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TEACHING OF POLITICAL SCIENCE IN EAST AFRICA: A NARRATIVE

By

Walter O. Oyugi (PhD)

Department of Political Science and Public Administration University of Nairobi oyugiw@yahhoo.com

Paper Presented at the International Political Science Association Conference

International Political Science: New Theories and Regional Perspectives Montreal, Canada

April 30th – 2nd May 2008

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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).

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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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