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On the Teaching of Economics in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

The past two years, 1968–9, have seen the publication of a significant handful of economic textbooks, designed for first-year university students in Africa. Their specific aims, their precise range, and their technical quality naturally vary widely; but the important thing is that they have been published at all. This marks the culmination of a long, slow revolution, since the time when the then University College of the Gold Coast began to teach economics in 1949–50, following unmodified London syllabuses. There seemed to be no anxiety to work out any appropriate local substitute for papers in such topics as British industrial history, although this was possible under the regulations; and one of the lecturers told me, ‘There is no need for an African textbook— economic principles are the same all over the world.’

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

Page 715 note 1 Dinwiddy, Caroline, Elementary Mathematics for Economists (London and Nairobi, 1967)Google Scholar, is one handbook based on experience with East African students; another useful little manual is Lury, D. A., Elementary Quantitative Methods (Nairobi, 1967).Google Scholar

Page 716 note 1 In francophone Africa, this will probably be true of French, although students in Dakar or Rabat may well have a better command of the European language than their anglophone counterparts by the time they reach university. Their problem is further compounded by the fact that they may later have to learn English too, if they are to study economics at graduate level. But this article is only concerned with economics in English-speaking Africa; and it does not touch on the special problems of African students in South Africa.

Page 718 note 1 Dates of first publication only are given for most books cited, often indicating the time-lag before they reached Africa.

Page 718 note 2 But see also Cairncross, A. K., Factors in Economic Development (London, 1962).Google Scholar

Page 719 note 1 The above remarks do not refer to the subsequent revisions of Benham's, Economics by F. W. Paish (1964, 1967).Google Scholar

Page 719 note 2 The same authors did attempt to cater for non-mathematical neophytes in a brief introductory text, Hague, D. C. and Stonier, A. W., The Essentials of Economics (London, 1955).Google Scholar

Page 722 note 1 Robinson, E. A. G., The Problems of Teaching Economics in Pakistan (Karachi, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, 1967).Google Scholar

Page 722 note 2 Seers, D., ‘The Limitations of the Special Case’, in Bulletin of the University of Oxford Institute of Economics and Statistics (Oxford), 05 1963Google Scholar. See also, inter alia, ‘Why Visiting Economists Fail’, in The Journal of Political Economy (Chicago), 12 1962.Google Scholar

Page 723 note 1 See, for example, Birmingham, W., Neustadt, I., and Omaboe, E. N. (eds.), A Study of Contemporary Ghana, especially the excellent first volume, The Economy of Ghana (London, 1966).Google Scholar

Page 724 note 1 Seers, ‘The Limitations of the Special Case’.

Page 724 note 2 See Svendsen, K. E., ‘The Teaching of Economics at the University College, Dar es Salaam’ —a paper presented at the conference held there on ‘The Teaching of Economies in Africa’, 03 1969.Google Scholar

Page 725 note 1 E. A. G. Robinson, op. cit. p. 7.

Page 726 note 1 Cf. Bauer's, P. T. slimmer volume, Economic Analysis and Policy in Underdeveloped Countries (Durham, North Carolina, 1957)Google Scholar; a later edition (London, 1965) has a useful bibliography.

Page 727 note 1 Recently several excellent books on applied economics have appeared, transforming the scene described above. Mention should be made of Kamarck, A. W., The Economics of African Development (New York, 1967)Google Scholar, and Robson, P. and Lury, D. A. (eds.), The Economies of Africa (London, 1969).Google Scholar

Page 727 note 2 Arising out of this teaching experience, an introductory text has been prepared: K. E. Svendsen (ed.), Economic Problems of Tanzania, due for publication shortly. This is only one exam pie, typical of what is happening elsewhere in Africa.

Page 728 note 1 A new series edited by Robson, P., ‘Studies in African Economics’, began with Newlyn, W. A., Money in an African Context (London, 1967)Google Scholar; and other topics have followed, though not necessarily at second-year level.

Page 728 note 2 The same author's Development Planning: the essentials of economic policy (London, 1966)Google Scholar must at least be named in this article, although it was not available at that time; it has since proved an excellent manual for third-year students.

Page 728 note 3 See Ewing, A. F., ‘Some Recent Contributions to the Literature on Economic Development’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, IV, 3, 1966Google Scholar. The first annotated bibliography in this field was Hazlewood, Arthur, The Economics of ‘Under-Developed’ Areas (London, 1954, 2nd edn. 1959)Google Scholar, followed by his more constructively titled The Economics of Development (London, 1964)Google Scholar, listing publications 1958–62.

Page 730 note 1 See P. Streeten, ‘The Use and Abuse of Models in Development Planning’, in Martin and Knapp (eds.), op. cit.; cf. his appendix 3 to Myrdal, Asian Drama.

Page 732 note 1 Myrdal, Gunnar, Economic Theory and Under-Developed Regions (London, 1957).Google Scholar

Page 732 note 2 Coleman, James S., ‘The Resurrection of Political Economy’, in Mawazo (Kampala), 06 1967.Google Scholar

Page 733 note 1 Ian Livingstone, ‘Economics and the Developing Countries’, ibid. December 1967.

Page 734 note 1 It is an abridged version of The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, to be published by the Hungarian Academy.

Page 734 note 2 Whetham, Edith H. and Currie, Jean I., Readings in the Applied Economics of Africa (Cambridge, 1968), vols. I, II.Google Scholar

Page 736 note 1 Robinson, Joan, The Economics of Imperfect Competition (London, 1933), pp. 23–4.Google Scholar

Page 737 note 1 The Eastern Africa Economic Review (Nairobi), I, I 1969.Google Scholar

Page 738 note 1 Cf. Green, R. H. and Seidman, A., Unity or Pouery? the economics of pan-Africanism (London, 1968).Google Scholar

Page 738 note 2 Africanisation is already taking place as rapidly as possible, but one hopes it will not mean immunisation of these universities from outside influences. Academic autarchy is, in any country, a poor substitute for international free trade in scholars, research workers, and ideas.

Page 739 note 1 For example, from Baran, P. A., The Political Economy of Growth (New York, 1957)Google Scholar, and Sacha, I., Patterns of Public Sector in Underdeveloped Economies (Bombay, 1964).Google Scholar

Page 741 note 1 Even her quotation of a famous passage of Keynes (about burying banknotes in coal mines) misses the point of the joke, which is his sadly ironical perception of the idiocy of the capitalist system; and it is just not correct to claim that ‘neither Keynes nor his followers suggest alteration of the basic system of private ownership of the means of production’. It was Keynes who wrote of ‘the euthanasia of the rentier’; and his followers included not only Joan Robinson, among the academics, but some members of the 1945 Labour Government in Britain, which was pledged to a radical alteration of the balance between public and private ownership.