CHAPTER XV

Education in Africa

Education in Africa did not begin with the whites. The tribal education of the native was especially addressed to teaching him to endure pain and provocation without showing it. The training of young children was intelligent; spoiled children were exceptional and punishment unusual. At the time of initiation of children into manhood and womanhood there was a systematic and intense course of training. This initiation is the most important event in the life of the young man, teaching him the past of the tribe, the magical power of his ancestors and his present duties. He becomes a new person and begins a life separate from the women and children so as to be initiated into the spiritual inheritance of his forefathers. A similar ceremony for girls instructs them in the mysteries of womanhood.

The co-operation between the African and European is not simply a matter of “Black brawn and white brains”; even today the African is doing brain work in Africa and is lessening the distance between him and the European, although the European is often inclined to keep as great a distance as possible and to use education in order to maintain the status quo.

There come, however, a number of pressing problems in the European direction of African education: first, shall the African be systematically trained at all; secondly, if trained, shall he not be trained chiefly to work; third, if he is trained to work, shall he be trained for work according to his own needs and tribal organization, or for work which is valuable and desired by the white employer; fourth, whether he is trained for his own work or the work of the employer, how far shall he be trained in intelligence, the use of the three R’s and the opening up of avenues toward modern training; fifth, if he is to be trained in intelligence, shall the medium of his training be his own vernacular language or a world language like the English or the French; sixth, how far in his training shall physical science and the new sciences of anthropology, ethnology, sociology and linguistics be systematically and carefully used?

All these problems face African education; but in reality the basic problem is, no matter what the training of the African is, what is the object of the training? Is it to make him valuable to the European investor? No evading of this fundamental question can hide the necessity for its answer; and two different answers are given by the British and the French.

By the British, more especially in South Africa, but to some extent even in West Africa, there is no settled determination to deny to the African an education; but so few facilities are provided and there is such slow development of schools that the net result is to retard the African in his education and to turn him into a laborer and producer, of more or less intelligence, of crops and material for the profit of the investor.

Conversely, the French have carried to Africa the French idea of the preeminence of education in any social plan; they have assumed without argument that education is best for the African and should be pursued mainly along the same lines that education is pursued in France. They propose theoretically to educate an elite class and to let this intelligentsia eventually lead and govern black Africa. This involves political rights and social equality. Practically, of course, the French have fallen far below this ideal.

Between these two extremes comes the pressing present problem: the invasion of a primitive people by organized and developed industry bent on profit and accompanied by missionary effort and religious propaganda. The missionary attitude is a hang-over and throw-back; an illogical urge toward philanthropic effort, under the pattern of a religion, which has largely lost its sanction in Europe and America; and yet out of it has sprung the one effective gift of the white man to the black man, modern education.

Education in modern Africa, outside the French possessions, is the result of missionary effort. Of this there can be no question; and at the same time it is true that missionary effort has been accompanied in all cases by industrial exploitation and in some cases has itself been the instrument for spreading such exploitation and bringing political subjugation to the African tribes.

This can only be explained by remembering what a modern missionary is. He is not usually a man trained in sociology or anthropology. He is apt to be an economic illiterate, naive in the data of the social sciences; assuming that people with customs different from his own are inferior and must be “raised,” and that modern capitalism and European family customs are a part of the divine order. Beyond that, he may be a sectarian fanatic or a man of intelligence and sacrifice, pouring out energy and life itself for what he conceives to be the best interests of an alien people.

Christian missions have from the beginning developed systematic educational work in Africa. For the most part, save in French Africa, they still are in charge of the majority of the schools. The colonial governments tardily but increasingly have come to take up the burden of education. Of course the missions have not confined themselves to education. They have pushed religious propaganda, sometimes to a hurtful degree; they have interfered in native family life and tradition, sometimes beneficially, but often ignorantly and dogmatically; they have often considered religious conversion of more importance than intelligence and understanding; they have sent out numbers of enthusiastic but ignorant fanatics who have played havoc with native life and European industry.

Ludwig calls attention to the fact that missionary work has been hampered and made hypocritical by the triumph of the machine, which made so many human hands idle and reduced the price of men, and nevertheless, in the use of human labor, white capital never ventured into the open “without a moral rain coat.”

In the educational program, the Protestants and Catholics have differed markedly. The Catholics in the Belgian Congo, Uganda and elsewhere have arranged their pattern of education strictly according to the political and economic limits of the state; inculcating peace, submission and contentment; with primary training and training in industry. In French Africa, the Catholics have followed the pattern of the state schools. The Protestants everywhere have usually aimed at an ideal of general intelligence, seeking to advance pupils toward high school and even college and professional training, and encouraging ability and often self-assertion.

The pioneer work of the missions in education and the fact that the government was tardy in helping, gave them a certain independence. The Protestants developed a few colleges like Lovedale in South Africa and Fourah Bay in West Africa; and by insisting on training bright pupils, brought upon themselves the suspicion and enmity of a good many government officials, which persist today in colonies like the Rhodesias, Kenya and parts of West Africa.

We may attempt here a rapid survey of present educational conditions in Africa, realizing that exact statistics are not available, due both to difficulties of distance and reporting, and also to the reticence of colonial governments.

Beginning with the Union of South Africa, in 1936 less than thirty per cent of the total native child population of school age was in school; the majority go to school for two or three years and even then not regularly. The inspected schools are reported as hopelessly over-crowded and understaffed and the other schools are of course much worse. The cost of native education of all kinds amounts to $10.25 per student per annum on the average enrollment. The government contribution for white pupils is ten times as large as for natives; or, comparing the white and native population, it is forty times as large. White teachers are paid sixty-three per cent higher wages than natives with the same professional qualifications.

For white children primary education is compulsory and free, including text-books. The native child has to pay school fees and buy his own books. There is but one native college, Fort Hare, in Cape Colony, which is affiliated with the University of South Africa. This college was started by the native chiefs, who gave fifty thousand dollars in 1907 from the funds of the Transkei Native General Council. The missionaries gave the land. The college opened in 1916, with twenty students. Between 1916 and 1934, it enrolled five hundred and seventy students, and graduated fifty by 1936. It prepares students for degrees in the University of South Africa. It will hereafter train medical assistants from an endowment furnished by the mining companies.

The leading institution, of the Hampton type, is the Lovedale Missionary Institution. It was founded in 1841 by the United Free Church of Scotland and has a teaching staff of about sixty, one-third of whom are Negroes. The attendance is about a thousand, and of these about a hundred are in the high school grades. Its chief work is preparing teachers. Healdtown is also noted for its teacher training. All these are in Cape Province. In Natal is Mariannhill Institute, a Catholic school training in industries and for teachers. It is noted for training artisans and for issuing most of the printed Zulu literature.

The Union of South Africa had, in 1935, 4,419 schools for natives and colored people, with 482,000 pupils. Of these, twenty-six were government schools and the rest mission schools aided by the government.

The Union government formerly gave a grant of three hundred forty thousand pounds sterling plus one-fifth of the annual revenue from direct native taxation, which amounted to two hundred fifty thousand pounds. This has proved insufficient because the native tax has dwindled during the depression. The government has promised in the future two-fifths of the annual income from native taxation, and there is hope that the total budget for the coming year will amount to a million pounds. The annual expenditure per head of native pupils may thus be increased fifty per cent next year; but there is no proposal for making primary education free. There is, of course, a deep difference of opinion as to whether the education of natives should fit them for a caste system or should be designed for acculturation.

If we turn to the separate provinces, we find in the Cape Province, up until the nineties, children of all colors in the country districts attending the same schools. Today color discrimination is the invariable rule. There were, in 1935–37, two thousand five hundred public schools and aided private schools for natives and colored people, employing six thousand five hundred teachers with 280,000 pupils. Among these schools were seventeen industrial schools and twenty-one teacher training schools. These schools cost $4,750,000 while the white schools with 154,000 pupils cost $14,750,000. In Natal in 1936 there were seven hundred native schools and one hundred thirty colored schools conducted or aided by the government. In these schools there were ninety-two thousand pupils whose education cost $1,290,000; thirty thousand European pupils cost $3,150,000.

In the Transvaal in 1936 there were 780 colored schools with ninety-six thousand pupils. There were seven teacher training institutions. These schools cost possibly $1,000,000. The total expense for education, white and native, was $15,000,000. In the Orange Free State in 1935 there were three hundred forty colored schools with thirty-one thousand pupils and nine hundred teachers. There were two teacher training institutions. These schools cost $295,000. White schools with forty-four thousand pupils cost $4,560,000. Native teachers during the depression had their salaries cut substantially, but new appointments of teachers with certificates are now paid at the regular rate.

The protectorates with their limited income and uncertain economic condition have limited school funds. In Swaziland fifty thousand dollars are expended annually for two hundred schools with five thousand pupils. There is a national education fund into which each Swazi pays fifty cents annually. A national school is being constructed out of this fund.

In Basutoland seventy-five per cent of the black children are in 575 schools with a total of seventy-six thousand pupils, of which sixty-nine thousand are in schools aided by the government. The expenditure for these schools was $265,000 in 1935–36. In Bechuanaland there were ninety-one native and two colored schools costing about fifty thousand dollars.

In Northern Rhodesia the schools are predominantly missionary schools with some government aid. Eighty per cent of the children of school age are not in school. There are nineteen missionary societies at work. There were 127,000 native children in school in 1936 at a cost of $250,000. The schools for a thousand whites cost over twice this sum. Education is confined to the primary grades. Little is done for education at the mines. At one mine, a day school had two hundred registered and fifty in attendance. There is no compulsion, of course. The government schools in the towns are not well attended. In one location out of a school population of 960 only fifty-six were in school. There are a few night schools.

There is the usual demand that the education of the natives be practical and industrial, while the natives want education for their children on broader lines. The government does not teach the native much in agriculture, for fear it will keep him away from the mines; the agricultural school at Mazabuda had in 1931 only eight students. The mission schools carry on agricultural work and instruction in the building trades and furniture making; but there is little demand for such crafts, and some of the schools have followed the bright idea of having the people use only native tools in making things for the schools and the huts. There is no mechanical training for work in the mines. The finance commission, on the other hand, has said that one of the greatest handicaps to better industrial education was lack of knowledge of the three R’s.

Southern Rhodesia had, in 1935, 100,000 native pupils enrolled and 60,000 in attendance at mission schools aided by the government, costing $285,000. There were also two government schools with four hundred pupils. In these schools were 275 white teachers and 1,800 colored teachers. The ten thousand white children cost the government $1,200,000.

Southern Rhodesia has had some difficulty in facing the problem of native education. In 1919 a system of schools was proposed to apply European knowledge to improving conditions in the native villages. Natives were to be taught how to handle skins, raise food, make furniture and to build. Two such schools were opened in 1920, but money to support them was not appropriated, and there was, of course, at this stage of development, no effective demand for skilled craftsmen. The schools taught agriculture and some building, but in 1924 there was a protest against the training of natives to compete with Europeans. In 1929, it was decided to teach in the schools things that could be used in native villages but which did not call for European implements. Jeanes Fund methods were introduced but the experiment finally broke down. Even the government training school for agricultural demonstrators was about to fail, when a mission school intervened and is now training a few excellent teachers of farming.

In Nyasaland, eighty per cent of the children of school age are receiving no education. There were in 1936 four thousand native schools with 130,000 pupils in attendance. The government appropriation is very small, amounting in 1936 to only $55,000. The missions here have long borne the burden of native education. There are twelve normal schools for training native teachers.

Education in the West African colonies has been dominated by missionary zeal, on the one hand, and on the other by fear on the part of the whites lest partially educated Negroes should increase in number and demand political and economic power. The native demand for thorough higher training has, of course, entailed increased educational expenditure, increased social contact, and inevitable political readjustments with indirectly decreased commercial profit.

It has been difficult, with the counter influence of some of the English, for the educated natives to keep the respect of the mass of natives. The “Divide and Rule” method has been subtly and effectively applied. In the case of the black Bishop Crowther, the whites charged that he did not enforce discipline over the African clergy, and after his death a white bishop with an African suffragan was appointed; Henry Carr, a colored man, has been inspector of schools and assistant Secretary of Native Affairs. He was of unquestionable character and intelligence, but had a good deal of native opposition, encouraged by many of the whites. Among the Yoruba and the Egbas, natives educated in Europe helped to remodel the government and form organizations; African engineers and surveyors were used. The British interfered in many ways and suppressed the Egba leaders, but considerable influence has been retained by educated men in the tribe.

In West Africa there are two outstanding colleges: Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, a missionary institution supported by the Church Missionary Society and the Wesleyan Missionary Society; and the government institution in Nigeria, Achimota College, which has but recently gone beyond high school work. Other higher institutions are the Wesleyan boys’ high school, and the Church Missionary Society grammar school in Sierra Leone.

There are five missionary schools in Gambia and a special school for children; and the missionaries have furnished secondary schools. The government spent $25,000 for education in 1936 as compared with $45,000 in 1930.

Freetown in Sierra Leone is dominated by the descendants of freed slaves and early became the intellectual center of West Africa, because of Fourah Bay College, established in 1827. This has long been the only institution in West Africa where an African could obtain an education which corresponded with that of an English university. It has been affiliated with Durham University of England since 1876.

In the colony there are fifty primary schools assisted with public funds and one government primary school. There were eight assisted secondary schools. In the protectorate, education lags: there are eight government primary schools and one technical institution. In 1936 there were one hundred eighty missionary primary schools of which eighty received government assistance; five thousand two hundred pupils attended the assisted schools to which the government granted twenty thousand dollars. There is a government school for the sons and nominees of chiefs at Bo. The total expenditure for education by the government was, in 1936, seventy thousand dollars. Many of the educated Negroes from this colony seek clerical employment in other parts of West Africa and in the Belgian Congo.

Nigeria is making much effort to encourage education, but is handicapped by the comparatively small amount of her budget which is available. Medicine and health were stressed, primarily at first for the health of the white officials; but this protection against tropical diseases is gradually being extended to the blacks. Soldiers and crime call for a disproportionately large expenditure. In the northern provinces there is an unfortunate religious division in the schools; thirty-five thousand Mohammedan schools with two hundred thousand pupils are mainly of the usual type: centers of propaganda and rote learning of the Koran. The element of instruction is, however, being increased. There are two teacher-training centers, one secondary government school, and at Katsina a college with fifty-five pupils.

In the southern provinces education is carried on mainly by mission schools aided by government grants. There are 3,250 elementary and middle schools and two teacher-training institutions. There are four government secondary schools and twenty missionary high schools. At Lagos there is a secondary school, King’s College, which prepares for the English universities and civil service.

In the whole of Nigeria the government schools are under the direct control of the department of education, aided by the native councils. The budget for 1932 was $30,000,000, out of which $1,240,000 was spent on education; $1,940,000 on medicine and health, and $2,500,000 on police, military and prisons.

The Gold Coast has the best educational system in Africa. A college has been established at Achimota to head the educational system of African teachers. Fifty white English university graduates have been brought in as instructors. The education in the early grades is in the vernacular and in later years English is to be used. Achimota consists of a kindergarten, primary school, secondary school, and eventually it will have a college. The government plans to spend three million dollars in equipment and $250,000 a year in operation expenses. The expense of operation will in time be doubled. It is controlled by a council of sixteen members of whom six are Negroes. In 1935 there were seventeen students taking university courses.

The Gold Coast has done a good deal to train natives in technique. The Public Works Department has courses for engineers and road foremen; postmasters have been trained and women telephone operators. There are black superintendents of police, locomotive engineers and station masters.

There were three hundred eighty assisted schools with fifty thousand pupils and four hundred forty teachers in 1936, and two hundred fifty non-assisted schools. The Basil Mission trained most of the first artisans in the country. Secondary education is in the hands of missionaries. There are two good grammar schools in Cape Coast. Excluding Achimota, the government spent $900,000 on education in 1936.

There is distinct effort being made to discourage West African students from going to England for college and postgraduate work. The desire to go is partially in answer to the criticism that Negroes are not thoroughly trained. On the other hand, their presence in England causes certain social problems in hotels and elsewhere, and especially gives these students a chance to imbibe modern radical thought. This is looked upon as a danger in West Africa and effort is being made to give some local higher education as a substitute.

For instance, Yaba College, established in 1934 in Nigeria, is going to teach medicine; but, as the natives protest, it will not give a full medical course but will train “assistants” who will be allowed to practice on natives. There have been many suspicions as to the grade of work planned at Achimota. The English attribute this attitude of young West Africa to impatience. The Africans reply: “Give us scholarships and let us go to England. We will be as patient and thorough as the whites.” In a number of cases this ability has been proven.

Turning to East Africa, we find Kenya fearing the educational and industrial advance of natives in West Africa, and deprecating even what East Africa has grudgingly yielded. The native school population of Kenya is about six hundred thousand, and of these ninety-three thousand are in mission schools and four thousand in government-controlled schools. Less than sixteen per cent of the African school population is receiving any form of education, and only one-half of one per cent reach the upper grades of the primary school. Girls are receiving almost no education. In 1935, Kenya had eighty-two government schools of which twelve were European.

In Kenya fifteen hundred native schools are conducted by missions, of which nine hundred are bush schools. Bush schools do little more than give religious training. The other mission schools include five hundred elementary schools, forty-five primary and two secondary. In 1923, one hundred thousand dollars was spent for African and Arab education in Kenya. In 1937, $392,500 was spent for African education. In 1932 the state spent $415,000 for education of Africans, Indians and Arabs and $245,000 for a few hundred European children. The average annual amount spent on the white child was fourteen dollars and fifty-six cents and on an African, sixteen cents.

Uganda is struggling toward the West African model. There were two hundred seventy thousand children in school in 1936. In 1932 there were 5,353 African schools with 244,227 students, and twenty-one Asiatic schools with nine hundred forty-six pupils. The total cost of education in all schools in 1932 amounted to $357,500. There are three types of native schools: elementary schools with vernacular instruction; secondary schools with instruction in Swahili and English, and Makerere College. Two missionary schools offer finishing courses for the daughters of the upper class Baganda.

Makerere College, a future black university for East Africa, has ten years’ work in primary, secondary schools and professional work. There is an attendance of three hundred forty students. It trains natives as medical assistants, agricultural instructors, veterinary demonstrators, land surveyors, etc. There is a government training school at Bukalusa, and, in 1933, there were two secondary schools preparing students for entrance into Makerere. Students of Makerere College obtain entrance certificates for English schools. Parliament may be asked to make this college and affiliated institutions a higher university for East Africa including Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika.

In the Belgian Congo, we meet a curious case of the co-operation of modern industry and the Catholic Church. Belgian industry aims at peace, cheap labor of all grades, and profit for investors. The Catholic Church, bowing to the will of the state, proposes to proselyte among the natives and give them such training as will best carry out the object of the state and no more. The standard of education in the Belgian Congo is lower than in British West Africa. Congolese are not allowed to leave the country for studying abroad. Those who leave the Congo as seamen or servants and stay abroad more than six months are not allowed to return.

The Catholic missions lay less stress on literary subjects and concentrate on the craft demand. The aim of the large Belgian corporation is to build up a cheap labor force and train it in skill. In Elizabethville, for instance, there is a school which trains tailors, dressmakers, carpenters, printers, leather workers, blacksmiths, and bricklayers. In Katanga there is a school for locomotive engineers, railway repairing and mechanics.

The government declares that it is its policy to assist the native to rise as high as he can and as rapidly, but as a matter of fact he is not allowed higher training and does not get far beyond the semi-skilled occupations. Usually Congo education goes only to the third grade. The system has been put almost entirely under the domination of prevailing capitalism so that education is not primarily for intelligence but for practical work. Certain employers have established hygienic villages and schools. Congo natives, however, are not encouraged in too great aspiration and assumption. There is not a single native black leader in the Congo educated in modern ways.

The Protestant missions have tried to do more and higher work and are consequently pretty severely restricted. Health needs, however, have brought an attempt to train medical assistants which may force the imparting of some higher training, and perhaps the eventual training of full-fledged physicians.

In the Belgian Congo, in 1937, there were two thousand five hundred Catholic missionaries and seven hundred twenty-five Protestants. They co-operate with the government and carry on ten state schools with five thousand three hundred pupils and 4,156 subsidized schools with two hundred thousand pupils. There are state schools for boys at eight centers and one for girls. Eight schools are training native dispensers and one school medical assistants, three schools are for sanitary inspectors and there are several schools for midwives. In 1937 the government grant to mission schools amounted to eleven million francs and the total expenditure was nineteen million francs.

“When the Portuguese colonized, they built churches; when the British colonized, they built trading stations; when the French colonized, they built schools.”1 In 1903 there were seventy schools and two thousand five hundred students in French West Africa; in 1925 there were three hundred seventy schools and thirty thousand students; in 1935–36, there were four hundred and seventy schools and sixty-seven thousand pupils.

In 1935–36 there were two hundred ninety preparatory and elementary schools with 26,606 pupils; seventy-five country schools with 21,805 pupils; twenty urban schools with 5,987 pupils; seven higher primary schools with six hundred four pupils; nine technical schools with four hundred thirty-seven pupils; two lyceums with seven hundred thirty pupils; sixty-nine private schools with 11,429 pupils. These figures do not include the five thousand and more Koranic schools.

Private schools in French West Africa are conducted according to special decrees, by French Catholic and Protestant organizations. In 1934, there were fifty-seven schools for boys with 6,416 pupils; seventeen schools for girls with 3,051 pupils; a total of seventy-four schools and 9,467 pupils.

The number of children of school age in French West Africa is about 1,360,000. There is, therefore, approximately one child in school for every twenty children of school age, or nearly five per cent. Outside of new buildings, there were appropriated for education in French West Africa twenty-four million francs in 1934.

The avowed object of the French is diametrically opposed to the objects, expressed or implied, of the English, Dutch, Belgians, Germans or even Portuguese in Africa. It is to train a black elite by means of a thorough French system of education and eventually to bind these people to the French state by giving them every political, civil and social privilege. This is looked upon by the French as the only way to raise the status of the native population. It has produced much ill feeling in European colonial circles against the French and the Negroes of French Africa are the envy of other colonial Negroes.

Despite this program clearly laid down and to an increasing extent followed, the actual number of educated French Africans is still small, and therefore France has not yet to any extent faced the innumerable and baffling problems of the rise of a backward people to equality with a dominant culture group; however, her West Indian experience is of value.

There are today two systems of education in French West Africa, representing two educational problems: first a European system for European and African children who are already French in culture. The European system came first and is best exemplified in Senegal. It consists of infant schools, primary schools, secondary schools and lycée schools. These schools are identical with corresponding schools in France.

European schools provide an education specially designed for the training of Europeans and Africans to play their part later on in the French economy. Secondly, for Africans who do not know French culture, there is an African system. African schools provide an education specially designed for participation in African life, but envisage eventual integration of native life in French culture. There is no color bar in either set of schools.

The system of African schools includes: first, popular schools; second, technical schools including schools for the special needs of particular areas; third, higher schools. Each of these three groups may be divided into rural and urban schools. These three groups of schools are loosely connected into an educational ladder by means of which pupils pass from one group to a higher group; but such promotion is incidental and not the aim of a given school. Each school gives complete training for pupils who will receive no further education. Only selected children of promise may take the competitive promotion examinations.

In the African popular schools there are three stages: an initiation stage; an elementary stage; and a lower primary stage. The initiation schools are held in thatched buildings and even tents, with one teacher in charge; they initiate the children into learning spoken French and raising their standards of living. The course is approximately two years. In the main country stations, and always in the cities, there is a fully developed elementary school, including initiation and substandard classes and two year standard classes. In the earlier classes of the initiation elementary schools, local vernacular is used for instruction in certain subjects, but this is limited. The efficiency and equipment of these initiation and elementary schools were formerly low and are in many cases still, but they are steadily being rebuilt and reorganized. They teach animal husbandry and stock farming and run a school co-operative with sale of produce. The co-operative is the property of the pupils.

In gold-mining areas, blacksmithing and jewelry-making are taught instead of farming; in the fishing areas, fish nets and canoes are built. In each case the needs of the local community are studied and the instruction planned accordingly. In 1934, there were two hundred sixty-five government village schools and thirteen government urban schools of the initiation and elementary type, providing for 22,289 pupils. In addition to these there were a large number of mission bush schools.

There are seventy-five regional schools at important government stations that carry African education on two years farther. The studies include history, geography, hygiene and arithmetic. In the larger commercial centers are city primary schools with an academic curriculum.

There are special craft institutions for teaching European crafts, planned to articulate African and European technique. There were adult courses with ten thousand students in 1934 and the training of teachers is provided for in practice schools. There is effort to develop vigorous local economic units by groups of technical schools; some preparing pupils for the needs of village life; others training artisans for industrial areas, and a third group training skilled workers for government departments and factories. In Moslem areas there are four special Mohammedan schools to train leaders and chiefs, with an attendance of about four hundred.

The most nearly complete system of French schools centers in Senegal and was begun in 1816. Primary education begins in the village schools. The best students of the preparatory school below the age of thirteen are sent to the elementary schools of which there are a large number in each colony. The third school is the regional school at the capital of the colony with three grades. If the student passes after four years’ work he is given a certificate to enter the higher primary school at the capital.

At the capital of each of the colonies there are higher primary schools. Entrance to these schools is by scholarships awarded by competition to the best boys from the regional schools. Board and lodging are free and sometimes pocket money is given. The staff is composed of university men of high standing.

In these schools there are special technical departments which provide for artisan training in the postal and telegraphic service, the survey department, the public work department, the railways and other government or commercial service. Then there is an academic division which provides a local education for those who purpose to be government clerks or enter commercial firms or compete for scholarships which will fit them for careers in the learned professions.

Each year, the best pupils from the academic departments of higher primary schools compete in a federal examination for the selection of candidates for the State African Secondary School, which is the William Ponty and Faidherbe School at Dakar. Fifty to eighty boys are selected each year. About one-half of these are trained as teachers and the other half for medicine, veterinary work and engineering. The course is four years and the pupils are on graduation from twenty to twenty-two years of age. Work in this school is similar to the kind of work covered in secondary schools in Europe, but the students are taught with special reference to Africa. “The graduate of the William Ponty School is so fine a product that the education there given seems a complete vindication of French educational theory and practice in Africa.”2

“In 1935 the William Ponty School admitted seventy-two new pupils; its three departments turned out forty teachers, thirty-five pupils gained the certificate in administration, and twenty-nine passed to the Medical and Veterinary schools. The two Secondary schools at Dakar and St. Louis number six hundred twenty-two pupils.”³

The government reported recently: “We are about to embark on the transfer of the William Ponty School to Sébikotane, where it will be not only the leading school in French West Africa, but a kind of model city, a centre of French higher education. Lastly, I have decided on the establishment of a French Institute for Africa which, in association with the French West Africa Museum and the Historical Archives Department, shall be at once the centre of those higher studies that must be given a place in a great country such as our Federation and the foundation of all African research and all understanding of African life and institution.”⁴

Parallel to the Ponty school are schools of marine engineering to train for the naval service, veterinary schools for government service and a medical school at Dakar, where sixty pupils selected in open competition from the Ponty School are given a five year course as medical assistants. “Walking round these wards as we did with the students, and listening to each student in turn discussing his various cases, it was difficult to realize that we were in Africa at all. In every way the students were like their brethren in Europe, keen, enthusiastic, and interested in each new problem as it was dicussed.”⁵

In Portuguese Guinea there are nine elementary and two professional schools. In Angola there are seventy primary schools, three secondary schools, including a central college at Loanda, and a national college at Lubango. There are also some professional schools. In Mozambique there were, in 1932, five hundred schools with six hundred seventy teachers and six thousand five hundred pupils. Of the latter, two thousand five hundred were mulattoes and whites. The schools include a central high school; fifty elementary schools; one hundred forty intermediate schools; two hundred ninety missionary schools, and forty professional schools; also there are seventy schools administered by the Mozambique company.

Portuguese colonial law tries to compel the employer to provide teachers for any children on his estate and some private employers maintain schools. At one mission of Angola, American Negro missionaries have been carrying on agriculture and education for ten years. The life of the district has been improved, the crop yield raised and live stock increased in number; the native farmers have become economically independent.

In the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan the education of the blacks has been pushed by the English to offset Egyptian influence and rule. Taking advantage of the long memory which the Sudanese have of Egyptian misrule, the English have proceeded to train the blacks as civil servants, judges and soldiers. If Egyptians instead of Sudanese should occupy these positions, the Sudan would easily and naturally revert to Egyptian rule.

In the northern Sudan, the government controls education. There is Gordon Memorial College, a secondary school, with three hundred pupils; and several training schools for the civil service. There are eleven intermediate schools and ninety-eight elementary schools for boys and twenty-eight for girls. Also there are thirty-four non-government schools with five thousand five hundred pupils and six hundred Koranic schools. In the southern part there are only mission schools with government subsidies; there is no higher or secondary education.

Turning to the mandated areas: In German East Africa, now Tanganyika, eighty per cent of the African children of school age are receiving no education. There were in 1936 two schools for whites with seven hundred sixty-two pupils; fifty-three Indian schools with 4,038 pupils; eighty-one government native schools with 8,105 pupils; also one hundred ninety-one aided mission schools with 19,785 pupils. Beside this are 4,643 mission schools with 197,951 pupils which do not receive government aid. The total estimated expenditure for education (1936) was four hundred thirty-five thousand dollars.

In Southwest Africa there were, in 1935, sixty government white schools with four thousand seven hundred pupils and sixty private white schools with eight hundred seventy-six pupils. The education of natives is carried on in the mission schools. There were seventy-eight government-aided mission schools with 4,608 pupils. White pupils cost $98 a head; Negro pupils $2.81.

The latest figures on schools in black Africa give the enrollment as 3,375,000; of these 1,240,000 are in schools maintained by the government or aided. In the number of pupils in school the colonies rank as follows: Belgian Congo 460,000; Nigeria 416,000, if we include 200,000 in the Koran schools; in the Belgian mandate, Ruanda-Urundi, 220,000; in Uganda 273,000; in Tanganyika 225,000; in Nyasaland 194,000; in the Cape Colony 176,000; in the Transvaal 115,000; in Northern Rhodesia 110,000; in Southern Rhodesia 104,000; in Kenya 100,000; in the French Cameroons 97,000; in Natal 87,000; in Basutoland 73,000; in the Gold Coast 63,000.

The Government expenditure per head for all African children in schools varies as follows: Gold Coast $15.20; Cape Colony $11; French Equatorial Africa $10.28; Nigeria $5.29; Kenya $4; Southern Rhodesia $3.43; Basutoland $2.79; Tanganyika $1.39; Uganda $1.31; Northern Rhodesia $1.12; Nyasaland $0.45. There are no separate figures for French West Africa although the per capita expenditure is high there; and also none for the Belgian Congo where the expenditure is low.

Allied with education as indices of social service for the natives of Africa come public health, the preservation of animal life, the regulation of liquor and similar matters. The factual data covering these matters are not at present full enough to call for extended treatment, but a word may be added concerning health.

The Union of South Africa has four hundred and two hospitals and nursing homes for the two million whites and one hundred and forty-two for the seven and a half million colored and black. Most of these are maintained by mines and factories. In the protectorates there are fifteen government hospitals. In the sixteen hospitals of Southern Rhodesia both races are provided for separately. Northern Rhodesia has seven hospitals for ten thousand whites and thirty hospitals and dispensaries for 1,300,000 natives. In Nyasaland two thousand Europeans have two hospitals while the million and a half natives have fifteen hospitals and ninety-three dispensaries. In Tanganyika the four million natives have fifty hospitals and three hundred dispensaries. In Kenya the three million natives have thirty-five hospitals. Uganda furnishes thirty-four hospital beds for its two thousand whites, fifty-six beds for fifteen thousand Asiatics and 1,273 for three and a half million natives. In Nigeria there are twelve hospitals for the few thousand whites and fifty-seven for twenty million natives. Fourteen of the medical staff are Negro physicians trained in Europe. French West Africa has eleven government hospitals with beds for 788 whites and 5,484 Africans. The white population is twenty-five thousand and the native population fifteen million, but the color line is not strictly drawn in the white hospitals. French Equatorial Africa has five hospitals and ninety-eight dispensaries and health centers. The Belgian Congo has twenty-five hospitals for twenty thousand Europeans and seventy for ten million natives.

In defense of present conditions it may, of course, be argued that the need to protect the health of whites was more immediate and the native more immune to disease. Nevertheless, here still lurks the idea that the primary goal of African administration is the European; and this is confirmed when one realizes the extraordinary fact that the offer of the Rockefeller Foundation of New York of fifty-six thousand pounds sterling to the Union of South Africa to build a medical college for the Bantu was refused by Prime Minister Hertzog. There are only eight black doctors in all South Africa. Subsequently industry came to the rescue and the Transvaal Chamber of Mines in 1935 made a grant of $375,000 for educating native medical aids. This course will be given at Fort Hare native college and it is expected that the first graduates will be available in 1940. There is no provision yet for a full medical course.

In the Belgian Congo, health teaching and hospitalization have made a good record, but perhaps the most advanced medical service in Africa is in Uganda, with twenty-three government hospitals for the natives, ten for the Asiatics and four for Europeans, beside seven hospitals under missionary control. To a very great extent the problem of Africa is a problem of health in the midst of malaria, sleeping sickness and a multitude of other tropical diseases. As Marshall Lyautey has said: “La seule excuse pour la colonisation, c’est le médecin.”