Humanities and leadership: thoughts on the education of Benjamin Mkapa, President of Tanzania:

What I admire most about these predecessors of ours, as indeed exemplified in the first three Presidents of Tanzania, was their mastery, internalisation and application of the humanistic liberal education that they had acquired at Makerere [University] and elsewhere….

I think that it is significant that [the Presidents] Mwalimu [Julius] Nyerere, Sheikh Ali Hassan Mwinyi and Benjamin Mkapa, all pursued liberal humanities courses of study.

The humanities are these days speciously and disparagingly referred to as “the arts” by many of our policymakers, in their strident clamour for the sciences and demonstrable skills. We will not go into the details of these today. But my argument is that, if we are to go by the examples of leaders like Julius Nyerere or Benjamin Mkapa, the humanities or liberal studies, like language, literature, history, theology and philosophy, are an excellent preparation for public service and leadership roles….

His humanities education helped him in his struggles in three main ways. First, it apparently nurtured in him that open-minded and tolerant attitude that enabled him to receive and evaluate opinions and standpoints without prejudice. That is what “liberal” is all about. Secondly, Mkapa’s linguistic and literary training equipped him with a superb communication competence, or eloquence, that enabled him to convince and persuade his many audiences of the reasonableness of his views.

Finally, a humanities education trained Mkapa to keep insatiably searching for information and knowledge. This is evident in the voracious reading habits that sent Hayati Mkapa seeking out and consuming the writings of even obscure novices, like the Bukenyas of the 1970s. I think that a fair supply of well-read and constantly reading leaders would go a long way towards making Africa a better place to live.