The
historical educational imbalance in Eritrea
There are
factors that cause easily identifiable divisions in Eritrea. These include the
presence of nine languages, two major religions and two distinct geographical
zones. These factors, however, become essential elements of division in the
hands of manipulative elite. Otherwise, it was not religious faith but the
struggle for political power – the source of material benefits, the
preservation of group identity and dignity – that has caused disunity. We have
seen that the Eritrean Muslims constituted the majority in the ranks of the
independentists in the 1940s and in the liberation struggle until 1975. They
acted in the way they did mainly because they perceived that their interests in
the long-run would not be satisfied in a political relationship with Ethiopia.
On the other hand, the Eritrean Christians in general hoped that unity with the
Ethiopian state, dominated by their co-religionists, would bring them “dignity,
freedom equality and new opportunities”.
It was the
question of access to the ‘new opportunities’ that widened the gap of division
between the two Eritrean communities.
Take the
access to state power in Ethiopia. Out of 138 highest state posts between 1941
to 1966, 85 went to Shoan Amharas, 19 to Eritreans and 7
Tigriyans.* Eritrea was the second most favoured region (my own comment is that
Eritreans came first if you take it proportional to population size), but the
breakdown of the 19 posts made a difference locally; 16 were Christians and
only 3 Muslims. Among them Saleh Hinit, the first Muslim in Ethiopian history
to become cabinet minister in 1966.
Education,
which was usually the path to high state posts and material benefits, was less
accessible to the Eritrean Muslims than their Christian compatriots. In 1966,
50 % of the children over the age of ten in Asmara were literate; 28% of the
children of the 7 – 12 age-group also went to school in Eritrea as a whole. But
the share of the lowland peripheries in educational opportunities was very low.
Similarly, the enrolment in Ethiopian higher institutions of learning showed a
very high percentage of Eritreans. In average, there were 830 Eritrean students
in the Haile Sellasie I University at any given year during 1963 – 1968, making
16.6% of the total university student population. But out of those Eritreans,
much less than 2 % came from the non-Tigrinya speakers of the Eritrean
lowlands.
This writer (meaning Wolde Yesus Ammar) a Christian,
completed grade 8 with 86 mates in the town of Keren in June 1961. In the 9th
grade entrance (Ethiopian) national examination, in which a pass in Amharic was
a pre-condition for further studies, only four (all Christians) obtained pass
marks. This was because both Tigrinya and Amharic written in Ge’ez Alphabet which
the Christians studied from the beginning. The Muslims constituted 90% of the
group all failed, Many of them either went to the Arab world or joined the
liberation struggle during the 1960s.
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Source:
Eritrea: Root causes of War and Refugees by Wolde-Yesus Ammar, 1992, pp.86 -88
·
Christopher Clapham, Haile Sellasie’Government, 1969. P.81
quoted in
the book
And here is
the educational imbalance during PFDJ:
Out of 512
elementary schools in 1996, 354 (about 70 %) taught in Tigrinya, 96 in Arabic,
25 in Tigrait, 13 in Kunama and 14 in Saho in a population where Tigrinya
speakers are estimated to account for about 50 % of the population. The same
pattern prevails in the distribution of teachers in the lowland provinces of
Barca, Denkalia, Semher, Senhit taken all together formed simply a mere 15 %.
One wonders how much of this has influenced the social engineering of the
society through the years
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Source of
the Statistics: Fouad Mekkis article, “Nationalism, State Formation and the
Public Sphere in Eritrea 1991 – 1996 p. 483 quoting an article by Jenny Street
and a Report of the Ministry of Education
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