A Behavioral Model of Pan-African Disintegration: A Reply

Extract

In his article published in this review's December 1970 issue, Alan R. Waters proposes to the reader what he calls “A Behavioral Model of Pan-African Disintegration.” His main point seems to be that there are going to be (if there are not already) too many university graduates in humanities and legal training for African economies to absorb. This excess supply is wanted by Africans and the system adjusts to it more or less automatically: “This is what the educatees want, and this is, therefore, what the system provides” (p. 416). These educatees, according to the author, want these kinds of degrees because of their expected earnings which are too high in the African administrative system. Since this education is freely provided for by the government through taxation, the author asserts that “this high return on educational investment amounts to a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich” (p. 415). However, the author recognizes, these high rewards are inherited from colonial systems where colonial elites were selected and rewarded on the basis of their metropolitan education and incentive systems. Despite these high rewards, “the colonial and educational systems could remain fairly efficient over time due to the existence of alternative occupations and a parallel education system in the metropole” (p. 420), while in the new systems these conditions have disappeared. To make the exploitation of the poor by the rich (understand, both Africans) clear, the author, in footnote 8 on page 20, shows that “a university graduate in the United Kingdom was paid about the same as a miner in 1967; in Nigeria he was paid four times the salary of a miner or nine times the income of a farmer.”