Raising Tanzania’s very best: The case for elite education

Before the rise of schools such as St Francis, Kemebos, and Feza, schools like Ilboru and Mzumbe were the talk of the town. Those schools brought Tanzania’s best and brightest together for the most gruelling academic faceoffs in the land. The ensuing contests shattered many egos – they were never the same again.

People usually ask about the fate of students that pass through such schools. People believe that special students ought to contribute to society in special ways. That is true, but the pressure is unwarranted – regardless of how gifted those students are, they are miles away from making any significant contribution to our world. A lot should be done in-between for them to realise their potential. The solution to that problem is the key that can unlock our vast human capital potential.

The state of failure

Ilboru is located on one of the hills at the foot of Mount Meru. The top of the hill is home to sports fields and teachers’ houses, while academic blocks and dormitories rest at the bottom. The school is well-built, and the location is breathtakingly beautiful. From the heart of the school below, a spring called Naura flows. With its clear and cold waters, Naura goes on to irrigate many a garden downstream. Even for a chance observer, Ilboru is in many ways a gift to the senses.

My first encounters with Ilborians were a lesson in humility: they were a reminder that they possessed qualities that I could only aspire to have. Watching Form 1 and Form 2 students tackle higher-grades problems was a stark contrast to my experience. At my school, we had not even covered the Form 1 syllabus in any subject by the end of the first term in Form 2.

I got to know the Ilborians better when I joined the school years later. Any ambition to rise to the top was extinguished. Sometimes it is good to know that regardless of how good you think you are, there are those that can make you look very pedestrian. But it helps to interact with individuals with such high aspirations, it can drastically shift one’s perspective on what is possible.

The future of Africa is often muttered in pessimistic tones, with some believing that our genetic makeup is to blame for our perceived backwardness. This notion, however, is easily debunked when one considers the remarkable abilities of our best and brightest. The failure of Africa is not due to a flaw in our nature but rather to a failure to properly cultivate and harness the potential of our human capital.

The elite education solution

Whatever we think of how bad our education system is, the reality is grimmer than we imagine. It wasn’t until I delved into the statistics last year that I truly grasped the scale of the problem. Since then, I have been trying to understand how Tanzania can compete given its poorly educated population.

The key lies in, first, recognising that people possess unique abilities, second, tailoring our education to nurture and develop the talents of our best and brightest, third, deploying them to tackle our most pressing challenges, and finally, compensating them accordingly.

The legendary Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew was a great proponent of this philosophy. But Tanzanians are generally opposed to it. In Tanzania, elitism is viewed negatively, associated with snobbery, privilege, and exclusivity. We tend to pretend that we are all equal, even though we know better.

That needs to change.

In this context, elite education refers to a system providing advanced curricula, smaller class sizes, and greater access to resources, aimed at producing exceptional graduates who achieve superior levels of excellence. Elite education presents students with cutting-edge instruction so that graduates can take strategic positions in society afterwards.

It is interesting to observe how others do it. Ezra Vogel’s Japan as Number One explains how the Japanese did it. Dan Senor’s Startup Nation describes how the Israelis do it. Jean-Benoît Nadeau’s Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong explains how the French do it too. In all cases, the outcome is beautiful—the creation of a highly transformative class that greatly impacts their societies.

When it comes to productivity, there is a massive difference between the average and the best. Bill Gates once said that outstanding software engineers are worth 10,000 times more than average ones. Reed Hastings observed that the best programmers add 100 times more value than average ones. In matters of human capital, quality trumps quantity and investing in quality generates far greater returns than quantity.

The government’s initiative to uplift standards in 25,000-plus schools around the nation will not produce results any time soon. The magnitude of the problem is too large for any intervention to have a meaningful impact. Meanwhile, the country desperately needs people who can solve social problems, start businesses, attract investments, create jobs, and boost its global competitiveness now. This goal, I believe, can be achieved through an elite education system spanning from secondary schools to universities.

We will continue to examine this thought next week.