Investing in Africa’s High-Level Human Resources: The Challenges and Paradox of Implementing Cost sharing in Higher Education Policy in Tanzania in the 21st Century

Abstract

Investing in African’s high-level human resource, i.e. investing in higher education is critical for Africa’s socioeconomic development, given the central role played by higher education in the development of any nation in the 21st century.  Tanzania, realizing the critical role of higher education in its development, soon after independence (1961) and until the late 1980’s deliberately and strategically invested in higher education to cater for the development needs of Tanzania in the 21st century.  During the early 1990s the government introduced a cost sharing policy in higher education in the broader context of implementing social and economic reforms, partly advocated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This policy to some extent contradiction government’s efforts of investing in higher education in order to make it accessible to all Tanzanians and expand the sector in general. This article argues that the introduction of cost sharing in higher education in the 1990s was imperative given the financial austerity and the increasing government‘s inability to finance public higher education.  Such government inability was a result of higher education ever increasing demand.  Cost sharing in higher education policy has become counterproductive in the process of investing in highly-needed human resource to make Tanzania competitive in the 21st century, to face the challenges of globalization.  Tanzania’s higher education sector, compared to other East Africa countries, particularly Kenya and Uganda, is still small with a total student enrolment of 82,529 (TCU), 2009).  For this reason, the government and other stakeholders need to invest more in higher education.