Distance Education in
Tanzania
Introduction
Distance education is reasonably prevalent in Tanzania, and organized
through a common association, the Distance Education Association of Tanzania (DEATA). This
is in turn linked into the fledgling Open Learning and Distance Education Association of
East Africa, of which Tanzania currently holds the chairing and secretarial
responsibilities. The organization described in this report enrol over 18,000 students
between them and there are other organizations also offering distance education
opportunities which would increase this number further. In addition to more traditionally
expected roles for distance education (such as higher education or providing schooling to
adults), there are various innovative applications of distance education. These include
educating Burundian refugees, training local councillors, and offering civic education.
Distance education in Tanzania is also characterized by strong
involvement in the national Government in its implementation. There are two Ministries, a
Ministry of Education and Culture and a Ministry of Science, Technology, and Higher
Education. In addition, the Ministry of Labour has played a role in supporting the
development of distance education opportunities. All of the programmes and institutions
reported on below – with the exception of the Southern African Extension Unit –
emanate directly from one of these Ministries and continue to enjoy strong ties with
Government. The Institute of Adult Education is still formally a part of the Ministry of
Education and Culture and the Open University of Tanzania was formed from the offices of
the Institute. Likewise the Vocational Education and Training Authority was set up from a
unit within the Ministry of Labour. Similar roots can be traced for the three institutions
not covered in this report, the Cooperative College in Moshi, the Muhimbili University
College for Health Sciences, and the University of Dar es Salaam. The Ministry of
Education and Culture is also a full member of DEATA. Although there is not policy
specifically focusing on distance education, policy commitments to distance education do
exist in various policy documents.
Use of educational technologies other than print is, however, very
minimal in those institutions reviewed below. The main technologies used other than print
are radio and audio, with no use made of either television or computers to support
teaching and learning directly. There has though been an increase in access to the
Internet and to computers over the past few years, and this is reflected in growing use of
e-mail as a communication technology. Likewise, some organizations are now making use of
word processing and desktop publishing technology to support course materials design and
development, although many materials have clearly been designed without such technologies.
Furthermore, there is still minimal use of information and communication technologies to
support management and administration of distance education in Tanzania. Possibly the best
example of this is continued reliance on manual stock-taking and materials dispatch
systems at organizations like the Open University of Tanzania and the Institute of Adult
Education. Serious questions need to be asked as to why donor agencies working in Africa
continue to pour so much money into unsustainable experiments to use these technologies to
communicate directly with learners when there are many more obvious needs and more
obviously sustainable ways of using such technologies to facilitate the development of
systems and to increase efficiencies.
Many common distance education problems are prevalent in Tanzania.
These are listed briefly below:
- Resource constraints. The most commonly mentioned problem was lack of funding. Many
projects, such as those of the Southern African Extension Unit and the Institute of Adult
Education, have relied on donor funding for their existence, and this creates problems of
sustainability. In the case of the Institute, face-to-face tutorial support for learners
has been withdrawn because there is simply insufficient funding to keep it functioning.
Tanzania appears to have learned some of the important lessons of ensuring quality in
distance education, but now finds it very difficult to implement these lessons given
existing budgets. Two important lessons exist here. First, this points clearly to the
impossibility of maintaining colonially inherited welfare systems that are not underpinned
by sustainable local economic activity (which now appears to be growing in Tanzania).
Second, simplistic statements about the viability of distance education in African
countries because of its cheaper unit costs need to be carefully tempered by awareness of
the true costs of implementing effective distance education, particularly given difficult
material circumstances. Models of distance education developed in developed countries like
the United Kingdom or Australia simply do not remain relevant in educational environments
like Tanzania, because the material circumstances are fundamentally different.
- Infrastructural limitations. While this links to the above point, there are a few points
specifically worth making. First, a common complaint was about the difficulties of relying
on the postal service in Tanzania. This is a fundamental problem for any distance
education, and creates serious problems for implementing distance education programmes in
the country. An interesting adjunct to this is the additional costs that have to be borne
by students returning materials to distance education providers, a cost which alone makes
distance education unaffordable to many Tanzanians. Second, infrastructure for using
information and communication technologies is very limited. Even in Dar es Salaam,
Internet access is limited, expensive, and not yet very reliable. On a positive note,
access to communications technologies does appear to be expanding, although still quite
slowly and mostly in urban areas.
- Common distance education problems. There are various common distance education problems
in Tanzania that emerge from the above problems and that are highly prevalent. These
include:
- Face-to-face tutorial support is critical to learner success, but expensive to
implement;
- There are few reliable and sustainable strategies for making ongoing investments in
course materials design and development;
- Professional development for educational and administrative staff members is sporadic
and limited, resulting in insufficient skills amongst personnel to sustain distance
education systems;
- Administrative systems either do not exist or are highly underdeveloped;
- Even modest course fees are beyond the reach of many Tanzanian learners;
- Innovation in distance education relies heavily on unsustainable sources of funding,
particularly donor funding;
- National communication systems (roads, telecommunications, postal systems) are not
sufficiently reliable or pervasive to meet the requirements of distance education
provision.
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