hammamet, tunisia

Mazrui: shake off the imperial legacy.

An African renaissance is unlikely to happen while English remains the main medium for science education, and without concerted efforts to involve women, according to Ali Mazrui, professor emeritus of Africana Studies at Columbia University, New York.

In a keynote address to the fifth general conference of the African Academy of Science, in Hammamet, Mazrui said that one reason why science had failed in Africa was the “masculine bias” of educational institutions both before and after independence.

Another reason, he suggested, was the failure of both the colonial powers and the continent's independence leadership not only to acknowledge indigenous African medicine and technology, but also to convey discoveries and ideas in modern science in Africa's indigenous languages.

“Africa's educational system is good at transmitting the Western literary heritage, but not the scientific heritage,” said Mazrui. He pointed out that Julius Nyerere, first president of Tanzania, translated Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Julius Caesar into kiswahili. “Why couldn't anyone do the same for Darwin's On The Origin of Species , or The Descent of Man ?” he asked.

Similarly Milton Obote, a former president of Uganda, had taken his first name from the poet John Milton. “Why has there not been an African Newton Obote, out of admiration for the great physicist?”

The provision of science education in indigenous languages must be a priority for any future African development policy, said Mazrui. Countries such as Japan and South Korea had developed using their own languages. “Can Africa take off while it is hostage to the languages of former imperial powers?” he asked.

“When Japanese physicists meet, they can discuss advanced physics in Japanese,” said Mazrui. “But, when two African economists meet, they are unable to use any language but English, even if they come from the same African linguistic group.”

Mazrui added that Africa was unlikely to develop unless the role of women was recognized as being on a par with that of men. “In African societies, women are the trustees of indigenous languages. A linguistic revolution needs to be reinforced by a gender revolution — an androgynization of science.”

Full text: http://imagine.nature.com/wcs/a26.html