Service-based leadership: Africa’s missing weapon against modern-day slavery

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6 years ago

Overview

Under a community-based organization called Municipal Area Libraries (MALIBS), we train youth facilitators to conduct seminars, workshops or focus group discussions with parents/ care-givers of early-grade learners. The output from these youth-led meetings is to equip as many parents as possible in direct education of their young charges by reading to them. The adults also benefit from life-long learning, an intended format in Early-grade Literacy and Retention “andro-pedagogy.”

While we are providing leadership in the field of alleviating classroom congestion and the improvement of the quality of universal primary education in Uganda, our primary objective is to demonstrate that we can apply our volunteerism to solve community development problems. In so doing, we reduce dependency on foreign aid and debt and, concurrently, reduce the hemorrhage of human resource to labor export.

Introduction

The four recent decades since 1975 have seen some of the worst forms of authoritarian leadership manifested by Africa’s rulers. The crop of leaders in question are the second wave who came after the passing of the generation of the post-colonial patriarchs who had witnessed the yoke of oppression that greedy European sovereigns had visited upon the rather naïve, fragmented and submissive jungle settlements caged in, as they were, by the expansive western coastline of the Indian Ocean and the equally frightening eastern boundary of the Atlantic. Celebrated servant leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Kenneth David Buchizya Kaunda, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and Dr Apollo Milton Obote embodied obdurate revulsion towards any form of subjugation of a fellow African regardless of race or creed. Their enduring legacy is the passionate brotherhood called Pan-Africanism.

That Pan-Africanist philosophy was perceived as a service creed can be elucidated from the words of Mwalimu Nyerere (1974) at the last Pan-African congress held in Dar es Salaam that year, describing Pan-Africanism as a:

“means, and further, the progress, of opposition to racialism, colonialism, oppression and exploitation everywhere, within the context of a worldwide movement for human equality and national self-determination… even a fight against oppression by the leaders of those countries which have recently attained freedom, whether this is directed against other black men and women, or against people of different races.”

Nelson Mandela was to convert this theory into practice twenty years later. But he was only the exception proving the general degeneration in the ethos of occupation, inclusive of leadership, among Africans.

Problem Statement

Over half the population of working-age young people in Africa is unemployed. In Uganda, for example, 78 percent of youths aged 18-35 years are not engaged in productive work. As these youths grow poorer and more desperate for work, they vent their frustration on a seemingly clueless, dazed, obstinate and aging leadership. What the youths are oblivious of is the general lack of access to basic needs such as shelter and food production and storage infrastructure within their communities.

In the earlier epoch of the frequently maligned and demonized European colonial administration of Africa, voluntary unpaid labor targeting community development was an obligation. The spontaneity of community service was so compelling that local language descriptive names such as “bulungi bwansi” and “saagala aggalamidde” define acts of community work to this day.

However, it is apparent, while volunteering in Africa is relevant to young people’s needs and interests, the link to national and international development goals by both the young people and national leaders alike is missing.

The result is spiraling quasi-unemployment in communities with a lot of work that has to be done for economic transformation to occur. In sub-Saharan African countries like Uganda, the fear of violent eruption of youth anger against the status quo has led to the mushrooming of a modern form of slave trade, sanitized by a terminology: “exporting labor.” While Africa loses its most creative workforce segment as was the case two to three hundred years ago, cosmetic language, a faulty conceptualization of development paths and absence of volunteerism among the youths seems set to bring the continent to its knees once more. The rising debt owed to those countries that have volunteered themselves into economic power houses is evidence.

Literature Review

Gouvea (2016) sums up the moral question concerning slavery quite convincingly. He argues that slavery was considered moral throughout most of human history because morality is carved out of reality by the tools of necessity and greed: greed being the hammer and necessity the chisel. Slavery was moral because it was both less cruel and less a waste of resources than slaughtering the conquered enemy. The development of money only made slavery more prevalent.

But how did an African become a slave? Constitutional Rights Foundation (2018) gives us a candid idea. About 50 percent of the slaves were taken as prisoners during the frequent tribal wars occurring among the West African kingdoms. Another 30 percent became slaves as punishment for crimes or indebtedness while the remainder was kidnapped by black slave traders! The modern form of slave trade has a similar congregation of players to the earlier one.

Volunteering in Africa

Wijeyesekera (2011) argues as follows:

A potential benefit for promoting youth volunteering in Africa is to address conflict which affects young people, and may involve young people. The five largest youth populations in Africa reside in Niger (49%), Uganda (49%); DRC (47%), Zambia (46%), Somalia (45%).

Four out of the five populations have recently experienced, or are still experiencing conflict. Young people are both disproportionately involved in violent crime as well as being more likely to be the victims of crime and violence. Research shows that a youth bulge while an economy is weak can lead to political violence and social conflict, as we have seen recently in the UK, Middle East and in 2007/8 in Kenya. Therefore, investing in young people to use their time productively (particularly where jobs are not available) is valuable in avoiding destructive behaviors which affect young people and their societies.

In Burundi young people have been at the forefront of post-conflict reconstruction with youth service initiatives such as Jeunesse en Reconstruction du Monde en Destruction (Youth in Reconstruction of the World in Destruction) cited as having played a crucial role in addressing the needs of communities in the aftermath of war.

Our volunteerism as servant leaders in Education

Below is a description of the initiative my team of peers and I are involved in.

Context: Education and Skills

Abidjan Declaration 3: We call on AU and EU Member States to guarantee universal access to quality and inclusive education, recognising the importance of Technical and Vocational Education and Training

Sub-theme: Addressing access to quality education and skills development programmes for all, including in rural, remote and disadvantaged areas.

TITLE of Program: Early Grade Literacy and Retention: Link to Learn

Involving parents/care-givers in direct, active education of their children through reading sessions is a novel approach towards entrenchment of early-grade literacy, but also doubles as a veiled vehicle for adult learning as well. This innovation is proving quite attractive to the municipal communities in Uganda.

BACKGROUND

In 1997, the president of Uganda announced the commencement of Universal Primary Education (UPE) which it soon followed up with Universal Secondary Education (USE). The policies of UPE and USE multiplied pupil enrollment into school by many factors. However much government tried to increase the number of teachers, the pupil-to-teacher ratio in early grades has failed to improve beyond 100:1 in urban UPE schools. The rural school ratios are worse still. Fatigued teachers run out of school and drown their exasperation in inebriation while would-be pupils jump over the fence and go fishing. Parents and politician take turns to accuse one another for unplanned programs and wring their hands. The level of illiteracy among completers and drop-outs alike is making most Ugandan youth unattractive to employers.

PROBLEM:

The multiplicity and fragmentation of existing information on poverty alleviation, educational achievement and health delivery make decentralization of the human development effort quite confusing. The few achievements delivered by external community development agencies are often reversed once the implementing agency has left. Yet, it has always seemed, education service delivery relies very heavily on experimental policies based on external analysis of the drivers of underperformance. Community based organizations (CBO), which always stay and are part of the social fabric ought to provide an anchor of consistency, sustainability and hope. However, the unmet need is often so enormous and the CBO too under-resourced for the effort.

OBJECTIVES:

Still, I have started a CBO called Municipal Area Libraries (MALIBS) with the following objectives:

(i) To enhance literacy in schools with particular emphasis on early grade literacy and numeracy;

(ii) To promote youth career counseling and guidance for secondary school and tertiary education;

(iii) To promote literacy and skills enhancement among out-of-school youths;

(iv) To contribute towards adult literacy and education;

(v) To sensitize communities about their constitutional and human rights and responsibilities in order to make them law abiding citizens

RATIONALE

MALIBS is a novel library idea in that it hinges on a cascading escalation of reading enjoyment as the basis for entrenching literacy among pupils. The process of development of these adult clubs is as described below:

(a) Train trainers of trainers (ToTs) in youth seminars and workshops

(b) ToTs train mentoring youth facilitators as the backbone of the community literacy drive

(d) Readers’ clubs practice their acquired skills by reading to/with their charges

Quite clearly, the concept imitates the development of an avalanche rather than the building of a pyramid. The analogy was arrived at after a very agonizing analysis of demand-driven, bottom-up service delivery (which is the more prevalent logic within the social development community) versus the waning top-down model preferred by “a better-informed” elite dispensing development manna from above.

Interest of parent/care-givers in sacrificing a little time and meager earnings to attend literacy classes was achieved by the concession of school head teachers who were concerned about the poor school outcomes which were attracting disquiet from the policy architects of the floundering UPE/USE program. During end-of-year speech days, my team and I were able to gain a slot on the school schedule to explain the power of the “God-taught” teacher, that is, the guardian who had a much smaller audience than the government-trained school teacher.

CONTEXT:

Originally, the entry point was around school related gender-based violence (SRGBV) which was causing by far the most observable leakage of school drop-outs. We developed and distributed SRGBV materials in English and Local Language and encouraged parents/care-givers to attend community workshops to discuss SRGBV reading materials, generate consensus and support and fight the SRGBV vice.

As the readers’ clubs have taken root, so have improvements in literacy and school retention among participating schools increased. The following goals have rallied the support of both the schools and the parents/care-givers:

1. Strengthen schools to recognize, prevent and respond to school-related gender based violence and promote learner retention through jointly formulating frameworks and intervention models with school management (SMCs/PTAs), municipal education authorities, child-protection agencies and health practitioners. MALIBS has MoUs on specific EGLR issues with 4 leading schools and 6 District Local Governments in south-western Uganda. Additionally, MALIBS has working relationships with Civil Society Organizations and District Local Governments in 9 Greater Acholi region districts in northern Uganda.

2. Increase Parent / Caregiver involvement in promoting literacy attainment for early-grade learners through, workshops, reader-shops. 2,500 readers in 100 clubs have been planned in the period 2018-2020.

3. Develop early grade reading materials for pupils, teachers and parents/ care-givers to inculcate the culture of respect for learners’ rights while delivering life-skills trainings among the young people themselves in order to strengthen and sustain the demand for training and reading materials.

Conclusion

We concur with Wijeyesekera (2011) when he posits that from helping to rebuild critical infrastructure, such as homes and hospitals, to dealing with the psychological scars through art and music, such initiatives not only address immediate needs but also contribute to wider goals of national peace and reconciliation. In countries such as Sierra Leone, where young soldiers struggle to re-integrate into normal life service-led programmes such as The Reintegration Skills Training and Employment Generation (STEG) have been an effective tool in helping them to develop a more positive outlook as well as develop their identity as young citizens. Youth volunteerism is service-based leadership which is the necessary link to youth employment in the fight against modern-day slavery.

References

Constitutional Rights Foundation, CRF-USA.ORG (2018). The Slave Trade. http://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/the-slave-trade (Accessed on 21st September, 2018).

Gouvea, JG (2016). Did slavery end because it was immoral, or because of Industrialization? https://www.quora.com/Did-slavery-end-because-it-was-immoral-or-because-of-Industrialization (Accessed on 21st September, 2018).

http://www.restlessdevelopment.org/file/forum-youth-volunteering-africa-pdf

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate

Wijeyesekera, D. (2011). The State of Youth Volunteering In Africa, FORUM discussion paper 2011 p4

About the author:

NAME: Malingu Lwanga Charles Jr.

e-mail: clmalingu@gmail.com