In this book, Birgit Brock-Utne tells stories from her exciting life as a professor, consultant and researcher – mostly in Africa, but also in Japan, New Zealand, Norway and the US. Throughout, she wonders, asks questions and learns from the answers. Already on her first trip to Africa in 1976, she wondered why the teaching in the College was in English and the text-books were from the US. In a hut in Kenya, she also wondered what it was like for two women to share the same husband. Here, she learned about clitoridectomy and began to wonder about the practice.

She was a professor at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, and her husband was the Norwegian Ambassador to Tanzania. She was unaware of the expectations placed upon the wives of ambassadors, which she neither had the time nor the will to fulfil.

Working at the University of Dar es Salaam, she quickly noticed that all of her colleagues and students spoke Kiswahili, but the language of instruction was English. When she wrote questions for group discussions in English on the blackboard, her students quickly translated them and discussed them in Kiswahili. When she did student supervision in a secondary school, she noticed the problems that both teachers and students had in using English – a foreign language they hardly heard outside of school – as the language of instruction. There is no doubt, of course, that children learn better when they understand what the teacher is saying. In Africa, however, many children do not understand what the teacher is saying. Brock-Utne dismantles the myth of the thousands of African languages and shows that many of them are just dialects of each other and have, because of rivalry between missionaries, been spelt differently. The African languages have millions of speakers and all of them are cross-border languages. Africans are not “anglophone”, “francophone” or “lusophone”. They are, instead, “afrophone”. The author has been connected to the University of Dar es Salaam for thirty years: first as a professor, then as a researcher and then again as a professor. Below is a picture of her with students studying for master’s degrees. She taught these students while switching between Kiswahili and English. They enjoyed the interactive approach of the lessons very much and could express themselves much better in Kiswahili.

Though the author speaks five languages fluently, in Japan she discovered that she was little more than illiterate because she was and is only familiar with the Latin script. This led her to questioning the very concept of “literacy”. Who is illiterate and in whose language?

The author writes about the many greetings she has received from colleagues and students. What was the function of these greetings? Can we find similar examples from earlier times in Norway, especially in rural areas? She writes about questions from her students, how they wondered about the so-called “developed” nations who would stow the elderly into nursing homes and yet not take care of them. Similarly, she discusses how her African friends make the dead a part of their lives. She also recounts her experience of Ramadan. In the image below, she is breaking the fast in the home of one of her good Muslim friends.

The author also discusses the difference between the concept of time for people living in industrialized countries and people used to rural areas and slow living. She discusses the concept of “African time”, where it does not really matter much whether things run on time or not. One of her African students was very upset when the ferry he was supposed to take in Oslo just left off without him, though he was just two minutes too late. When he later took the bus and was the only passenger, he went to the driver and asked him why he would drive all the same. Would he not wait until the bus would fill up? That is what would have happened in Tanzania, after all, where there is no time-table by the bus stop at the university. When the driver told him that in three minutes he had to be at the second bus stop, in five minutes at the third and so on, the student exclaimed: “You poor man. You are totally driven by the clock”.

Prof. Brock-Utne also draws on some of the experiences she has made as a consultant looking into projects in forestry, home economics and fishery. During the forestry project, she learnt that there are “women trees” and “men trees”. The trees women cherish are fast growing multi-purpose trees that can be used for firewood, medicine, spices and fodder for animals. Women plant these trees close to their homes, which means they do not need to walk far to cut them down. Experts from industrialized countries often teach the men to grow mono-purpose trees that can be cut down, used as timber and sold. However, if these trees are planted close to where the women want their trees to grow, there is a conflict. This conflict often results in the women having to walk further away to plant their trees, which increases their daily burden. But one development agency also created a sawmill for women, where they would cut up trees that had been planted and, therefore, could earn money. Below is a picture of a sawmill Prof. Adelaida Semesi and the author visited as part of a consultancy on forestry.

The author also discusses projects that aim at cooperation between universities in the North and the South. Why did two of the projects she had been involved with succeed so well, but a third one failed? One of the successful projects was the LOITASA project (Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa) that she draws on throughout the book.

The project ran officially from 2002 to 2011. The last student to complete her Ph.D. under the project received her degree in 2016. In the first phase, four books were produced. All of the books were produced in Africa during every second year in Tanzania and every second year in South Africa. This was a conscious choice by the editors of the books, who were very much aware there is little publishing in Africa. In the book, Brock-Utne recounts the English Language Support project paid by Britain, which produced many textbooks for schools. Several of these were written by Tanzanians, and Tanzanian publishers thought there would be profit to be gained from the project. It was, however, decided that all the books, including a second printing of them, should be published in Britain and shipped to Tanzania. It is difficult for publishing companies to survive when they do not have the opportunity to publish books in large quantities. It was, therefore, a good choice by the LOTASA project group to decide to publish the eight LOITASA books in Africa. However, it created difficulties for academics in Europe, the US, Canada and Australia to obtain them. After the first phase of the LOITASA project, a Canadian contact asked the LOITASA group if he would be allowed to select chapters from all four books to make a new book that was more readily available outside of Africa. He was given permission to do so, but the editors made it clear they did not want to have anything to do with the selection of chapters since they had not only been editors of the four books but all had a chapter in each book. After the first phase an international conference, called LEA (Languages and Education in Africa), was held at the University of Oslo and a book was produced afterwards. In the next phase, another four books were produced. Below you see the cover of all of the ten books.

Learning from and Teaching Africans is aimed at college students in courses focusing on cross-cultural communication and international education, as well as those with a special interest in African countries, their languages and their way of looking at life. The book is full of personal stories and anecdotes, which make it easy to read. It is written with great love for Africa and African students.

Birgit Brock-Utne is a Professor in Education and Development at the University of Oslo, as well as a Visiting Professor and consultant around the globe. She has served as a Professor at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and as the President of the British Association of Comparative and International Education. She was also the Norwegian coordinator of the Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa project, which ran from 2001 until 2013, and one of the Norwegian coordinators of the TRANSLED project, which ran from 2015 until 2021.

Learning from and Teaching Africans is available now at a 25% discount. Enter code PROMO25 to redeem.

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