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julius nyerere, lifelong learning and

informal education
One of Africa’s most respected figures, Julius Nyerere (1922 – 1999) was a
politician of principle and intelligence. Known as Mwalimu or teacher he had a
vision of education and social action that was rich with possibility.

contents: introduction · ujamma, socialism and self reliance · education for self-reliance · adult education,
lifelong learning and learning for liberation · liberation struggles · retirement · further reading and
references

Julius Kambarage Nyerere was born on April 13, 1922 in

Butiama, on the eastern shore of lake Victoria in north west Tanganyika. His father was
the chief of the small Zanaki tribe. He was 12 before he started school (he had to walk 26
miles to Musoma to do so). Later, he transferred for his secondary education to the
Tabora Government Secondary School. His intelligence was quickly recognized by the
Roman Catholic fathers who taught him. He went on, with their help, to train as a
teacher at Makerere University in Kampala (Uganda). On gaining his Certificate, he
taught for three years and then went on a government scholarship to study history and
political economy for his Master of Arts at the University of Edinburgh (he was the first
Tanzanian to study at a British university and only the second to gain a university degree
outside Africa. In Edinburgh, partly through his encounter with Fabian thinking,
Nyerere began to develop his particular vision of connecting socialism with African
communal living.
On his return to Tanganyika, Nyerere was forced by the colonial authorities to make a
choice between his political activities and his teaching. He was reported as saying that he
was a schoolmaster by choice and a politician by accident. Working to bring a number of
different nationalist factions into one grouping he achieved this in 1954 with the
formation of TANU (the Tanganyika African National Union). He became President of
the Union (a post he held until 1977), entered the Legislative Council in 1958 and became
chief minister in 1960. A year later Tanganyika was granted internal self-government
and Nyerere became premier. Full independence came in December 1961 and he was
elected President in 1962.
Nyerere’s integrity, ability as a political orator and organizer, and readiness to work with
different groupings was a significant factor in independence being achieved without
bloodshed. In this he was helped by the co-operative attitude of the last British governor
– Sir Richard Turnbull. In 1964, following a coup in Zanzibar (and an attempted coup in
Tanganyika itself) Nyerere negotiated with the new leaders in Zanzibar and agreed to
absorb them into the union government. The result was the creation of the Republic of
Tanzania.

Ujamma, socialism and self reliance

As President, Nyerere had to steer a difficult course. By the late 1960s Tanzania was one
of the world’s poorest countries. Like many others it was suffering from a severe foreign
debt burden, a decrease in foreign aid, and a fall in the price of commodities. His
solution, the collectivization of agriculture, villigization (see Ujamma below) and large-
scale nationalization was a unique blend of socialism and communal life. The vision was
set out in the Arusha Declaration of 1967 (reprinted in Nyerere 1968):
The objective of socialism in the United Republic of Tanzania is to build a society in
which all members have equal rights and equal opportunities; in which all can live in
peace with their neighbours without suffering or imposing injustice, being exploited, or
exploiting; and in which all have a gradually increasing basic level of material welfare
before any individual lives in luxury. (Nyerere 1968: 340)
The focus, given the nature of Tanzanian society, was on rural development. People were
encouraged (sometimes forced) to live and work on a co-operative basis in organized
villages or ujamaa (meaning ‘familyhood’ in Kishwahili). The idea was to extend
traditional values and responsibilities around kinship to Tanzania as a whole.

Julius Nyerere on the Arusha Declaration

It is particularly important that we should now understand the
connection between freedom, development, and discipline, because
our national policy of creating socialist villages throughout the rural
areas depends upon it. For we have known for a very long time that
development had to go on in the rural areas, and that this required co-
operative activities by the people . . . 
When we tried to promote rural development in the past, we
sometimes spent huge sums of money on establishing a Settlement,
and supplying it with modern equipment, and social services, as well as
often providing it with a management hierarchy . . . All too often, we
persuaded people to go into new settlements by promising them that
they could quickly grow rich there, or that Government would give
 them services and equipment which they could not hope to receive
either in the towns or in their traditional farming places. In very few
cases was any ideology involved; we thought and talked in terms of
greatly increased output, and of things being provided for the settlers. 
What we were doing, in fact, was thinking of development in terms of
things, and not of people. . . As a result, there have been very many
cases where heavy capital investment has resulted in no increase in
output where the investment has been wasted. And in most of the
officially sponsored or supported schemes, the majority of people who
went to settle lost their enthusiasm, and either left the scheme
altogether, or failed to carry out the orders of the outsiders who were
put in charge — and who were not themselves involved in the success
or failure of the project. 
It is important, therefore, to realize that the policy of ujamaa Vijijini is
not intended to be merely a revival of the old settlement schemes
under another name. The Ujamaa village is a new conception, based on
the post Arusha Declaration understanding that what we need to
develop is people, not things, and that people can only develop
themselves . . . 
Ujamaa villages are intended to be socialist organizations created by
the people, and governed by those who live and work in them. They
cannot be created from outside, nor governed from outside. No one can
be forced into an Ujamaa village, and no official — at any level — can
go and tell the members of an Ujamaa village what they should do
together, and what they should continue to do as individual
farmers . . . 
It is important that these things should be thoroughly understood. It is
also important that the people should not be persuaded to start an
Ujamaa village by promises of the things which will be given to them if
they do so. A group of people must decide to start an Ujamaa village
because they have understood that only through this method can they
live and develop in dignity and freedom, receiving the full benefits of
their co-operative endeavour . . . 
Unless the purpose and socialist ideology of an Ujamaa village is
understood by the members from the beginning — at least to some
extent it will not survive the early difficulties. For no-one can
guarantee that there will not be a crop failure in the first or second year
— there might be a drought or floods. And the greater self-discipline
which is necessary when working in a community will only be
forthcoming if the people understand what they are doing and why . . . 
Nyerere on The Arusha Declaration - Excerpts from J.K. Nyerere,
Freedom and Development (Government Printer, Dar-es-Salaam, (no
date) Reprinted in Freedom and Development (Oxford University
Press, 1973). Copyright retained by the President.
Within the Declaration there was a commitment to raising basic living standards (and an
opposition to conspicuous consumption and large private wealth). The socialism he
believed in was ‘people-centred’. Humanness in its fullest sense rather than wealth
creation must come first. Societies become better places through the development of
people rather than the gearing up of production. This was a matter that Nyerere took to
be important both in political and private terms. Unlike many other politicians, he did
not amass a large fortune through exploiting his position.
The policy met with significant political resistance (especially when people were forced
into rural communes) and little economic success. Nearly 10 million peasants were
moved and many were effectively forced to give up their land. The idea of collective
farming was less than attractive to many peasants. A large number found themselves
worse off. Productivity went down. However, the focus on human development and self-
reliance did bring some success in other areas notably in health, education and in
political identity.

Education for self-reliance

As Yusuf Kassam (1995: 250) has noted, Nyerere’s educational philosophy can be
approached under two main headings: education for self-reliance; and adult education,
lifelong learning and education for liberation. His interest in self-reliance shares a great
deal with Gandhi’s approach. There was a strong concern to counteract the colonialist
assumptions and practices of the dominant, formal means of education. He saw it as
enslaving and oriented to ‘western’ interests and norms. Kassim (1995: 251) sums up his
critique of the Tanzanian (and other former colonies) education system as follows:
1. Formal education is basically elitist in nature, catering to the needs and interests
of the very small proportion of those who manage to enter the hierarchical
pyramid of formal schooling: ‘We have not until now questioned the basic system
of education which we took over at the time of Independence. We have never
done that because we have never thought about education except in terms of
obtaining teachers, engineers, administrators, etc. Individually and collectively
we have in practice thought of education as a training for the skills required to
earn high salaries in the modern sector of our economy’ (Nyerere, 1968 267).
2. The education system divorces its participants from the society for which they are
supposed to be trained.
3. The system breeds the notion that education is synonymous with formal
schooling, and people are judged and employed on the basis of their ability to
pass examinations and acquire paper qualifications.
4. The system does not involve its students in productive work. Such a situation
deprives society of their much-needed contribution to the increase in national
economic output and also breeds among the students a contempt for manual
work. (Kassam 1995: 251)

 Nyerere set out his vision in ‘Education for Self Reliance’ (reprinted in Nyerere 1968).
Education had to work for the common good, foster co-operation and promote equality.
Further, it had to address the realities of life in Tanzania. The following changes were
proposed:
1.  It should be oriented to rural life.
2. Teachers and students should engage together in productive activities and
students should participate in the planning and decision-making process of
organizing these activities.
 3. Productive work should become an integral part of the school curriculum and
provide meaningful learning experience through the integration of theory and
practice.
4. The importance of examinations should be downgraded.
5. Children should begin school at age 7 so that they would be old enough and
sufficiently mature to engage in self-reliant and productive work when they leave
school.
6. Primary education should be complete in itself rather than merely serving as a
means to higher education.
7. Students should become self-confident and co-operative, and develop critical and
inquiring minds. (summarized in Kassam 1995: 253
Judged today, the educational reforms met with some success and some failure. The
policies were never fully implemented and had to operate against a background of severe
resource shortage and a world orientation to more individualistic and capitalist
understandings of the relation of education to production. However, primary education
became virtually universal; curriculum materials gained distinctively Tanzanian flavours;
and schooling used local language forms (Samoff 1990).

Adult education, lifelong learning and learning for liberation

In the Declaration of Dar es Salaam Julius Nyerere made a ringing call for adult
education to be directed at helping people to help themselves and for it to approached as
part of life: 'integrated with life and inseparable from it'. For him adult education had
two functions. To:
1. Inspire both a desire for change, and an understanding that change is possible.
2. Help people to make their own decisions, and to implement those decisions for
themselves. (Nyerere 1978: 29, 30)

Julius Nyerere - The Declaration of Dar - es - Salaam

[Page 27] Man can only liberate himself or develop himself. He cannot
be liberated or developed by another. For Man makes himself. It is his
ability to act deliberately, for a self-determined purpose, which
distinguishes him from the other animals. The expansion of his own
consciousness, and therefore of his power over himself, his
environment, and his society, must therefore ultimately be what we
mean by development.
So development is for Man, by Man, and of Man. The same is true of
education. Its purpose is the liberation of Man from the restraints and
limitations of ignorance and dependency. Education has to increase
men’s physical and mental freedom to increase their control over
themselves, their own lives, [page 28] the environment in which they
live. The ideas imparted by education, or released in the mind through
education, should therefore be liberating ideas; the skills acquired by
education should be liberating skills. Nothing else can properly be
called education. Teaching which induces a slave mentality or a sense
of impotence is not education at all — it is attack on the minds of men.
This means that adult education has to be directed at helping men to
develop themselves. It has to contribute to an enlargement of Man’s
ability in every way. In particular it has to help men to decide for
themselves —in co-operation—what development is. It must help men
to think clearly; it must enable them to examine the possible
alternative courses of action; to make a choice between those
alternatives in keeping with their own purposes; and it must equip
them with the ability to translate their decisions into reality.
The personal and physical aspects of development cannot be separated.
It is in the process of deciding for himself what is development, and
deciding in what direction it should take his society, and in
implementing those decisions, that Man develops himself. For man
does not develop himself in a vacuum, in isolation from his society and
his environment; and he certainly cannot be developed by others.
Man’s consciousness is developed in the process of thinking, and
deciding and of acting. His capacity is developed in the process of
doing things.
But doing things means co-operating with others, for in isolation Man
is virtually helpless physically, and stultified mentally. Education for
liberation is therefore also education for co-operation among men,
because it is in co-operation with others that Man liberates himself
from the constraints of nature, and also those imposed upon him by his
fellow-men. Education is thus intensely personal. In the sense that it
has to be a personal experience— no one cam have his consciousness
developed by proxy. But it is also am activity of great social
significance, because the man whom education liberates is a man in
society, and his society will be affected by the change which education
creates in him.
There is another aspect to this. A Man learns because he wants to do
something. And once he has started along this road of developing his
capacity he also learns because he wants to be; to be a more conscious
and understanding person. Learning has not liberated a man if all he
learns to want is a certificate [page 29] on his wall, and the reputation
of being a ‘learned person’— a possessor of knowledge. For such a
desire is merely another aspect of the disease of the acquisitive society
- the accumulation of goods for the sake of accumulating then. The
accumulation of knowledge or, worse still, the accumulation of pieces
of paper which represent a kind of legal tender for such knowledge, has
nothing to do with development.
So if adult education is to contribute to development, it must be a part
of life — integrated with life and inseparable from it. It is not
something which can be put into a box and taken out for certain
periods of the day or week—or certain periods of a life. And it cannot
be imposed: every learner is ultimately a volunteer, because, however
much teaching he is given, only he can learn.
Further, adult education is not something which can deal with just
 "agriculture", or "health", or "literacy", or "mechanical skill", etc. All
these separate branches of education are related to the total life a man
is living, and to the man he is and will become. Learning how best to
grow soy-beans is of little use to a man if it is not combined with
learning about nutrition and/or the existence of a market for the
beans. This means that adult education will promote changes in men,
and in society. And it means that adult education should promote
change, at the same time as it assists men to control both the change
which they induce, and that which is forced upon them by the decisions
of other men or the cataclysms of nature. Further, it means that adult
education encompasses the whole of life, and must build upon what
already exists.
Extract from Julius K. Nyerere '"Development is for Man, by Man, and
of Man": The Declaration of Dar es Salaam' in Budd L. Hall and J.
Roby Kidd (eds.) (1978) Adult Education: A design for action, Oxford:
Pergamon.
Nyerere's view of adult education stretched far beyond the classroom. It is 'anything
which enlarges men's understanding, activates them, helps them to make their own
decisions, and to implement those decisions for themselves' (Nyerere 1978: 30). It
includes 'agitation' and 'organization and mobilization'. There are two types of educator
involved:
 generalists like community development workers, political activists and religious
teachers. Such people are not politically neutral, they will affect how people look
at the society in which they live, and how they seek to use it or change it. (ibid.:
31)
 specialists like those concerned with health, agriculture, child care, management
and literacy.

Adult education, for Nyerere, doesn't have a beginning or an end. It should not be
pressed into self-contained compartments. Rather we need to think of lifelong learning.
Living is learning and learning is about trying to live better. 'We must accept that
education and working are both parts of living and should continue from birth until we
die (1973: 300-301).
In terms of method, two aspects stand out:
 Educators do not give to another something they possess. Rather, they help
learners to develop their own potential and capacity.
 Those that educators work with have experience and knowledge about the
subjects they are interested in - although they may not realize it.

[B]y drawing out the things the learner already knows, and showing their relevance to
the new thing which has to be learnt, the teacher has done three things. He has built up
the self-confidence of the man who wants to learn, by showing him that he is capable of
contributing. He has demonstrated the relevance of experience and observation as a
method of learning when combined with thought and analysis. And he ha shown what I
might call the "mutuality" of learning—that is, that by sharing our knowledge we extend
the totality of our understanding and our control over our lives. (1978: 33)
The teacher of adults is , for Nyerere, a leader - 'a guide along a path which all will travel
together' (ibid.: 34).
In practical terms this approach proved successful. Mass literacy campaigns were
initiated and carried through (for example, between 1975 and 1977 illiteracy fell from 39
to 27 per cent - by 1986 it was at 9.6 per cent); and various health and agricultural
programmes were mounted e.g the 'Man is Health' campaign in 1973, and 'Food is Life'
(1975) (Mushi and Bwatwa 1998). Adult education initiatives have made a significant
contribution to mobilising people for development (Kassam 1979).

Liberation struggles
A committed pan-Africanist, Nyerere provided a home for a number of African liberation
movements including the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan African
Congress (PAC) of South Africa, Frelimo when seeking to overthrow Portuguese rule in
Mozambique, Zanla (and Robert Mugabe) in their struggle to unseat the white regime in
Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He also opposed the brutal regime of Idi Amin in
Uganda. Following a border invasion by Amin in 1978, a 20,000-strong Tanzanian army
along with rebel groups, invaded Uganda. It took the capital, Kampala, in 1979, restoring
Uganda’s first President, Milton Obote, to power. The battle against Amin was expensive
and placed a strain on government finances. There was considerable criticism within
Tanzania that he had both overlooked domestic issues and had not paid proper attention
to internal human rights abuses. Tanzania was a one party state – and while there was a
strong democratic element in organization and a concern for consensus, this did not stop
Nyerere using the Preventive Detention Act to imprison opponents. In part this may
have been justified by the need to contain divisiveness, but there does appear to have
been a disjuncture between his commitment to human rights on the world stage, and his
actions at home.

Retirement
In 1985 Nyerere gave up the Presidency but remained as chair of the Party - Chama Cha
Mapinduzi (CCM). He gradually withdrew from active politics, retiring to his farm in
Butiama. In 1990 he relinquished his chairmanship of CCM but remained active on the
world stage as Chair of the Intergovernmental South Centre. One of his last high profile
actions was as the chief mediator in the Burundi conflict (in 1996). He died in a London
hospital of leukaemia on October 14, 1999.
Tom Porteous, writing in The Independent (October 15, 1999) summed him up as
follows:
Slight in build, somewhat austere in manner, Nyerere was neither vain nor arrogant. He
set great store by honesty and sincerity. A family man devoted to his wife and children,
he was extremely loyal to his friends - sometimes to a fault. He inspired among his
people both devotion and respect and returned the compliment by complete dedication
to his work on their behalf as head of state. He was ready to admit his mistakes, and to
show flexibility and pragmatism, but never if this meant compromising his cherished
Catholic, humanist and socialist ideals.
Nyerere’s life and career are an inspiration to the many Africans who dismiss the notion
current in elite African circles today that justice, dignity and freedom should be
subordinated to the single-minded pursuit of prosperity through economic liberalisation
and structural adjustment. Africa needs more leaders of Nyerere’s quality, integrity and
wisdom.

Further reading and references

Books by Julius Nyerere:
Nyerere, J. (1968) Freedom and Socialism. A Selection from Writings & Speeches, 1965-
1967, Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press. This book includes The Arusha
Declaration; Education for self-reliance; The varied paths to socialism; The purpose is
man; and socialism and development.
Nyerere, J. (1974) Freedom & Development, Uhuru Na Maendeleo, Dar es Salaam:
Oxford University Press. Includes essays on adult education; freedom and development;
relevance; and ten years after independence.
Nyerere, J. (1977) Ujamaa-Essays on Socialism, London: Oxford University Press.
Nyerere, J. (1979) Crusade for Liberation, Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press.
See, also:
Nyerere, J. (1978) '"Development is for Man, by Man, and of Man": The Declaration of
Dar es Salaam' in B. Hall and J. R. Kidd (eds.) Adult Learning: A design for action,
Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Material on Julius Nyerere:

Assensoh, A. B. (1998) African Political Leadership: Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah,
and Julius K. Nyerere, New York: Krieger Publishing Co.
Kassam, Y. (1995) 'Julius Nyerere' in Z. Morsy (ed.) Thinkers on Education, Paris:
UNESCO Publishing.

Legum, C. and Mmari, G. (ed.) (1995) Mwalimu : The Influence of Nyerere, London:
Africa World Press.
Samoff, J. (1990) ‘"Modernizing" a socialist vision: education in Tanzania’, in M. Carnoy
and J. Samoff (eds.) Education and Social Transition in the Third World, Princeton NJ:
Princeton University Press.

Other references
Hinzen, H. and Hundsdorfer, V. H. (eds.) (1979) The Tanzanian Experience. Education
for liberation and development, Hamburg: UNESCO Institute for Education.
Kassam, Y. (1978) The Adult Education Revolution in Tanzania, Nairobi: Shungwaya
Publishers.
Mushi, P. A. K. and Bwatwa, Y. D. M. (1998) 'Tanzania' in J. Draper (ed.) Africa Adult
Education. Chronologies in Commonwealth cultures, Leicester: NIACE.

© Mark K. Smith 1998. Last update:

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