Ailing Library: A source of human resource failure!

Library is the source of information: that one researcher/author transfers his/her knowledge to the community. Western world thrives on deliverance of knowledge from one person to the other.

A century ago, not a very long time, our natural way of transferring knowledge was totally disrupted by the coming of a white man.A craftsman would let a young man to learn his trade through apprenticeship and hence therefore the learner eventually by using the knowledge plus forces of environment could manage to sharpen the item into the next better level. To date though witch doctors are ubiquitous they do not have an official way of transferring their knowledge to the next generation. Contrary the western world spend enormous amount of capital on researches and development ( R& D) and thereafter results of their researches are published and displayed in libraries and universities. I may argue that the first world still transfers knowledge to the next generation while our way of knowledge is sadly muted.

Dar Es Salaam has one existing Library located at the Central Business District constructed several decades ago when the City had a population of less than 500,000 residents. Now with the population close to 5 million the ill-equipped library looks like a joke stalking old books. As residents move as far as 30km from CBD we expect library services to follow the ever moving population but this is not happening leaving only market force to demand consumption patterns of Dar Es Salaam dwellers. We are enclosed with noisy bars, convenient shops,hotels, restaurants etc that facilitate consumption of foreign stuff at the expense of our innovation and creativity.

Prof. Ali Mazrui once wrote that capitalism implanted into our being consumption culture but intentionally did not activate technological know how. We moved from communal way of life into capitalism embedded with modernity, excessive consumption of material goods without learning on how to manufacture them. Yet existence of libraries ensures that knowledge is shared among humanities not only of these generation but many many more from today. After all if Edison ignored to document his findings that led to the discovery of bulb we could not be enjoying electricity as we consume today. One discovery leads to another, and one way the next generation accrues the knowledge of the last scientist is by visiting local, national and university libraries; the idea we're desperately missing.


The reason why we fail to develop libraries is that our leaders' mindset is engraved in the idea that development will be determined by drilling natural resources to the exception of human resources. Now and then leaders trot around the world looking for investors to harness gold, uranium, oil, tanzanite, etc with no clue that the real development will be gained by developing human resources.Canada( a leading nation in mineral extraction) has a higher valued human resource compared to none in southern Africa that enabled her to exploit our fragile economies by extracting minerals massively.Take Switzerland as a case in point. The country is landlocked, with no natural resources but yet harnessing talents of her own men and women guarantees a place among to the club of the mighty.Switzerland is good in producing very tiny but highly valued items that needs greater input of human brain as compared to muscle power.