continued popularity of the discipline is still based on
the mistaken assumption by many students that it is a gateway to getting administrative jobs
in the government. It is also popular as a choice out of curiosity by many students since
Political Science is not a high school subject, and therefore, there are no requirements the
17
students have to meet in order to be admitted to the department, once they have satisfied
the general university and faculty admission requirements.
In all the three universities, specialization in the discipline is organized around the major
sub-disciplines with the number of the sub-disciplines around which the courses are
designed varying from one university to another. In Nairobi, for example, the undergraduate
courses are offered/designed around six sub-disciplines, namely: Political Theory,
International Relations, Political Economy, Comparative Politics and Government, Public
Administration and Political Sociology. In Dar-es-Salaam and Makerere, courses are offered
in all these areas without clustering at undergraduate level.
Whereas the degree structure in the three universities used to be similar, it is no longer the
case, since the University of Nairobi changed from a three-year to a four-year degree
programme. Under the old structure which Makerere and Dar-es-Salaam still retain, students
are usually required to take courses in three disciplines during the first year but may
specialize in one area in second and third years. The most popular alternative is one in which
the student takes courses in two disciplines in both second and third years. The three
universities used to insist on prospective staff development fellows opting for the 3-1-1
structure. Both Makerere and Dar-es-Salaam are still operating according to this old
structure. However, in Nairobi with the introduction of the 8-4-4 system of education a la
North American universities, students in the faculty now choose from the following options:
take courses in year one from three disciplines, but from year two one may take Political
Science only or; Political Science and another subject or; Political Science as a major with
another subject as a minor or; Political Science as a major with two other subjects as minors.
At the time of graduation the degree classification is based on the aggregate of all the courses
taken from second year and the score determines the degree classification that the student
obtains (first class, upper second, lower second, pass, or fail). This classification was
inherited at independence from the University of London.
At the post-graduate level, courses continue to be offered in the MA programmes in all the
three universities. Dar-es-Salaam has organized post-graduate courses around three sub-areas
which they refer to as streams. These streams are: Public Administration, International
18
Relations, and Politics. Under the rubric of Politics one would have expected to see many
courses covering Comparative Politics, Political Economy, Political Sociology and Political
Theory. The coverage of these is however very restricted in that currently there is only one
course on Political Theory, Comparative Politics, and Political Economy and with none on
Political Sociology. The impression one gets therefore is that the emphasis in the teaching of
Political Science at the University of Dar-es-Salaam is still built around two sub-areas: Public
Administration and International Relations. This happens to have been the emphasis even
during the heydays of underdevelopment/dependency movement at the university. Whereas
Public Administration stream offers nine courses and International Relations eight courses,
the Politics stream, on the other hand, has only four courses under it. And the framework of
analysis that inform the teaching of Political Science in the three universities in East Africa
remains predominantly the Anglo-American in orientation—the framework which was the
subject of condemnation in the 1960s and 1970s in many universities in Anglophone Africa.
In Makerere too, the teaching of Political Science at the undergraduate level is also designed
around sub-areas of the discipline, with each being a recognized area for the purpose of
degree award. The three areas are Political Science, International Relations and Public
Administration. Other sub-areas of the discipline have been neglected over the years and the
situation remains the same to date. The neglect is due to lack of staff with interest in these
areas and thinness of staff on the ground which has become a permanent feature of staffing
situation in the region.
University of Nairobi, as has been alluded to above, has on paper what appears to be a well-
designed curriculum in Political Science both at undergraduate and post-graduate levels.
Indeed, except for the differences in course offering at the two levels, the design remains the
same (the six sub-disciplines referred to above). However, in a number of instances, courses
are rarely offered in all these areas either as a result of lack of staff with interest and
competence in some areas or because of lack of interest by students in some areas. The sub-
areas that continue to suffer are: theory, political sociology and political economy.
The experience which the three universities have in common is that the
underdevelopment/dependency movement of the 1960s and 1970s was literally abandoned
19
with the collapse of global communism in the late 1980s. As a result, courses which are
offered under Political Economy lack the radical approach which is often associated with
underdevelopment/dependency frameworks.
For many years, the three universities were centres of academic excellence. In the formative
years, teaching at the university was a prestigious undertaking and the few elites that found
themselves as university instructors always endeavoured to justify their presence in the
university. Between the 1960s and 1970s, the staff component was a mixture of expatriates
and locals. Initially, the expatriates were the majority. For example, at the University of
Nairobi, in 1967/68 academic year, only 25 per cent (one) of the four members of staff was
local. Twenty years later in 1989/90 academic year, locals constituted 85 per cent of the staff
(17) with only three expatriates (Africans). Today, with a staff complement of fifteen on the
ground, there is no expatriate. The situation was similar in Tanzania during 1967/68. Of the
thirteen members of staff, only two (15 per cent) were locals. Thirty years down the line in
Tanzania, that is, by 1995/96 academic year, of the twenty-four members of staff in the
department, twenty-three members (96 per cent) were local. The current situation has not
changed.
Although the figure for the staffing situation in Makerere in the 1960s was not readily
available at the time of writing, one can say with a certain degree of accuracy that by the early
1960s the majority of staff at Makerere were mainly expatriates. They continued to be on the
staff as exemplified by the data for 1970/71 which shows that of the fifteen staff on the
ground, expatriates accounted for 60 per cent. Three years later in 1973/74, there were only
nine staff members on the ground of whom 33 per cent were expatriates. It should be noted
that this is the period during which the expatriates began to move out of Makerere following
the Amin‘s coup ďétat of January 1971. At present (early 2008), all the nineteen members of
staff are Ugandans, twelve of whom have doctoral degrees, with the rest at various levels in
their pursuit of doctoral degrees.
A number of factors have over the years affected the staff strength on the ground in East
Africa. First, is the structure of remuneration in East African universities which has over the
years made it difficult for the universities to employ expatriates after the British government
20
withdrew the expatriate supplementation scheme. Under the said scheme, the British
government used to top up the salaries of expatriate staff attached to universities in her
former colonies in Africa. In the absence of supplementation, the expatriate lecturers began
to leave one after another upon the completion of their contracts. This was the case in all the
three universities. Similarly, the American foundations also followed suit.
With post-graduate programmes established in all the three universities from the late 1970s,
the universities thereafter used the available opportunity to retain the cream of the
graduating class as tutorial fellows or assistant lecturers after three years as tutorial fellows.
This has been a stop-gap measure before the students secure scholarships for doctoral
studies either in Western Europe, North America, at home or more recently in South Africa.
By the turn of the 21st century, the phenomenon of employing staff without PhDs still
remains; so that, for example, at the University of Nairobi, out of the current staff of 15
currently on the ground, almost half (i.e., seven) do not have doctoral degrees. A similar
situation obtains at the University of Dar-es-Salaam and Makerere although there are
percentage variations. Unlike the 1960s and the 1970s when members of staff would be
assisted to go abroad for further studies within a very short period, the opportunities have
since the 1980s become increasingly rare, with most of the foundations having withdrawn
the scholarship support which used to be the major source of funding for such studies.
Secondly, universities‘ teaching programmes have been expanded in recent years with the
introduction of evening classes for direct fees payers. This has made it difficult for
departments to even want to release members of staff for further studies abroad for fear that
those remaining behind might be overwhelmed.
Indeed, the teaching demand on the lecturers in the three universities is such that most of
the engagement time is spent on teaching with little time left for research. Furthermore, the
staffing situation on the ground has been affected by recent development involving
recruitment of university dons as managers in other public organizations. In Tanzania, this
practice has been going on for a long time. Lecturers are from time to time appointed as
field administrators, chief executives of parastatal corporations or as senior staff in the
mainstream civil service. Again, because of the poor remuneration structure, quite a number
21
of university lecturers are engaged in ‗moonlighting‘ as a matter of routine. This has been
accentuated by the proliferation of local and foreign NGOs which offer attractive
assignments that poorly paid lecturers find difficult to turn down. This has had some effect
on staff commitment to their responsibilities at the universities. Unless the situation is
arrested in the near future, the trend does not portend well for future stability of university
education not just in the region but in Africa generally.
The movement in and out of the universities by political scientists in recent years even
makes it difficult for one to know the population of political scientists in a given country.
The reader may wish to know that in the last two decades, a number of additional public
universities have been established in the East African region as follows: two in Uganda, three
in Tanzania and six in Kenya. In addition to these, are several private universities with
national charters while others are still operating with interim charters. In all these
universities, where social sciences are being offered, invariably Political Science is one of the
subjects, and therefore, one would expect to find two or so political scientists on the staff.
Of the recently established public universities in the region, three have departments of
Political Science with approximately five members of staff a piece. In terms of numbers, the
population of political scientists currently serving in the three main universities under review
is no more than sixty. If the other public universities and the institutes and private
universities are brought into focus, the real figure is not more than 100. The more relevant
institutes in this regard are: Institute of Development Studies at the University of Dar-es-
Salaam, Institute of Social Science Research at Makerere, and Institute of Development
Studies, and Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies at University of Nairobi. Of
course, there are also a number of people holding doctoral degrees in Political Science but
who have never bothered to take up positions as lecturers in the universities preferring to
operate in the NGO world or similar organizations. An attempt to establish a local chapter
of AAPS in Kenya failed to attract potential members most of who failed to see any material
benefit in being a member; which is why it is not easy to tell how many political scientists,
there in Kenya. The situations in Uganda and Tanzania are by and large similar, with no
active local chapters of AAPS.
22
VI. IN LIEU OF CONCLUSION
Political Science remains a major discipline in the social sciences both globally and in East
Africa. The methodology informing its study has been influenced by intellectual movements
at any given time. In the recent past there have been insignificant theoretical movements of
the magnitudes experienced during the 1950s and 1960s. Therefore, in the present
circumstances, one could say that it is unlikely that a major theoretical breakthrough is likely
to emerge before the close of the decade. With Marxists or neo-Marxists frameworks largely
abandoned in Africa following the collapse of global communism, we have begun witnessing
what one might refer to as theoretical rollback.
We are reminded of the reactive character of Marxist and neo-Marxist frameworks. The
target was the analytical framework perceived to be supportive of capitalist mode of
production with its supportive political ideology: liberal democracy. Therefore, what is and is
likely to remain is the so-called American Political Science as expressed in the tools of
analysis. Whereas neo-Marxist frameworks are likely to persist as analytical tools in the hands
of individual analysts, this is unlikely to make a mark in the teaching and research in Political
Science in East Africa in the foreseeable future, having failed to do so in its heydays.
23
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