The Director, knowledge management at the
COSTECH, Faith Shimba speaking to participants and media shortly before
officially launched the Consortium.
When you talk of a knowledge-based society with many chances for further development, high quality publications both in shelves and online are inevitable.
In short a knowledge-based society is the type of society needed to compete and succeed in the changing economic and political dynamics of the modern world.
It also refers to societies that are well-educated, and who therefore rely on the knowledge of their citizens to drive the innovation, entrepreneurship and dynamism of that society’s economy.
But, is our publications at libraries, schools, colleges, and Universities really leads us to the knowledge-based society? Are they high quality enough to lead this society to knowledge- based economy?
Are our education system, teachers and lecturers competent enough to produce job creators and not job seekers?
These are some of the questions that transpired during the launching of the consortium on strengthen indigenous academic and digital publishing in Tanzania this week.
In fact the publishers and other stakeholders expressed their dismay over increasing substandard publications currently flooding in different places in the country.
They said despite the mushrooming of inferior materials, the academic staff, students and researchers also faced another challenge of shortage of credible publications.
Citing an example of increasing poor performance and incompetence among many University graduates, managing director of Mkuki na Nyota publishers, Walter Bgoya said that in the past it was easily to tell a University student from his competence.
Today, he said; don’t be surprised to see a University student can’t express himself or herself either in English or kiswahili.
“Our education system has completely failed to offer what Tanzanians need in this modern world of science and technology, so there is a need to turn to other alternative means that could help to build competence among learners ” he said.
He said the academic and digital publishing would help to restore the culture of reading to gain more knowledge.
Many depend on spoon feeding from incompetence teachers currently teaching in different schools, colleges and Universities
“Lack of reading culture even to our own books erodes our knowledge and skills as well as inquisitiveness” he said.
According to the Global Monitoring report, developed by an independent team of experts, observes that throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, teaching using a foreign language do not give student the best he or she deserves.
The countries where the official language is not common spoken at home, many children are taught in a language other than their mother tongue, contributing to extreme education disparity.
Commenting on the use of language in schools, he said that it was a shame to cling to English language while there are no competent English teachers.
“As a nation we must be proud of our Kiswahili language instead of using English and kiswahili in schools. This situation ends up confusing learners,” he said.
He adds: When the investors comes here with their contracts, you find that they are all written in English, but can you go to Canada today to invest with Kiswahili contracts?
Citing an example he said that the Chinese, Germans, Russians, have used their own language to develop, the decision that could be made by Tanzanians as well.
For his part, Director, Knowledge Management at Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) Faith Shimba said that the project was very important for Tanzanians as it will fill in the existing gaps such as shortage and substandard publications
He said currently some publishers are incurring high costs to publish due to high costs involved adding that the project would minimize such costs and encourage many other local publishers.
Rose Tesha, supervisor for secure livelihood progamme was on the view that Tanzania was not benefiting much from academic and digital publications because the nation has not yet encouraged and utilized them to the fullest level.
“These academic and digital publications will help local publishers to get their work sold in and beyond Tanzania because they will be easily available online” she said.
She also said University students will benefit in many ways including publication of their thesis and scientific matters in international standard.
Commenting on the project, the Publishing Advisor, Maaike Duine said that when academic and digital publishing will be strengthened, this will also lead to higher quality textbooks for primary and secondary school students.
When students, studying at universities and colleges to become teachers for primary and secondary school, will have access to higher quality scientific publications, they will also become better teachers.
She said apart from benefiting schools and Universities, the project will enable Tanzanian researchers to communicate their research globally.
Next to academic publishers, she said, all other Tanzanian publishers will benefit from the possibilities of digital publication as their books and journals will reach more people. She said.
“This project will reach more people by, for example, ebook distribution and smartphone distribution. When more Tanzanian people have access to higher quality books, this will lead to a knowledge-based society with many chances for further development” she said.
She adds: We would like to raise the quality of scientific publishing within Tanzania. That’s why we are setting up a consortium of all academic publishers within Tanzania and by organizing trainings covering subjects as marketing, sales, production, contracts and copyright.
We will also offer trainings about digital publishing covering subjects as digitization of books and journals, online formats and platforms. The more publishers join the consortium, the better because that way knowledge can be shared” she said.
Commenting on English language in Tanzania and creation of a knowledge-based society, she said that together with the local publishers, the project will draw up an inventory of the number of Kiswahili publications that can be digitized.
“Depending on the target audience of the scientific publications we will discuss if there are possibilities to translate the titles into Kiswahili” she said.
VSO Tanzania and INASP (International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications) have agreed to fund the two-year project.
To implement the project, VSO Tanzania will collaborate with the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), the Publishing Association of Tanzania (PATA), the Book Development Council of Tanzania (BAMVITA) and the Dar Teknohama Business Incubator (DTBi).
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