Gesammelte Schriften ErgBd 5 E-Book

Hans Furrer

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: Gesammelte Schriften Ergänzungsbände
• Sprache: Deutsch

Seitenzahl: 416

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Dieser Ergänzungsband enthält bisher nicht veröffentlichte Texte aus den Jahren 1972 bis 2025, die in den letzten Jahren aufgefunden wurden. Es handelt sich um Texte zur Berufspädgogik im Globalen Süden und um Fragmente zur allgemeine Pädagogik.

Leseprobe

Inhaltsverzeichnis ErgBd.

Vorrede

Grundsätzliche Beiträge(2022-25)

Self-reliance and Vocational Education(2022)

Preliminary remarks on the sources

Self-reliance and Vocational Education

Why ›self-reliance‹?

The traditional economy of Africa

The colonial economy and its effects

The development after independence

The concept of structural heterogeneity

Heterogeneous socialization and school

The expropriation of one’s own history

The expropriation of one’s own language

The expropriation of one’s own interest and needs

What is ›self-reliance‹?

a) re-prospecting the locally available resources

b) local utilization of resources

c) further development of existing an invention of adapted technology

d) establishment of an own industrial sector to produce means of production

e) increasing the productivity of agriculture

f) industrial production of mass consumers goods

Auto-centered education and school

a) education for al

b) africanization of school

c) I polytechnic education

c) II ruralisation

c) III dual vocational education

c) IV practice-oriented higher education

What is ›auto-centered vocational education‹?

Commented index of authors in alphabetical order

Freude an entfremdeter Arbeit – geht das?(2024)

I Ausgangslage und Erkenntnisinteresse

II Arbeit und Arbeitsethik im Laufe der Geschichte und verschiedenen Kulturen

1 Arbeit und Tugend bei den ›alten Griechen‹

2 Arbeit im Alten Testament und der jüdischen Philosophie

3 ›Laborem exercens‹ und die katholische Arbeitsethik

4 Die protestantische Ethik und der ›Geist des Kapitalismus‹

5 Arbeitsethik im Islam

6 Arbeitsethik bei afrikanischen Handwerkern

7 Die Arbeitsethik im ›Globalen Norden‹ im 18. - 20. Jahrhundert

7.1 Die Babyboomer

7.2 Die Generation X

7.3 Die Generation Y

7.4 Die Generation Z:

Arbeit oder Freizeit – Loyalität oder Egozentrismus?

8 Das Recht auf Faulheit

8.1 Generation Z und ihre Arbeitshaltung

III Sozialökonomische und sozialpädagogische Betrachtungen und Ethnopsychologische Untersuchungen

1 Auswirkungen der ›heterogenen Sozialisation‹ auf die Arbeitsethik

1.1 Identitätsfindung

2 ›Schwarze Haut, weisse Masken‹ – zur Schwierigkeit eine ›schwarze Identität‹ zu erlangen

IV Erste Gedanken zu einer Umsetzung in Senegal

Farewell adress – Abschiedsrede in Massawa(2024)

Farewell adress

Von der Gabe zur Korruption (2025)

Ein Essay zur Erklärung der ›Selbstverständlichkeit‹

der Korruption

1. Die Gabe

2. Die Auswirkungen der Kolonisation auf das Sozialsystem

Nachträge zu Eritrea(2012-25)

Das EU Projekt ›Post and undergraduate Studies for the Ministry of Education‹(2010/12)

Vorläufiger Bericht zum Workshop in Asmara vom 22.-26. Februar 2024

Persönliche Gedanken zum Projekt

Projektdokumentation Berufsbildung Eritrea(2015)

Briefe aus dem Abseits(2016)

Brief Nr. 1 Warum gerade Eritrea?

Brief Nr. 2 Die Mühen der Ebenen

Brief Nr. 3 Innehalten, nachdenken

Brief Nr. 4 Die unglaublich unglaubwürdige Anklageschrift

3 Jahre ›Massawa Workers Vocational Trainings Centre‹

Briefwechsel mit Bundesrat Jans(2024)

Interview und Artikel in Radio Swiss Info(2024)

Rede zum Eritrea Festival in Bern(2024)

Stellungnahme zum externen Evaluationsbericht(2025)

Übrige Nachträge(1972 – 2007)

Einleitung

Gegenskript Nr. 1(1972)

Herman Nohl(1981)

Lernen durch Visionen(1990)

Die verlorene Ehre der Demokratie(1993)

Exzerpte zur Linguistik und Sprachtheorie(1997-2005)

Chomsky’s Sprachtheorie

Erckenbrechts emanzipatorische Sprachtheorie

Sprache als Tätigkeit

Fremdsprachenunterricht als Schule des Verstehens(1992)

Ökonomisierung des Sterbens oder ›Sterben ist keine Ware(2007)

Die Ausgangslage

Selbstbestimmung zwischen Freiheit und Überforderung

Literaturverzeichnis ErgBd. 5

Vorrede

Dieser Band enthält im 2. Teil drei mir sehr wichtige Dokumente, die bedeutende Aspekte der letzten Jahre meines Lebens abdecken.

Es ist dies an erster Stelle ein Grundsatzdokument aus dem Jahr 2022, in welchem ich den Zusammenhang zwischen dem entwicklungspolitischen Konzept der ›self-reliance‹ und der Berufsbildung aufzeige.

Zweitens enthält dieser Band ein Manuskript zum Arbeitsethos, welche für mich ein wichtiger Inhalt der Berufsbildung ist. Dabei geht es mir auch darum, wie es möglich sein könnte eine Arbeitsethik zu entwickeln und vorzuleben, die auch interkulturell akzeptiert werden kann.

Das dritte, mir wichtige Dokument enthält meine ›Abschiedsrede‹ im Berufsbildungszentrum in Massawa (Eritrea) vom April 2024, die über weite Teile auch ein Rückblick auf ein Lebensprojekt ist, das ich aufgebaut und während mehreren Jahren begleitet habe.

Der neueste Beitrag ist ein Essay zu den Ursachen der Korruption in Afrika. Der zweite Teil besteht aus verschiedenen Beiträgen, Manuskripten und Fragmenten, die nicht in den ersten Bänden der Gesammelten Schriften enthalten sind, weil ich sie erst später wieder aufgefunden oder verfasst habe.

Grundsätzliche Beiträge(2022-25)

Self-reliance and Vocational EducationAn Essay with basic Thoughts on vocational Education and Development

This essay is dedicated post mortem to my friend Tekeste Baire (1953–2022), who was a charismatic, visionary and caring person and dedicated most of his life to the cause of the Eritrean workers and promoted the emergence of a modern vocational education in Eritrea.

Boll (Switzerland), 5th October 2022

Preliminary remarks on the sources

In the following essay on self-reliance and vocational education, I have tried to draw primarily on authors from Africa and other parts of the Global South. These are mostly sources that were created in the 70s and 80s of the last century, because the concept of self-reliance emerged during that time. Many of these authors have since passed away and many of today’s readers are no longer familiar with them. Even though the sources quoted are from the last century, they are not outdated. No, they are as actual as ever and are unfortunately still not realised. It is therefore necessary and worthwhile to make them accessible to the younger generation. Therefore, I have briefly presented all authors in alphabetical order in an appendix: p. 33ff

Conceptual note:

I consistently use the nowadays common term ›Global South‹ instead of the term ›Third World‹. In quotations from older sources, of course, I leave it as it is.

Self-reliance and vocational education1

Economic and cultural development are closely linked to the education system. I have analysed and explained this interdependence in detail elsewhere2. In doing so, I mainly referred to the Egyptian economist Samir Amin and the Brazilian educator Paolo Freire and to my experiences in the training of teachers in Mali and Togo.

I would now like to reflect on the research conducted at that time – again on the background of my experiences in vocational training in Myanmar and Eritrea in the meantime. In doing so, it is important to me not to do so from a European perspective, and I therefore try to refer mainly to authors from the Global South; to leading figures of independence movements such as the Tunisian Albert Memmi, Frantz Fanon from Martinique, the Brazilian Paolo Freire, the Burkinabe Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Albert Tévoédjrè from Benin, but also to the representatives of the latest approaches of postcolonialism as represented by Achille Mbembe and Fabien Eboussi-Boulaga from Cameroon and the Senegalese Felwine Sarr. In addition to the thoughts of all these authors, it is extremely important to me to also let my African colleagues and friends have their say with all their experiences.

Why ›self-reliance‹?

To understand why a radical rethink of development policy is needed, a digression into the economic development history of the Global South and Africa is necessary.

The traditional economy of Africa

The traditional societies – including the early advanced civilisations – were primarily peasant societies, and some of them trading societies. All these different peasant cultures from the Mediterranean cultivation areas in the north, the oasis economy in the Sahara, the agropastoralism in the Sahel, the fruit and vegetable cultures in the monsoon areas at the Gulf of Guinea, down to the slash-and-burn agriculture in the rain forests of the Congo basin, all these cultures had one thing in common: they were subsistence economies. That is, they produced – and still produce – mainly for the daily needs of their own extended family, and only small quantities of cereals, legumes and tubers were offered on the local markets, since most people had some plants next to their house or in the courtyard.

Since the Middle Ages, important trade routes ran through Africa. From Timbuktu, for example, traders went in all directions – north to Morocco, east to Egypt and Abyssinia, and south to what is now Cameroon.

With the abduction of African slaves and colonisation, these structures changed. The traders on the great routes changed from trading gold, salt or rubber to transporting slaves from the interior of Africa to the coasts. The number of slaves shipped can only be guessed, but the figure of a hundred million black people in North and South America gives a rough order of magnitude. Economically, this led to a total exhaustion of labour force in Africa and to a tremendous regression of the productive forces. Felwine Sarr assumes 24 million abducted persons as well as 200 million further persons, who died because of their captivity, their transport or by the slave trade conditioned wars and raids.1

In the 19th century, the merchants and financiers of the industrialised nations realised that it was more profitable to have the labour force in their countries of origin work for them in mining and agriculture. This marked the beginning of the era of colonialism in sub-Saharan Africa.

The colonial economy and its effects

Because of the increasingly higher organic composition of capital in the industrialised nations, the rate of surplus value in these countries is becoming lower and lower. The capital, which can no longer be profitably invested in one’s own country, is exported to those countries where – because of the cheap labour – a much higher rate of profit can be achieved with small mechanical investments. Investments are made almost exclusively in sectors whose products are exported to the ›mother country‹. Due to the lack of natural resources, the export sector in West Africa consisted almost exclusively of agricultural products such as cotton, peanuts, coffee, pineapples, bananas, etc. This led to a disintegration of the traditional economy. This again led to a disintegration of traditional agriculture and, therefore, to a disintegration of the handicrafts that had previously supplied traditional agriculture with tools.

The fact that modern plantations employed wage labourers created the need for a cash economy. The workers employed on the plantations now had to buy their means of subsistence. On the other hand, however, no internal market could develop in the existing economic structure, since the large farms produced for export and traditional agriculture could only produce minimal surpluses for the market.

The increasing mechanisation of the plantation economy »drove part of the population of the land, proletarianizing them without creating a demand that would allow the employment of this overpopulation«1.

In addition, the huge oversupply of labour in traditional agriculture meant that newer methods were not adopted, and intensive hoe farming still predominates today, leading to stagnation and often regression.

As already explained, the destruction of traditional agriculture also destroyed a large part of the crafts. Those handicrafts that were still able to resist this first attack were finally crushed by the import of cheap finished products from Europe. In addition, ›luxury products‹ were also imported for the emerging small native class of administrators, durable goods such as cars or prestige goods such as Coca Cola, suits, etc.

In summary, it is important to emphasise again that the countries of the Global South were not simply less developed when they were ›released‹ into independence, e.g. their level of development was roughly equivalent to that of Europe 200 or 300 years ago, but their economies were systematically distorted.

Because of these distortions, after the independence of the colonies, it could not simply be a matter of catching up on development but would have been a matter of restructuring the economy.

Moreover, this restructuring had to be accomplished with those human beings that colonialism had left behind. Human beings who have been oppressed for decades.

Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them. […] The oppressed are regarded as the pathology of the healthy society, which must therefore adjust these ›incompetent and lazy‹ folk to its own patterns by changing their mentality. These marginal need to be ›integrated‹, ›incorporated‹ into the healthy society that they have ›forsaken‹.2

In this way, people who could not form an identity of their own were ›produced‹ as people who »hate the colonizers and yet admire them so passionately«3.

And so happened what can only be explained psychoanalytically, what Frantz Fanon tried to do in his famous work The Wretched of the Earth:

The colonized man will first manifest this aggressiveness which has been deposited in his bones against his own people. […] the last resort of the native is to defend his personality vis-à-vis his brother.4

What this means for education and schools is shown below.

The development after independence

Attempts to change the economic structures inherited from colonisation have been made in most of the countries, but so far without success. There are several reasons for these failures:

○ The replacement of the monocultures inherited from colonisation for export was extremely difficult, as this would have required large investments, but the money for this could only be raised through these very monocultures, with their functioning processing structure.

○ The attempt to build up local industry met with a market that was too small for industrialisation and in which the wage level was distorted.

○ The available national capital, derived mainly from trade, was not large enough to compete with foreign monopolies. Thus, foreign monopolies continued to determine the development of the economy and the state of technology from the outside.

For these reasons, all attempts to build certain national economic structures from within have failed so far.

1 This essay was written in 2020 and 2021 as a core paper for the professional development of Eritrean teachers at MWVTC. However, since this could not take place due to the pandemia, it has not yet been used as such. It was first published, along with other articles, in the commemorative publiccation for Hans Furrer’s 75th birthday (Berlinger (2021)) and now it is published here in the extended version of October 2022.

2 cf. Furrer [1983]a and [1984]

1 cf. Sarr [2016], S. 53

1 Amin [1973], S. 164

2 Freire [1970], S. 59

3 Memmi [1966], S. 13

4 Fanon [1961], S. 43f

The concept of structural heterogeneity

The economies of the countries of the Global South, unlike those of European countries, have not developed out of internal necessity and have led to a situation that is now commonly referred to by the term ›structural heterogeneity‹.

For Africa, this means that subsistence farming, plantation farming with seasonal harvest workers, and highly mechanised large-scale cultivation areas exist side by side in agriculture; that, in addition to small and very small handicraft and repair businesses, there are larger manufactories, industrial plants with outdated machinery, and ultra-modern, fully automated industrial plants.

However, all these different modes of production do not exist independently of each other but are related to each other by complex market and labour market mechanisms. It is important to note that the most modern, and therefore externally determined sector is always the dominant component in this field of mutual conditions.

In the following, I will again try to summarise and highlight the central provisions of structural heterogeneity for my study:

a) in the countries of the Global South, forms of production and forms of organisation of production developed to different degrees exist side by side

b) the introduction of new forms of production and organisation is not determined by the economic needs of the country in the Global South, but by the capital valorisation process of the industrialised nations

c) this makes the economy of these countries uninfluenceable by internal movements and reacts only to the movements of the world economy

d) in this situation the relations between the individual economic sectors are extremely fragile and no stability of the structures can develop.

Thirty years have passed since these analyses by Samir Amin and others, but – despite globalisation – nothing has fundamentally changed in this situation, except that the contradictions have become even more unbridgeable, the gap between industrial societies and Africa and between rich and poor in the African countries themselves has widened even more.

The first phase of globalisation took place primarily in an increasing interpenetration of the developed economies and only secondarily with an expansion of North-South exchange.

In the second phase, the outsourcing of production processes from the industrialised countries to the low-wage countries of the Global South, especially to Asia, began.

The main principle of globalisation is: produce where the profits are the highest – and without regard to ›collateral damage‹. And this means concretely:

○ invest where wages are lowest

○ invest where trade unions are weakest

○ invest where social and environmental contributions are lowest

○ invest where the control over the observance of labour rights and environmental laws is the smallest

○ invest where the delivery of raw materials is shortest

○ invest where transport conditions for export to Europe and America are most convenient

○ …

but at the same time this also means for the investors:

○ be headquartered where taxes are lowest.

○ be located where the controls for fair labour practices and environmental impact are smallest

○ reside where the quality of life is highest

○ send the children to school where the education system is the best

○ …

In many cases, this means producing in Asia, having the company headquarters in Switzerland, living in Monaco and sending the children to an elite boarding school somewhere else.

For workers in the South, however, it means working 10-12 hours a day for low wages in stuffy factories without safety measures. But also, worldwide this means a deterioration of working conditions for 95% of the workers (even on different levels), because it is valid ›anytime – anyplace – anybody‹.1

In 2019, I learned that some international textile companies are outsourcing their production from Bangladesh to Ethiopia because wages are even smaller there, labour conditions are even more investor friendly, and distances to sales markets are shorter.

One of the worst consequence of globalisation for the people and countries of the Global South is ›land grabbing‹, e.g., the illegal leasing of land to wealthy foreign investors – usually combined with corruption. Farmers are expropriated by the government and chased off their land so that, for example, China can build the world’s largest palm oil plantation in the Democratic Republic of Congo or Dutch investors can grow tulips in Ethiopia for the European market. Thus, not only is good arable land lost for domestic food production, but the now landless farmers work as slaves on their former land in the best case, or in the worst case they migrate to the slums of the big cities, where there is neither housing nor regular work for them.

This increases the contradictions and structural heterogeneity in the countries concerned, because on the one hand there is highly technical work, and on the other increasingly precarious working conditions and unemployment.

This structural heterogeneity of the economy is naturally reflected in a structural heterogeneity of the entire society. For my investigation, its manifestation in the educational system is relevant. It is clear that structural heterogeneity must have its counterpart in the various instances of socialization. To describe this, I would like to introduce the concept of ›heterogeneous socialization‹.

Heterogeneous socialisation and school

Corresponding to the different developed forms of production and society, we find in the countries of the Global South also the most different forms of education and social forms. From still quite intact traditional education to neglect in the slums and without school attendance; from education in modern family structures and attendance of state schools to university or attendance of former colonial schools like ›École française‹ or ›Scuola italiano‹, to totally europeanised education by nannies and training by private teachers and subsequent attendance of an elite university in Europe or the USA, we can find everything.

Until today, traditional education means, for example, in the Eritrean ethnic group of Saho strongly patriarchal [families] with the father’s and grandfather’s roles highly respected and considered as dominant1. […] Traditionally, the grandfather’s role was to transfer social and cultural values to the young generation. He was also the decision-maker and the final authority in disciplinary issues.2

The situation has not changed much to these days and this is how the Eritrean Journalist Abrahaley Hapte describes it in 2021:

Parents do not equip their children with skills and knowledge only but also with useful attitudes and imbue them with their values. Children start looking after their parents’ sheep and goats early in their childhood. Once they become older, Eritrean fathers teach their sons how to plough the field, and all the activities related to farming. They are taught how to yoke the oxen and plough the field without hurting the animals, the farmers’ golden goose. They are also taught the value of diligence and hard work, and through the numerous stories they are told, they learn social-friendly behaviour and acts. Through the society’s proverbs, in which it has stored its experiences and wisdom and with which Eritreans grace their utterances, they learn what made the society as it is – its strengths, its attitudes to life, and its challenges.3

In the cities, especially craftsmen-families, even very young children often still learn their father’s craft by demonstrating and imitating, as can be seen especially at the Medeber Market in Asmara. Unfortunately, many of these children do not go to school and it would be important to teach these children in the countryside and in the city, in addition to their work activity, in schools integrated into the work process, reading, writing, arithmetic and theoretical knowledge about their work.

In Eritrean cities, most children go to school and their

parents start taking interest in their children’s future immediately after their children start going to school, especially if they want them to acquire skills the parents themselves do not have. If the children didn’t do well academically by middle school, many parents decide to attach their children to a garage, a bicycle repair-shop, or a place where they want them to get some technical skills. Many of the mentors do not pay the children (or give them only pocket money) because they are assumed to be giving the parents a favour by taking their children under their wings and teaching them the skills of their trade. Such apprenticeships, though not financially profitable to the children, provide them with skills, which they use to their advantage once their apprenticeship is over. Many of the carpenters, mechanics, and other technicians in our towns acquired their skills through such apprenticeship, under some experienced technicians.1

Although most African countries tried to build up their own school systems based on their own cultures after independence and invested a considerable part of the state budgets in it, these attempts all failed. Under the pressure of the old colonial powers and the dictates of the World Bank, the structures of an outdated European school were imposed again, so that many African schools present themselves practically as a caricature of the worst excesses of the European school.

However, this was not only the case during European colonisation, but also in Eritrea under Ethiopian colonisation. Kaleb Andemichael Bairu an Eritrean teacher describes the situation at that time as follows:

Teachers’ methods of teaching were mostly dominated by lecture methods, but sometimes demonstration method was also used in the case of science. However, no group work or project work were given. […] The teaching methodology was merely teacher dominated and not participatory, at least within the majority of the teacher at that time.2

The Brazilian educator Paolo Freire criticized this in his epoch-making book Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized and predictable. Or else he expounds on a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the students. […] Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse still, it turns them into ›containers‹, into receptacles to be filled by the teacher. The more completely he fills the receptacles, the better a teacher he is. The more meekly the receptacles permit them-selves to be filled, the better students they are.3

Freire has described the methods of the postcolonial schools as a ›banking concept‹ in which

knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing [and thus] education becomes an act of ›depositing‹, in which the students are the ›depositories‹ and the teacher is the ›depositor‹. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat.4

And as with any bank, the depositors hope – that means here the ministry of education –, that they can later retrieve their deposits at a profit.

In that process, the students were ›expropriated‹ of their history, their language and their real interests and needs.

Jamie Saaverdu, Head of Education Department at the World Bank, 2018 said in an interview with ›The Guardian‹:

This is a learning crisis, and we call it a crisis because we need to recognise the magnitude of the problem: it is extremely large. We are in deep trouble, because we are extremely far from where we should be. We have hundreds of millions of children who are in school who are not learning. […] If you take the average [figures] from developing countries for which we have data, about 56% of the kids who are in school are not learning. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number is about 90%. It’s an overwhelming problem.1

The Swiss sociologist Martin Graf has analysed the failure of the school system in terms of expropriations on the basis of the Swiss school. However, his findings are not only valid for Switzerland, but to a much greater extent for the African school.2

The expropriation of one’s own history

With the start of school, the individual’s entire previously familiar life situation changes. […] Whereas in early childhood the entire orientation is based on one’s own family, this is abruptly interrupted with the start of school. […] All previous experiences that were previously shared with family members or communicated to them, e.g. the entire basis for an understanding based on a common history, lose their value here3.

For the African child who attends the neo-colonial school, it is not only the individual, biographical history that is faded out, but also the history of his people. So, he finds himself again in descriptions of how his country, his rivers, his people have been ›discovered‹ by the Europeans. Not only are his family and peer group experiences negated, but all the traditions and values behind them are denied or judged as ›primitive‹. Alongside this, white culture is presented to him as good and as more efficient.

The expropriation of one’s own language

In a situation where children are taught in a foreign language from the first day of school, it is not surprising that this language is truly foreign to them throughout their lives, indeed that they also become increasingly alienated from their own language. No content can be assigned to the empty phrases that are learnt by heart at school: the language is deprived of concepts.

Only a few pupils in Mali understand – purely in terms of language – what knowledge is to be imparted to them. Not only does the whole thing have nothing to do with their living environment, but it is taught to them in a language and with terms they do not understand. And so, they learn the subjects by heart in order to be able to reproduce it as literally as possible. It is always astonishing that no child says that it does not understand any of this. Such a remark would make it obvious that she or he does not fulfil what would actually be the norm, knowledge of French, and therefore she or he does not really belong here. He or she is afraid of being excluded from school, a danger that constantly threatens him anyway because of the harsh selection. In this way, language loses its analytical and communicative character and degenerates into an instrument of power.

The expropriation of one’s own interests and needs

When the entire subject matter of school is determined by the interests of the ruling elites and the neo-colonisers and has nothing to do with one’s own life world, it is not surprising that the students are demotivated.

Because of the lack of, or expropriated interests, school attendance must be maintained through secondary motivations. In African countries, this is achieved by the fact that only those who have successfully passed through the neo-colonial socialisation institution of school are eligible for positions in the administration. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that even successful passage through this institution does not guarantee a career in the administration, and so ever greater selection must be practised. And as shown above, one of the most important selection tools is the language of instruction, which in most African countries is still the language of the former and new coloniser. In this way, no new generation of young adults can be educated who are able and willing to take responsibility for the future of their country.

In the following it will be shown that there are models and approaches for the economic development as well as for the development of schools to avoid the fatal circle shown above, namely the approach of ›self-reliance‹.

This is the only way for the vision of an »Africa that does not want to ›catch up‹ anyone, but wants to solve its problems by relying first on its own resources and energy.«1

The point is: »Let’s make it our task not just to reduce poverty, but to stop producing it.«2

1 What this means in concrete terms, especially for disadvantaged people, I have tried to show in my essay Wider die Globalisierung des Menschen* (Furrer (2001)a). *Against Globalisation of Mankind.

1 There are indications that Saho society was organized matrilineal before its islamisation between the 7th and 10th century – as it was the case in many nomadic ethnics. Thus, Saho men still use the formula »I, the father of Halimat swear […]« They swear by the name of their eldest daughter. Also, in the families, the eldest brother of the woman plays a great role and is consulted in all important decisions in family matters.

2 Abdulkader (2013), p. 278f

3 Hapte (2021), p. 4

1 Hapte (2021), p. 4

2 Andemichael (2011), p. 24

3 Freire [1970], p. 57

4 Freire [1970], p. 58f

1 The Guardian vom 02.02.2018, Hundreds of Millions of children in school but not learning. URL: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/feb/02/hundreds-of-millions-of-children-in-school-but-not-learning-world-bank [17.08.2021]

2 cf. Graf [1988]

3 Graf [1988], p. 99f

1 Tévoédjrè (2002), p. 105

2 Tévoédjrè (2002), p. 165; hghltd. by Tévoédjrè

What is ›self-reliance‹?

The term ›self-reliance‹ was coined by Julius Nyerere in 1967 and was in Swahili called ›kujitegemea‹ (self-responsibility, independence). It was soon adopted by some African and South American economists and is often referred also as ›auto-centred development‹.

Here the strategy of ›self-reliance‹ or ›auto-centred development‹ can only be summarised1.

Economically, ›self-reliance‹ means the development of the internal market for the benefit of the broad population. On the one hand, this means using labour-intensive techniques to integrate the unemployed and marginalized masses into the work process and guarantee them a sufficient income. In addition, sufficient consumer goods must be produced in the country itself. This is only possible through a gradual linkage of agriculture with crafts and industry.

The peace researcher Dieter Senghaas has formulated the measures necessary for this ›auto-centred development‹:

»They consists […] in the organized combination of the following activities:

a) re-prospecting of the locally available resources;

b) local utilization of resources;

c) further development of existing and invention of adapted technology;

d) establishment of an own industrial sector to produce means of production;

e) increasing the productivity of agriculture;

f) industrial production of mass consumer goods.«2

These points are to be explained here – partly critically:

ad a) re-prospecting the locally available resources

In order to be able to build up own economic structures, it is indispensable to make an inventory and to ascertain what resources the country has.

This refers not only to the mineral resources and existing industrial capacities, but also to human resources such as cultural techniques, knowledge of traditional agricultural and craft production techniques.

If mineral resources are available, there is a danger that this will arouse the covetousness of global corporations. If expensive machinery is needed to extract these resources, attempts must be made to obtain it through a joint venture with a foreign company, but care must be taken to ensure that most ownership remains with the state.

ad b) local utilization of resources

The use of local resources is not only about material resources, although these also play a major role.

An example of this can be the production of soap from local vegetable and animal fats and potash, which is found in many African countries, sometimes even in large quantities.

However, the human resources, the large reservoir of cultural, artisanal and agropastoral knowledge and skills seem much more important to me here.

Unfortunately, in much of the developing world, knowledge, techniques and skills imported from Europe, the USA, the Emirates or Singapore are seen as better and more progressive.

For example, corrugated iron roof has become a status symbol in African villages, but when it is sunny it turns the house into an oven and when it rains you can no longer understand your own words. Thereby the traditional mud ore stone house, which incorporates centuries of experience and the competencies of generations of masons, is more pleasant to live in, because the farming communities usually had a very sensible sense for dwellings that are adapted to the climate and the environment.

One particular danger should be pointed out here, namely the dependence on international agricultural corporations through hybrid seeds. In addition to dependency, this seed also entails the danger of destroying proven social and solidarity structures.1

The state must therefore protect its own resources and the biodiversity through strict import bans.

The aim must be to understand that

tradition, understood in this way, invites us to invest […] the resources of a flexible modern rationality that is neither unilinear nor necessarily normative. […] It aims to implement the richness of traditional human relations by removing what corrupts them, venality, parasitism, the inability to master the techniques that reduce scarcity, multiply jobs and allow everyone to give and receive, to enter the eternal cycle of giving and giving back.2

ad c) further development of existing and invention of adapted technology When European experts propagate the preservation and expansion of adapted technology in countries of the Global South, they are often told that they only want to prevent these countries from developing in the direction of a modern society. It is rightly argued that Africans also want the same quality of life and the same technological standard as the industrialised countries of the North.

This is right and in the (very) long term realistic and would only be fair. The experience with telecommunication and the internet has shown that modern technology can certainly establish itself in the Global South. But this cannot be transferred to other technologies. Complex CNC (computer numerical controlled) machines can certainly be operated after a short training. The difficulty lies in maintenance and troubleshooting.

This is also criticised by Isaias Afwerki in his History of the Eritrean Workers’ Movement:

We do not have the capacity to operate the machinery that we are importing. We don’t even have the capacity to effectively operate those in our hands. […] when it comes to human resources, we don’t have the capacity that matches with the development programmes that we are undertaking. Even when our colleges are producing graduates with certificate, diploma a degree and above, we still have not produced one hundred per cent capacity that can run the programme that we are undertaking as the bases for food security and infrastructure.1

This problem, however, is not one of a lack of formation, but one of a wrong formation; a formation that teaches pure theory, far from practice – see below. A high-tech CNC woodworking machine, for example, can only be understood and used correctly if the basic properties of the wood are recognised and understood through simple manual processes themselves.

»It is therefore important to know how to use these new technologies in an innovative way while safeguarding our traditional culture and technologies.«2 – and I would add: […] while safeguarding and honouring the experience and competency accumulated over generations by countless craftsmen. Therefore, the future lies more with PLCs (programmable logic controllers) than in CNC; the former is used for easily understandable and manageable control processes for procedures useful in daily life.

Basically, however, it seems important to me that knowledge and process techniques handed down over generations are reflected with their strengths (and weaknesses) and, if necessary, improved and applied.3

There is a need to »draw on the resources of African cultures« because »Africans are called upon to achieve a better integration of their own contexts of meaning and reference in the pursuit of social [and economic; HF] balance«4.

ad d) establishment of an own industrial sector to produce means of production

Of course, it would be desirable that, for example, the machines for metal and woodwork and especially the agricultural machines would not have to be imported. But the question arises whether the domestic sales market is really big enough for this.

And it is important to bear in mind that the production of too many of these ›useful‹ machines can lead to too many people becoming ›useless‹, e.g., unemployed. In African countries, there are enough workers to produce with adapted technology.

Only with reservations can the way be propagated when in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea during the ›Juche‹-movement, in every factory that owned a lathe machine, it was taken apart, plans were drawn up and a second machine was built with it, which was passed to another factory. Certainly, it would have been easier and also cheaper to build all these machines centrally in one factory, but through this method the workers really got to know their machine and could also maintain and repair it.

Even if simple techniques and local materials are used in the agricultural sector, in order to develop sufficient and most productive production, one has to rely on heavy industry. This is the case, for example, in the construction of dams.1

The interdependence and coordinated development of agriculture and industry has always been a major challenge to fundamental change throughout history. For example, the Russian Revolution failed because of this, at huge cost and much human suffering.

ad e) increasing the productivity of agriculture

What good is it to have modern, high-tech machines if people are starving? It is interesting but depressing to see that Africa, with an agricultural population of about 80%, has a self-nutrition level of only about 15%, while in Switzerland, for example, with an agricultural population of 2.6%, this is 62%. Other in other words:

»The gap between the average productivity of farmers in the North and farmers in the South […] is now 100 : 1.«2 This agriculture consists of small farms in terms of area, with almost exclusively family labour that lacks tractors and other material.

And remember that three-quarters of the underfed population of the world are rural dwellers!

So it is not surprising what Albert Tévoédjrè somewhat cynically puts it: »The highest dream of all Third World peasants […], today, is not to improve his situation, but to leave his piece of land, e.g. to destroy his existence.«1

To reverse this disastrous trend, it is necessary

to ensure the preservation of peasant agriculture for the foreseeable future of the 21st century. Not for reasons of romantic transfiguration of the past, but to ensure the indispensable food sovereignty of nations through unique regulations adapted to local conditions […] and to control the migration of the rural population to the cities.2

What the solution of this immense problem is, I dare not predict, because countless more competent people than I have already failed.

In principle, however, it can be said that

a development strategy in keeping with the challenge must be based on the guarantee of access to land and to means if its use to all peasants, as equally as possible. Yet the necessary progress of productivity of peasant family agriculture does need industries to support it. Industrialization therefore cannot be escaped from, but its patterns should not reproduce those of capitalism, which generates growing inequalities and ecological devastation.3

But the whole problem is also a question of attitude. Peasant work and peasant life must no longer be seen as inferior and primitive, as unfortunately happens in many countries of the South – not least through the influence of films and advertising that glorify the Western, urban lifestyle. Farmers, farm work, agricultural production and local products must be given more appreciation again – at all levels of society and politics.

The Brazilian doctor and president of the ›Centre Internationale pour le Développement‹, Josué de Castro, suggested:

If you want to improve the development of agriculture in a country, ask about the dining table of the prime minister or president. […] If menus like Toast Melba, Sauce Victor Hugo, Beef Fillet Wellington, etc. are served there by a European ›chef de cuisine‹ […] then you really have reason to fear that the country has embarked on a path of development that benefits neither local resources nor the basic needs of the population. […] If, on the other hand, at the presidential table, even at receptions for foreign guests, yam is preferred to potato, if honour is paid to maize, millet, cassava, long bean, then you can be sure that local resources are being used and the peasant can hope to participate in a development that really concerns him.4

ad f) industrial production of mass consumer goods

The diverse network of small shops for daily needs, the small workshops of tailors, cobblers, electricians, carpenters and repair services and also the itinerant traders are an important part of the national economy whose value must be recognised and promoted. Thus, bureaucratic obstacles must not be put in the way of these creative and innovative women and men.

In addition, it is more efficient to set up small and medium-sized industrial enterprises for certain products of daily use, such as everyday clothing, shoes, hygiene and personal care products, canned food and others. However, since these often require machines that are only available abroad, the danger of dependence is great. If, for example, a modern, computer controlled production line is imported with Chinese help, which can be operated by local workers, the dependency becomes apparent in the fact that Chinese experts have to be flown in in case of a defect and for maintenance, since all the machines are programmed in Chinese.

This economic policy is only possible by temporarily isolating a country to a large extent from the world market so as not to expose it to the constraints of globalisation. Of course, it is clear that absolute economic and cultural autarky is neither possible nor desirable today. Decoupling from free trade does not exclude controlled opening, but it must be a planned complement to endogenous development. It is a question of a country embarking on the path of ›self-reliance‹ wanting to determine for itself what aid and what influence it wants to allow and under what conditions. But it is precisely this awareness of one’s own strengths and the will to assert oneself that has so far caused all attempts to achieve genuine independence to fail, be it through sanctions or even armed interventions.

Besides the economic aspect, however, it is equally important – and equally difficult – for our consideration what this must mean for the cultural development and for an ›auto-centred education‹.

1 For a more detailed treatment, especially on the politics of ›self-reliance‹ in Eritrea, see Furrer (1990) and Locher/Furrer (1991) and, of course, the seminal works of Samir Amin ([1973] and (2018))

2 after Senghaas (1977), S. 266

1 cf. the interesting research by Jonas Metzger on More than a resource – the social significance of local seed systems and seed exchange in the Global South. The case of Tanzania (Metzger (2022)) (Socio-cultural aspects of local seed systems using the example of the Ruvuma region in Tanzania)

2 Eboussi-Boulaga (2000), p. 160

1 Afwerki (2012), p. 148

2 Tévoédjrè (2002), p. 137

3 cf. the last chapter of this essay

4 Sarr [2016], p. 109

1 Tévoédjrè [1978], p. 90

2 Amin [2017], p. 73

1 Tévoédjrè [1978], p. 90

2 Amin [2017], p. 73

3 Amin (2018), p. 130

4 de Castro (1973), quoted after Tévoédjrè [1978], p. 82f

Auto-centred education and school

If we recall the six necessary measures raised above for an economic policy of ›self-reliance‹, these also apply in an adapted form to ›auto-centred education‹. These measures would be:

a) education for all

b) reclaiming African values and cultures (Africanization)

c) education must serve the needs of a self-reliance economy and empower students to become conscious workers, farmers and scientists, e.g.:

I polytechnic education

II ruralisation of the school

III dual vocational education

IV practice-oriented higher education

ad a) education for all

Although schooling is now compulsory in almost all countries, enrolment rates vary widely around the world – and drop-out rates are even worse. And we must ask ourselves why this is so.

The first answer that comes to mind is probably that there is a lack of funds. However, if you look at the figures more closely, you will see that most African countries spend more money on education as a percentage of their budgets than Western countries. It is therefore more likely that the schools’ lack of success is due to their understanding of education.

Education for all is not school for all. Nor is it a package of tried and tested recipes applied to everyone and for all […]. Education for all must not only ask the question of ›how‹ without first asking ›why‹.1

As shown above, most education departments believe that the goal of schools should be to educate an obedient class of bureaucrats in the service of the government.

But why do we need a school for all?

Education should not be reserved for a minority as a luxury but should be made available to all as a daily food, without which the humanity in mankind is threatened. Education for all is necessary, because to live without a minimum of knowledge, know-how and self-confidence is to live on credit, it is to survive.2

This is what it is all about: enabling children to become emancipated and aware women and men, competent and aware female and male workers, competent and aware female and male farmers, competent and aware female and male scientists to bring the people and the country forward.

A school for all, however, must also be a school in which equality is lived and the hierarchy that prevailed in the old school is broken down.

Barake Ghehebre Selassie, Education Officer in the EPLF said in an interview:

Today, (that means 1980, during the liberation war; HF), there is no longer the old master–pupil relationship as in colonial times. […] An important slogan of the EPLF is: ›Everyone is a pupil, everyone is a teacher‹3. […] If one is better at writing and reading, but the other is better at repairing an engine, they try to teach each other these skills and abilities. […] Those who grasp more quickly help those who learn more slowly.4

I think it was precisely this understanding of education that brought about the successes in Eritrea’s liberation struggle and in the reconstruction of the country after independence.

Unfortunately, in the years 2009/2012, during various school visits that I was allowed to make as a trainer in a further training course for school leaders, I had to realise that this statement got lost in many Eritrean schools today and the outdated British ›banking-concept‹ of teaching has been reintroduced in many classrooms. The teacher is now often again the one who knows everything and pours out his knowledge on the students, who learn it by heart and later repeat it verbatim.

ad b) africanization of school

For decades, there have been calls to create a new school for Africa, an African school focused to the needs of African communities. One of the most important representatives of this demand was the former Minister of Education of Burkina Faso and member of the Executive Council of UNESCO, Joseph Ki-Zerbo. In his book éduquer ou périr1, he was one of the first to call for the Africanisation of schools.

The school cannot turn its back on the African heritage; that would be the school in Africa and not the African school. To be effective, basic education must be rooted in the environment, because any uprooting implies an increase in dependence. In short, Africans say: ›If you have lost your way, you must not run forward, but return to the point you recognize‹. The great evil of Africa is not that its people lack a foundation, but that, since colonisation, they have been deprived of one.2

As I have stated elsewhere,

since its beginnings, education has aimed at giving people conscious access to culture in its various forms of expression so that they can develop a comprehensive understanding of the world and their own place in it. This enables them to act in a self-determined manner and to participate in society. […] Progressive education policy should return to this original task of education, which is to enable every person to understand the world comprehensively and in a way, that is meaningful for his or her life.3