Higher Education in Mozambique-Portal

2.2 Mozambican higher education: a brief history of expansion and diversification

2.2.1 Introduction

 This section provides a short overview of historical developments in higher education in Mozambique, as a background to the chapters, which follow. The history of higher education in Mozambique is a very underdeveloped sub-field at present, and more in depth studies are required before a full picture can surface. In other words, the history of higher education in Mozambique is a history of its constitution. A brief historical sociology is provided here, to make sense of the analysis in the following chapters regarding the particular phase of expansion and diversification of higher education institutions. Mozambique is regarded as a country that went through considerable transformations in the last three decades.  In the last thirty years Mozambique experienced ten years of struggle for its independence and sovereignty from Portugal in 1975, followed by a devastating civil war soon after independence (1977/8) which only ceased in 1992 following a peace agreement between the government of the ruling party FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) and the former armed rebel movement, RENAMO (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana).  From 1977 to 1984 the country embarked on what I would consider a utopian[1] project of building a socialist society as a means to achieving development and an equitable society, redressing the social inequalities inherited from the colonial legacy. The last 14 years have been a period of substantial peace for Mozambique, a side from the natural disasters that beset the country cyclically. Since the country has joined the Bretton Woods institutions – World Bank and International Monetary Fund – and embarked on a structural adjustment program, Mozambique is regarded as one of the few examples of successful transitions to democracy and a liberal market economy in Africa.  According to Mário et al. (2003) these dramatic changes over the past 30 years in Mozambique also affected higher education. Beverwijk (2005) refers to the same period as one of turbulent transformations. The two authors acknowledge that despite these transformations that resulted from civil war, which affected the economic and political stability, the number of higher education institutions has increased. The new terrain of higher education in Mozambique can be distinguished from the previous one by the following three basic characteristics: 1)      In 1975 Mozambique inherited only one higher education institution from the Portuguese colonials. Almost none of the qualified academic staff remained behind when the Portuguese left the country. The new government had to start from almost zero recruiting and training academic staff and also students. Narciso Matos, the former second Rector (Vice Chancellor) of the Eduardo Mondlane University in an interview given to the Carnegie Corporation in New York in the year 2000 commented:  In the 1974 academic year, the university had 3, 000 students. Most of them were white students and the entire faculty was white. And one year after independence, in 1975, the university was down to 700 students. It means that most of them left to go to Portugal. Almost all the lecturers and professors also left, except for a handful that stayed in the country (Carnegie Corporation New York, 2000).  2)      The University Eduardo Mondlane was seen at that time as the headquarters for producing the ‘manpower’ (Mário et al., 2003) for the country or as I would put it in a Gramscian way, the university was the locale to produce the ‘organic intellectual’ who was going to make the socialist experiment feasible (Gramsci, 1971).  3)      A civil war which started soon after the independence in (1977/8) and intensified from 1983 brought an incalculable setback economically, socially and politically. This is the terrain in which higher education in Mozambique evolved.  Before embarking on a short history of higher education in Mozambique I shall briefly refer to the three principal stages which characterise the constitution of higher education in the country: the colonial stage, the socialist stage, and the post-civil war stage which also coincides with the country adopting the ideology of a market economy under the auspices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This classification of the phases of higher education evolving is shared by most scholars who study the Mozambican system (Mário et al., 2003; Utui and Fry 1999; SPHEM 2000-2010; Beverwijk 2005).  

2.2.2 Higher education for the colonials

 There is enough evidence for an undisputed consensus that higher education, particularly in the colonial age, was a privilege for the sons and daughters of the Portuguese colonialists (Bloom, Canning and Chan, 2006; Enemark, 2005; Mário et al., 2003; Chilundo, 2003; Cross, 2001; Utui and Fry, 1999). Mondlane (1977), probably the first Mozambican sociologist, founder and first leader of the liberation movement FRELIMO, noted in his famous book Struggle for Mozambique that there were two main goals for the Portuguese for educating the Africans:  1)       To train some individuals of the population to act as intermediates between the colonial state and the population.  2)      To inculcate a servile attitude in the educated Africans.  The role of education was to be an instrument of ‘discipline’[2], an institution to shape the body and mind of the African people. Educating Africans intended to inculcate the habits and aptitudes for work, harmony among sexes, and a notion of time, to ascertain the maximum profit in the manufactured work they were supposed to do. Thus, there was no reason to provide higher education.  I find in Mondlane’s explanation a sociological reasoning for the relatively small number of Africans in tertiary education. Nonetheless, other scholars believe that the small number was due to the unique characteristic of higher education institutions that were a branch of the Portuguese universities (Chilundo, 2003). Access was strongly based on possession of social and economic capital which allowed very few Africans those called ‘assimilados[3]’ (to Portuguese culture) (Cross, 2001), to enter higher education. According to Mário et al., (2003) the university was available primarily to the sons and daughters of colonists. Even though the colonial government preached non-racism and advocated the assimilation of its African subjects to the Portuguese way of life, the notorious deficiencies of the colonial education system established under their rule ensured that very few Africans would ever succeed in reaching university level. In spite of Portugal’s attempts to counter international criticism of racism in its colonies by expanding African educational opportunity in the late 1960s and early 1970s, only about 40 black Mozambican students, less than two per cent of the student body, had entered the University of Lourenço Marques by independence in 1975 (Mário et al., 2003:07). 

2.2.3 The post-colonial higher education: the socialist experiment

 Elsewhere in the beginning of this study I characterised the evolving process of higher education in Mozambique as one which experienced drastic changes and turbulent transformation. This section will refer to the transition from the later colonial period to the socialist experience early after the country’s independence, and highlight the main features of higher education in that period.  There is a considerable number of studies, book articles and occasional papers, characterising this period of education in Mozambique (Utui and Fry, 1999 SPHEM, 2000; Mário et al., 2003; Cruz e Silva et al., 2005). Most of the studies converge in their characterization of the system, with small differences in the emphasis each study gives to a particular aspect. Thus, I shall focus on the convergences. Three aspects stand in that characterization. Firstly, it is acknowledged by scholars that there is a link between the Revolution of the Carnations in Portugal April 1974, which precipitated the process of independence in the colonies, and the exodus of staff and students to Portugal (Utui and Fry, 1999; Mário et al., 2003). Secondly, soon after independence in June 1975, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), which had been assisted by the Soviet bloc during the war for independence, adopted a Marxist-Leninist form of government, resulting in a period of central planning.  Thirdly, Mozambique’s independence, its socialist orientation and its support for South African and Zimbabwean liberation movements provoked the wrath of Rhodesia and South Africa that, so that successively they, provided financial and logistical support to the rebel Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO).  Unremitting violent war compounded by drought and the growing unpopularity of FRELIMO’s socialist programme brought the Mozambican economy to a collapse. By the mid-1980s, Mozambique had become one of the poorest countries in the world, with an estimated annual per capita income of $60. As the war progressed and government revenues declined, morale foundered and the university lost all possibility of research outside the city of Maputo, while buildings, laboratories and other facilities became increasingly decrepit (Mário et al., 2003: 09). 

2.2.4 Peace, democracy and liberal market

 The mid 1990’s was a period of growth for higher education, at least in terms of the diversity of higher education providers. The diversity of suppliers was due to a new political and economical environment and a result of changes that were still underway in the country. In 1990 the country adopted a new constitution. That was the major legal step for peaceful agreement (which put a stop to 16 years of ‘brutal’ and inexplicable war in 1992). Two other facts, one external and one internal, contributed to theses changes in the country: 

• The end of the ‘cold war’ and the ‘victory’ of the liberalism proclaimed by Fukuyama (1992) as the ‘End of the history and the last man’ created an international climate which made socialism an unpleasant development model in countries such as Mozambique.

• The implementation of the rules of the Bretton Woods institutions in terms of financial and political principles of governance created conditions for countries like Mozambique to be eligible for multi-lateral loans.

 From 1987 there was evidence that the country had swapped from socialism to democracy, from centralised planned economy to liberal market economy driven principles. 

2.2.5 The ‘ambivalence causes’ underlying the expansionist phenomenon

 The focus of this section is not to analyse in a descriptive way the expansion and diversification of higher education institutions in Mozambique, but rather to examine whether it emerges from “a response of higher education institutions to a double-edged exhortation, which comes exogenously from either the policy prescriptions of the national government, or from the multiform facets of global markets, or often from both together” (Muller, 2003:102). In other words, one would ask whether the de-regulative steering of the government or the market logic of differentiation engendered the expansionist and diversification process in Mozambican higher education. These axes seem to be contradictory or ambivalent. However it was under that ambivalent conjecture that most institutions emerged in Mozambique.   The TFHE (2000:16) acknowledges that expansion has produced a variety of consequences. It considers that a more creative response has been seen in differentiation, a process whereby new types of institutions are born and new providers enter the sector. In the Mozambican case the terms public and private are used to grossly refer to that diversification. However I have suggested that the diversity is more complex than it seems, and that the frequently used terms, public and private, are somewhat reductive.  There is a considerable difference among the public and among the private institutions. The term public refers to the governmental institutions and private refers to non-governmental institutions. In the first group there is, for instance, Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) with characteristics of a Research University[4]; Pedagogic University (UP) a teacher training college and Higher Institute for International Relation (ISRI) is an institution for staff capacity building established following the orders of the former president of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano, supposedly to train diplomats and experts in international affairs.  Among the private institutions some researchers such as Mário et al., (2003), see also TFHE, (2003), distinguish between ‘for-profit’ and ‘non-profit’, denominational – with religious orientation – and lay institutions, philanthropic and non-philanthropic. To give a broad picture, in the beginning of the expansion and diversification process the first non-governmental higher education institution to open was a polytechnic and university institute, Higher Institute Polytechnic and University (ISPU); the second was a catholic university, Catholic University of Mozambique (UCM). Both institutions were established in 1995. ISPU and UCM were followed in 1998 by another technological institution, Higher Institute of Science and Technology of Mozambique (ISCTEM) and an Islamic university, Mussa Bin Bique University of Mozambique (UMMB). In 2000 a higher institute of transport and communication was also established, Higher Institute of Transport and Communication (ISUTC). This study is concerned with the evolving process of expansion and diversification, in particular, with the constellation that emerges from the interaction between these institutions. For the purpose of this dissertation, I shall establish the preliminary basis for further analysis of that interaction and its possible outcomes, remaining at the level of constructing the relative space of positions of the institutions.  

2.3 Approaches to the study of expansion in Mozambique

 As the Mozambican sociologist Carlos Serra noted once, there is no sociological tradition in Mozambique (Serra, 1997). There is similarly little sociological analysis of higher education. However, in contrast to the doomsday scenario that characterized writing and training in social science, particularly in higher education in Mozambique over the past two decades, the  period from 1994 may be regarded as one of new hope to construct critical knowledge on higher education studies in the country.  The following authors have been producing what constitutes the corpus of knowledge on Mozambican higher education. For example, a study by Mário et al., (2002) a Review of Education Sector Analysis in Mozambique, 1990-1998, gives a broad picture of what has been investigated in education in general, and in higher education in particular (Brito et al., 2005; Mário et al., 2002; Mário et al., 2003; Fry and Utui, 1999). The review consists of an inventory and critical analyses of the existing studies from 1990-1998. Most studies in higher education in the country remain policy oriented due to their commissioned nature. Hence, most of them do not reflect a corpus of scholarly knowledge (or a scholarly point of view) produced on the subject of higher education studies, that is, thus do not originate from strictly a scholastic interest[5].  The Association for Development Education in Africa (ADEA); the Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education (NUFFIC), and the United Nation, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) are among the international sponsors of the few analyses of higher education in Mozambique. This social, economic, political condition of production of educational knowledge in Mozambique dictates its policy driven tendency and predominance. It is helpful to now explore some of the implications of this condition.  

2.3.1 A policy studies tendency and predominance

 The policy tendency in the studies has implications. One is to reduce higher education to an ‘instrument’ for the accomplishment of a developmental agenda. Hence, and here lies the second implication of the ‘instrumentalization’, there is no time to look at higher education as a social institution itself that needs to be understood in its own terms as an object of study. The natures of the institutions that are committed to helping the development of higher education are mostly concerned with the link between higher education and the developmental agenda.  In the developing countries higher education is seen to play a key role in development and this is what these institutions put forward[6]. There is a tendency to forget that the link between higher education and development is neither necessary nor teleological. The fact that most of the studies are not strictly scholarly based can not be one of the causes for a lack of concern with theoretical and methodological issues scrutinized by Mário et al., (2002) in the educational analysis review. This may have contributed moreover to a lower level of theorization of higher education studies.

---

[1] It is not my intention to recall a controversial issue of the utopian thinking, its own definition. The point that I am trying to make is that at a particular moment of the construction of Mozambique as a sovereign country there was an investment in a possibility of the ‘Not Yet’, socialist society, and ‘Not -Yet-Become’ type of society. See Mendieta (2002) for a discussion on the ‘End of Utopia’.  

[2] For more on Foucault’s notion of discipline see Foucault (1995).

[3] The term was used by the Portuguese to refer to those ‘indigenous’ people who rejected their ‘own culture’ and assimilated the Portuguese way of life.

[4] A research university normally refers to a higher education institution which combines teaching and research…See: Perkin (1997) in his account for the emergence of research universities. On the classification of higher education institution according to its vocation there is considerable literature. For instance, Scott (1995:83) suggests five models based on university state relations and the demarcation between private and public institutions.

[5] In Bourdieuan terms of the distinction between academic and scholastic capital in the field of higher education, some of those who produced the studies that are mentioned possess ‘academic capital’ (institutional control over appointments funding, etc) and not ‘scholastic capital’ (scientific prestige and intellectual renown) in the subject area of higher education studies. Their daily research interests or academic activities are not with higher education as an object of study. This is not a judgment on the quality of the studies; it is simply a statement of fact. See also: Bourdieu (1998), chapter six on scholastic point of view.   

[6] See for example: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (2000) Higher Education in Developing Countries: The task force on higher education and society. The World Bank, Washington, D.C.