Light for Africa

This week the Duke of Gloucester breaks sod on a hill outside Kampala, capital of Buganda, principal kingdom of Uganda, for the stone buildings of Makerere College for Higher Education, first all-Negro university in East Africa. Recommended by a Royal Commission on Higher Education, the university will speak English, will teach the arts, science, agriculture, medicine, education, veterinary science and engineering to bright young blacks of Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika and Zanzibar.

While in Africa, the Commission collected fine specimens of big game and some damaging facts about Britain's ''trusteeship'' of backward peoples. Example: Government provision of primary schools is so inadequate that of the 720,000 children between the ages of five and 15 in Uganda, only one-third attend school, and of this number more than five-sixths attend mission schools. The sun may never set on Britain's empire, but it has disgracefully few native minds to which the light of education penetrates.

While Hitler and Mussolini trumpet their sympathy for the native, native dissatisfaction with British rule steams and bubbles from India through Palestine to Africa. In East Africa more sanitation, medicine, education and agricultural improvements might reconcile villagers to their colonial status. Such a program requires trained experts. Since Negro civil servants are cheaper than white, in fact cost only one-fifth as much to hire and maintain, the $1,000,000 Makerere College is expected to be a good investment for England.

Commissioners were concerned, however, with the present shortage of women fit to be mates of prospective Makerere alumni. Afraid that tribal wenches may undo the effects of higher education, the Commission suggested that facilities for giving a sound secondary school education to a limited number of young females be immediately provided. When this provision has been made, students at Makerere will be advised to marry during their college careers. Reason: "To preserve their morals."

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