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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The scramble for textbooks in Tanzania
Author:Languille, SoniaISNI
Year:2016
Periodical:African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society (ISSN 1468-2621)
Volume:115
Issue:458
Pages:73-96
Language:English
Geographic term:Tanzania
Subjects:publishing
political economy
textbooks
CCM
corruption
External link:http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/115/458/73.abstract
Abstract:In 2014, the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) government in Tanzania decided to discontinue the market-based system for textbook provision that was established in the early 1990s and revert to full state control. Drawing on the theory of political settlements and the literature on Tanzania's industrial politics, the article examines the political economy of textbook provision in this country in order to generate new insights into the relations between the educational, political, and economic spheres. It shows how donor ideology and practices, while subjecting textbooks to generic market principles, also promoted the interests of Western publishing corporations. It then argues that the distribution of power within the state, and the ambiguous relations between the CCM ruling elites, bureaucrats, and the capitalist class, prevented the consolidation of a textbook industrial policy geared towards supporting the local publishing industry. Finally, the article explores elites' diverse corrupt practices to capture public funding for textbooks at the national and local levels. Under Tanzania's country-specific political settlement, the textbook sector, far from primarily serving educational goals, has indeed been reduced to a vast site of primitive accumulation. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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