Since independence, the nation has served as a beacon of peace and stability in the East African region. Also, Tanzania has in the past decades evolved into one of the fastest growing economies in sub-Saharan Africa and was recognised as a lower middle-income country in , five years ahead of its projected schedule. Tanzanian education has since the days of Nyerere been widely recognised as successful in its citizen formation, with the effective installment of a unifying national identity as a main objective.
In addition, education in the country has continuously been closely linked to prevailing objectives of national development.
With development being given the highest priority, discourses of development have consequently been incorporated into the Tanzanian national identity, making important unifying elements. In this article, I explore the role of development discourses in Tanzanian education and the construction of national identity. By revisiting the dominating political discourse of development, conceptualised through the Swahili term maendeleo, I argue that the incorporation of elements of the development discourse in the Tanzanian national identity through education has contributed to the formation of a unified Tanzania where a population, rooted in collective values from its socialist past, has provided opportunities for local understandings of the neoliberal economic paradigm.
Increasing global inequality has been one of the dominant narratives of international development in the past decades and presents one of the main challenges currently facing development educators United Nations, This tendency of accelerating economic polarisation is commonly attributed to the worldwide dominance of the neoliberal economic paradigm of the past decades Alldred, In search for solutions, exploration of alternative educational perspectives on, and approaches to, development has been called for.
Few post-colonial nation-building projects are perceived to be more successful than that of Tanzania Abdi, ; Fukuyama, Since independence, the nation has enjoyed political stability and internal peace, conditions rare to the remaining East African region Ahluwalia and Zegeye, ; Kimambo, Maddox and Nyanto, In addition, the past decades have seen Tanzania evolve into one of the fastest growing economies in sub-Saharan Africa Masenya et al.
