The Lost Massey Lectures by Thomas King Read Free Book Online

underdeveloped world, positions of skill and responsibility (in Africa) were until recently in thehands of non-Africans. . . . As late as 1958 there were only about 8,000 Africans graduated from all the academic secondary schools below the Sahara, and only about 10,000 others were studying in universities—more than half of these in Ghana and Nigeria. . . . in 1962 there were still few African countries where more than two hundred Africans received full secondary diplomas.” 8 When the Republic of the Congo gained independence, there were fewer than 25,000 Congolese with any secondary education and only about thirty Congolese university graduates. The first university, Lovanium, had opened only in 1954 and only thirteen Africans had graduated by 1960. 9
    Professors Harbison and Myers have classified numerous countries in accordance with their resources in educated and trained manpower. In their lowest class, primary and secondary teachers average 17 per 10,000 population. On the basis of limited data, there are 0.6 scientists and engineers per 10,000 population and 0.5 physicians and dentists. 10 Of the seventeen countries placed formally in their lowest class, all but three (Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Haiti) are in Africa. Another twelve African countries were cited as probably falling in this class.
    The consequences of an inadequate cultural base are comprehensive—on government, the economy, internal security, communications, even foreign policy. But the most visible manifestation is on the apparatus of government. People with the requisite education, training, and ethical standards for performing public tasks are unavailable. As a consequence, taxes are collected in haphazard or arbitrary fashion and public funds are spent inefficiently or for no particular purpose except the reward of the recipients. Where this is the case, government will ordinarily be unstable; those who do not have access to public income will have a strong incentive to seek the ouster of those who do. As a further consequence, law enforcement is unreliable; and so, at a minimum, are essentialpublic services. In this context, in turn, there can be no economic development that involves any sophistication in technique or organization. 11 Primitive and local trade will flourish under almost any handicaps. But larger scale commerce and industry—the modern corporate enterprise—are demanding in their environment; their persons and property must be reasonably secure; their property cannot be hidden and must not be taxed merely because it is visible; profits cannot be readily concealed and must not be taxed simply because they are made; their business cannot be transacted in the absence of posts, telephones, and common carrier transportation. In the colonial era, firms were allowed to provide for their own security and establish services essential to their existence. With independence, such extraterritorial administration is not ordinarily permissible.
    But the inadequacy of government is only one of the manifestations of an inadequate cultural base. And it reflects the absence of schools, colleges and cultural environment for producing or preparing people for public tasks. All discussion of economic development involves difficult problems of sequence and circularity. This is an example. How does a country get an educational system without an adequate government? How does it get a government without the qualified people that an educational system provides? There is no obvious answer. But it helps to have narrowed the problem to this point. For we then recognize that little is accomplished by action that does not break into this particular circle. Assistance in the form of capital funds will not be useful if there is no one with the technical competence to employ it, and if the environment is hostile to the resulting enterprises. Technical assistance will not be useful if there is no one to advise or assist. In the next Model, progress