The “ Aidification ” of National Experiences : Swedish-Supported Correspondence Education in Tanzania , ca 1960 – 1975

This article deals with the foundational juncture in a 60-year long (and counting) relationship between Swedish and Tanzanian adult educators. It analyses how Swedish correspondence education methods and objectives were adapted as they entered the emerging field of foreign aid. Two educational institutions in Tanzania, in which Swedish funds and personnel played a central role are studied: the Nordic-funded Co-operative Educational Centre in Moshi founded in 1964, and the Swedish-funded National Correspondence Institute in Dar es Salaam (1971–). The analysis shows how international NGOs and individual policy entrepreneurs created the initial arenas for policy transfer. It emphasises how the ideal of creating an equal partnership affected the policies that were being lent and borrowed. The article argues that the concept of aidification can be used to capture the ways in which transnational policy areas such as education were transformed in the wake of decolonisation.

rush" or "development race" affected the field of adult education in Sweden. 3Which actors collaborated in adapting Swedish experiences of correspondence education for development purposes?In what ways did emerging development ideals of "partnership" determine processes of policy lending and borrowing?
Decolonisation in Africa and Asia not only had profound effects on dominant political discourses and identities in those continents but also in Europe. 4In the following I study a foundational juncture in what would turn out to be a 60-year long (and still counting) relationship between Swedish and Tanzanian adult educators. 5In the 1960s "development" became a ubiquitous concept in international affairs, and it seemed almost impossible to speak of North-South relationships without resorting to it.It is against this background that I examine the setting up of two educational institutions in Tanzania in which Swedish funds and personnel played a key role.The first is the Co-operative Educational Centre (CEC) in Moshi founded in 1964 and jointly initiated by the Nordic co-operative movements.The second institution is the Swedish-funded National Correspondence Institute (NCI) in Dar es Salaam, established in 1971.The CEC's main objective was to offer training for the rank and file of Tanzania's rapidly growing rural co-operative primary societies.The number of students increased over the first years, and between 1965 and 1969 6,100 individuals enrolled. 6By the end of 1970, eight correspondence courses had been produced by the CEC.In contrast, the NCI was created through a bilateral agreement between the Tanzanian and Swedish governments.It was a central, national institute for mass correspondence education under the auspices of the Institute for Adult Education in Dar es Salaam. 7By July 1974 there were 8,600 students enrolled, and two years later the number had reached 20,000. 8While the Moshi centre had been launched with a handful of employees, by 1974-1975 the NCI was already employing 64 Tanzanians on full-time contracts. 9he analysis is based on reports, correspondence and publications kept in the archives of the Nordic Tanzania Project and of the Swedish aid office in Dar es Salaam.Specifically I have traced the development of the CEC in the first of these archives in the boxes dedicated to "Co-operative projects." In the latter archive I have concen-The "Aidification" of National Experiences trated on the boxes dedicated to the NCI.The selection of these sources is motivated by the fact that they were produced within what could loosely be termed the Swedish/Nordic-Tanzanian zones of contact and collaboration that I focus on here.The sources provide accounts of how key Swedish actors interpreted ongoing processes, explained developments and prescribed actions.These accounts invariably include passages of "translation, " either when Swedish actors sought to make their experience of adult education applicable in Tanzania or, conversely, when they sought to make their experience of development co-operation understandable in Sweden.Such passages have constituted the focal point of the analysis.It is important to bear in mind that many of the documents were intended for superiors in the organisation or influential public groups back home.There is therefore reason to expect a measure of self-censorship when it comes to negative reporting about possible internal conflicts, misunderstandings and disappointing outcomes.The nature of the sources therefore means that the analysis does not claim to deal with the internal relationship between the co-operative movement's and the Swedish aid authorities' respective headquarters and their field offices abroad. 10Moreover, although the sources are suited for the article's stated purpose, they yield limited insight into the Tanzanian point-of-view of Swedish involvement or the day-to-day interactions between Swedes and Tanzanians at the CEC or the NCI.
The article is organised as follows.In the next section I situate the object of study in relation to existing research, and introduce the conceptual framework.I then go on to examine the institutional setting, identifying how international NGOs and individual policy entrepreneurs created arenas in which Sweden and Tanzania established their respective roles as donor and receiver of educational aid.Then I turn to the process of aid professionalisation over the 1960s, specifically the efforts to systematically de-and re-nationalise correspondence education practices.This was part of a broader agenda to dissolve the colonial dichotomies of European leaders vs African subjects and active "donors" vs passive "recipients." It was further expressed in what I discuss in the following section, namely the politics of appropriation.Swedes and Tanzanians collaborated in remoulding education practices deployed within the industrialised Swedish market economy, adapting them to the largely agrarian Tanzanian economy directed by a one-party authoritarian state.In the final section I return to the concept aidification, arguing that it can fruitfully be deployed to capture the ways in which transnational policy areas such as education were transformed in the wake of decolonisation.

Sweden and Tanzania: A postcolonial partnership
At the beginning of the 1960s, Nordic governments jointly and individually intensified their contacts with postcolonial counterparts in Africa and Asia, and by the end of the decade they had established themselves as avid supporters of the Third World bloc in the UN. 11 In their study of Danish agricultural co-operative movement during the 1960s, Gunnar Lind Haase Svendsen and Gert Tingaard Svendsen explain this foreign policy development by identifying an emerging "goodness ideology" in Danish society around this time.They argue that this factor lay behind the significant channelling of resources towards development aid. 12Research suggests that a similar ideological development was in play in Sweden. 13However, the articulations of that domestic ideology in different development contexts require close examination.The reason is that the notion of a wholesale "exporting" of the good Nordic society which Svendsen and Svendsen identify in the co-operative press was too simplistic for those actors who actually came into contact with presumptive "importers" overseas. 14While historians over the last decade have come to focus their attention on what happened to theories of development when they were put into practice on the ground, this analysis instead concerns what happened when practicing adult educators encountered theories of development. 15etween 1962 and 1983 Tanzania was one of the largest recipients of foreign aid in the world.Of the 50 aid donor countries the Nordics have been the most important over time.Over the years they have provided Tanzania with on average 30 per cent of its bilateral aid, and Sweden alone has provided approximately half that share. 16Tanzania received over 10 per cent of Sweden's total foreign aid during the second half of the 1960s, and that share increased to around 15 per cent during the following years.From an early stage, Swedish aid to Tanzania included support to education, gradually being concentrated to adult education and vocational training. 17Existing research has shown how the emerging relationship between the Nordic countries and postcolonial Tanzania was characterised by an intriguing combination of ideologi-  , 1960s-1990s  (Stockholm: Royal Institute of Technology, 2007).17 Edwards (2014) cally grounded solidarity and hardnosed political manoeuvring.Retroactive scholarly assessments have ranged from harsh to admiring.Jarle Simensen characterises the Nordics as naïve in their dealings with the Tanzanian regime, and shockingly unwilling to see the realities of President Julius Nyerere's increasingly authoritarian policies.In line with this, Nordic support to Tanzanian co-operatives has been denoted a "bleak chapter" in the history of foreign aid. 18In a similarly critical vein others have highlighted the reproduction of colonial discourses surrounding Swedish Folk Development Colleges in Tanzania during the 1970s and 1980s. 19On the other hand, scholars that have dealt with Tanzania's adult education policies, including the CEC in Moshi and the NCI in Dar es Salaam, have tended to underscore the relative successes of these early foreign-backed institutions. 20In this latter body of research, while the Tanzanian government is credited for educating the citizenry, the Nordic donors are lauded for their financial backing and forthcoming continuous support. 21t is against this ambivalent historical backdrop that I trace the early Swedish involvement in Tanzanian adult education in general and education via correspondence in particular.I argue that it provides a fruitful case for examining the tensions between problematic idealism and laudable pragmatism (and vice versa) that previous research has highlighted.Specifically, it allows for a study of what I propose to call the processes of aidification which took place within policy fields, professional associations and organisations in the 1950s and 1960s.Although I introduce it in an analysis of Swedish adult education, existing research suggests that the concept might fruitfully be applied in other contemporaneous policy fields too. 22I apply an analytical framework consisting of two component parts.The first deploys concepts devel-oped in the field of Comparative International Education studies, namely "lending and borrowing." Both are central to the broader process of policy transfer: "'Policy borrowing' implies that countries explicitly seek to appropriate a policy and tailor it to the local context, whereas 'policy lending' connotes that governments or global governance organisations provide policies to a receiving country with or without consent." 23 These concepts are deployed here in relation to a second analytical component.It belongs specifically to the history of foreign aid, namely the longstanding dominant Swedish discourse of ensuring an equal "partnership" between donors and recipients.Although the concept of partnership itself only began gaining ground in the 1970s, the ideal of creating "non-paternalist, equal relationships" with no strings attached was strong in Swedish foreign aid circles already during the preceding decade. 24Rooted in Social Democratic rhetoric of international solidarity and an emerging anticolonial facet to Swedish national identity, there was a "strong desire to adapt the forms and content of aid to the goals and wishes of the cooperating partners." 25 This self-perception was clear among Swedish expatriates in Tanzania.In a state so firmly wedded to the rhetoric and politics of self-reliance, a survey among Swedish technical experts in 1971 for example showed that they tended to consider their own presence "a necessary evil." 26 The partnership ideal sprung from a reaction against the colonial imposition of externally designed policies.Although it by no means in and of itself put an end to unequal power relations and colonial patterns of dominance, it did influence the form and direction of global North-South relations in the postcolonial world.Being equal partners, African governments were to actively scrutinise and select policies from their development counterparts abroad, and ideal lenders were to help determine how such policies might be adapted to national goals and local conditions.Taking this framework as my point of departure, I examine how these ideals of being a "good lender" were articulated when aid-funded educational institutions were established in Tanzania.

Institutional settings: National policies, transnational organisations
Like the leaders of other newly independent countries, the Tanzanian government expressed a strong commitment to extensive adult education policies as a means to accelerate economic, political and social development. 27The eloquent and forceful speeches and writings of President Nyerere are commonly cited as an explanation for the strong foreign donor support for Tanzania's postcolonial educational policies. 28As the title of his Education for Self-Reliance (1967) stated, a key purpose of all education was to promote Tanzanian self-reliance from the grassroots-level of the village to the national level.In this endeavour the new Tanzanian government sought assistance from abroad.How did this lead to the large-scale involvement of the Nordic countries?When explaining why certain foreign educational policies become attractive, David Phillips has emphasised the role of political change and subsequent formations of new configurations and alliances. 29Clearly, Tanzanian independence not only brought with it fundamental domestic political change, but also a novel international setting in which the government had to find allies.Meanwhile the Nordic countries were seeking to establish roles for themselves in the United Nations, which at this point was increasingly dominated by the Afro-Asian bloc and its development-oriented agenda.Over the course of the 1960s Swedish policy of neutrality shifted in character, from independent but cautious to an explicitly "active foreign policy." The latter included vocally criticizing (when deemed politically possible) human rights abuses, foreign dictatorships and the East-West divide.Offering development aid became an important tool in this new direction, and in 1968 the parliament committed to the goal of spending one per cent of Sweden's GDP on aid.A key dimension to the government's newfound foreign policy activism was fraternising with Third World countries.In the words of Norbert Götz and Ann-Marie Ekengren, "rationalising the South and its approach to world politics according to supposedly universal modern (i.e.Western progressive) standards was thereby an important objective." 30 By the end of the 1960s, the government became explicitly ideological in its view that Sweden should seek to cooperate with regimes that pursued development goals that the Swedes approved of.Since independence, Tanzania's political course meant that it emerged as an attractive partner in that regard. 31The mutual ideological attraction between Nyerere's TANU and the Social Democratic governments in the Nordic countries was certainly an effective conduit of policy transfers. 32For the Swedes, providing development assistance to Nyere's "democratic socialist" regime was a perfect fit for the government's new foreign policy as it shored up its ideological credentials among prospective allies in the Third World.From a Tanzanian perspective, building good relations with the Nordic countries and flattering them through policy borrowing made sense from the perspective of Nyererean "postcolonial realism." 33 Yet this inter-governmental relationship-building was only one dimension of the many ties that rapidly evolved in the early 1960s.Non-governmental organisations also played a key role.Dana Burde and Gita Steiner-Khamsi have identified several reasons for why such actors are keen to export their educational models and promote their best practices. 34In the cases studied here, it can be argued that the decolonisation of Africa and Asia and the emergence of the Third World as a political force completely transformed the focus of NGOs and INGOs claiming to be "international" in scope and "internationalist" by nature.Both the foundation of the CEC and the funding of the NCI can be linked to specific organisations adapting to the geopolitics of decolonisation and the related political thrust towards implementing, managing and leading "development." The Nordic involvement in Moshi can be traced to the International Co-operative Alliance's (ICA) attempt to become less Eurocentric. 35imilarly, the Swedish involvement in the NCI can be traced to the changing geographic focus of the International Council of Correspondence Education (ICCE), from a largely North American organisation in the 1950s to an increasingly global membership by the mid-1960s. 36The discourse of development and the increasing flows of foreign aid offered them concrete ways to live up to their "international" designations.In both the ICA and the ICCE, as I will be developing below, Swedes played a prominent role in this expansion.Founded in 1895 the ICA began in earnest engaging in the issue of co-operative development at its 1957 congress in Stockholm.According to the historian Rita Rhodes, this congress heralded growing Swedish influence within the ICA.Dr Mauritz Bonow was elected vice-president and would at the next world congress, in Lausanne 1960, become president.He held that position until 1975, and led the move to set up a regional ICA headquarters in New Delhi.That office was largely funded by the Swedish Co-operative Union (Kooperativa Förbundet, KF). 37Moreover, Bonow became a board member of the Swedish aid authority, the Agency for International Assistance (Nämnden för internationellt bistånd, NIB), and was in that capacity closely informed about the launching of official co-Nordic assistance efforts in Tanzania. 38In his inaugural Presidential speech, Nyerere emphasised the role that the co-operative movement would play in the establishment of "a true socialist society.he path towards Swedish support to the NCI took a similar route.Its origins lay in another world congress held in the Swedish capital.In June 1965 the ICCE, founded in 1938, held its seventh international congress and the first of its kind outside North America.Whereas the previous conferences had been attended by less than 100 delegates representing fewer than 10 countries, this conference marked a shift in the ICCE's history, with nearly 300 attendees representing more than 30 countries.A quarter of the participants were Swedish.For the first time one of the themes of the main ICCE conference was dedicated to "correspondence education in developing countries, " and by the next world conference in Paris 1969 the even more specific "training of manpower by correspondence education in African countries" constituted one of five main themes. 41Of particular importance in the present context is the fact that NIB, where Bonow was a Board member, hosted a pre-conference in connection with the ICCE summit in Stockholm, to which a select number of international delegates were invited.The purpose of the pre-conference was to ascertain how Swedish aid funds could best be used in the field of correspondence education.Lars-Olof Edström, who served as a secretary at this meeting, worked for the private correspondence institute Nordiska Korrespondensinstitutet (NKI), but was also present in his capacity as NIB's educational advisor.When the new aid agency SIDA (the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) formally replaced NIB only a few weeks after the conference, Edström continued in his position. 42At SIDA, where he became Head of the Education Division in 1972, Edström would play a key role in the Swedish-Tanzanian process of setting up the NCI in Dar es Salaam.The Australian educator Renée Erdos, who was one of the invited participants at the pre-conference, would eventually become the NCI's first director.
While it is well established that Sweden's official foreign policy became increasingly "active" during these years, the trajectories outlined above provide some insights into the changing conditions that made such a foreign policy possible by filling it with practical content.On the one hand there was a chain linking the ICA's conference in Stockholm in 1957, to the organisation's subsequent forays into technical assistance and the Nordic co-operative effort in Tanzania.On the other, there were links between the ICCE's Stockholm conference in 1965 (dubbed "The UN of correspondence education" in a contemporary magazine article), the professionalisation of distance teaching as an instrument in the broader field of development, and the Swedish involvement in Tanzanian state-run correspondence education. 43he actors that drew Swedish adult education into the aid rush thus included driven individuals such as Bonow and Edström who successfully facilitated and utilised the government's ongoing attempts to mould a new active foreign policy.They identified and articulated "lendable" national experiences that could be integrated into the government's rapidly expanding program of foreign aid, and thus in effect extended the field of adult education into the realm of Swedish foreign policy.A catalyst for their work was the shifting agenda of international organisations that were in the process of seeking to expand their own relevance, membership and influence in Africa, Asia and Latin America.Within these organisations as well as at the official inter-governmental level, the requirements and problems of "development" were actively being placed on the agenda by representatives of the Third World bloc.In this new postcolonial context, the parties went to great lengths to avoid anything that smacked of imperial domination.

Professionalisation: From general experience to specialised toolkit
From the perspective of the Nordic aid-providers, the multilateral context of world congresses and international organisations was felt to ensure that their contribution could not be accused of being paternalistic or colonial in outlook.In 1964 the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, founded in 1962 and co-funded by the Nordic governments, arranged one of its first international seminars on the topic "Development and adult education in Africa." Its Swedish director argued that it was natural that the Nordic organisations working in the field of adult education "should have thought of making available their vast experience:" It is perhaps right to assume that we in Scandinavia have something to give in this very field and that we are able to provide a few ideas.But it is necessary for us to keep clearly in mind that methods and ideas that once have worked in Scandinavia may, for various reasons, not work in Africa. 44ch cautious rhetoric was common.The point was reiterated at an international seminar in Uppsala in 1968, when one of the objectives was to acquaint participants with "Scandinavian" methods of correspondence instruction while also allowing them to critically assess their "possible relevance" to African conditions. 45This move to make national experiences internationally relevant while remaining sceptical of the possibilities of doing so was a central component in making them "lendable." In the case of the CEC, the very fact that aid was provided through joint Nordic organisations was no coincidence.Although the sharing of the economic burden certainly was a factor, the formation of a joint Nordic secretariat for the provision of aid to Tanzania, as well as the formation of a consortium of Nordic co-operative unions to fund the CEC ensured that the intervention was multilateral.Such aid was generally considered less problematic than bilateral aid, since the latter could always be suspected of coming with strings attached.Not only was the CEC by its very nature multilateral, but it could also be described as an institutional expression of the new development-oriented direction within the ICA.The legitimacy of the training methods deployed at the CEC did not lie in their ability to export Swedish educational ideals, but in the way they were seen to promote the movement's uniting principles.Arne Holmberg, soon to be director of the CEC, for instance conceded that there were significant historical differences between the co-operatives in developing countries and Western countries, yet he argued that in practice their members shared the same challenges: "Issues concerning how to run co-operative associations, about control, organisation, the involvement and capacity of staff and elected representatives seem to be the same everywhere, universal."46 From this perspective Holmberg and his colleagues could legitimise their role as experienced co-operators rather than as specifically Swedish experts.
The establishment of the NCI offers further examples of the steps taken to make nationally grounded experiences lendable.The pre-conference in Stockholm sought to directly link prospective Swedish aid efforts to the existing professional agendas of practicing educators.The Swedish authorities then went on to play a key role in hosting the two international seminars on the theory and practice of correspondence education in Uppsala in 1967 and1968. 47 Lars-Olof Edström toured Africa in preparation for these seminars, collating information and interviewing policy-makers in a number of countries.Representatives from these states were invited to Uppsala, and experts from Sweden, Australia, and the UK were brought in to give lectures.All these efforts can be seen as part of a general move to tone down the specific national traits of existing versions of correspondence education and begin to identify underlying models, or tools, that could be used to promote development.SIDA eventually went on to fund the NCI, the initial course-writing workshop, as well as seminars and conferences in Abidjan and Nairobi on correspondence education over the following years.At each stage, efforts were made to dilute the influence of the Swedish funders.The seminars were planned in connection with the ICCE's conference which again gave the Swedish project an internationalist objective.The new Institute was placed under the leadership of the Tanzanian authorities, and each Swedish technical expert had a Tanzanian counterpart.SIDA funded a course-writing workshop in Dar es Salaam under the leadership of Edström prior to the opening of the NCI, and twelve of the Tanzanian participants were selected to write the correspondence courses for the Institute.Three of them were also to be employed as teachers in the new institute. 48wedish development practitioners in Tanzania might initially have seen themselves as "good Samaritans" but, as cited above, within only a few years most of them had come to consider themselves a "necessary evil." This was both a cause and out-come of the professionalisation of development cooperation that was taking place.In 1968 the co-operative movement established its own free-standing body for its development projects, the Swedish Cooperative Center.At the same time SIDA began moving away from project-oriented aid to country programming, the latter intended to give the recipient countries more influence over how to use the funds.In the early 1970s SIDA was consequently restructured into sector divisions which concentrated the in-house technical expertise, while new country units gathered officials specialised on the conditions of each aid-receiving country. 49A comparison between the preparations for the CEC in the first half of the 1960s and NCI in the second half provides an illustrative example of this professionalisation process in the context of educational aid.From the CEC's inauguration in 1964 until 1969, Arne Holmberg was director, and his right-hand man was Rune Forsberg, both recruited from the national Secretariat of KF. 50Neither Holmberg nor Forsberg spoke Swahili when they arrived, and neither had any professional experience of working outside Sweden.Even prior to his arrival in Tanzania, Holmberg and the adjacent Co-operative College's British director Frank Howarth agreed that the CEC had to prioritise the production and distribution of correspondence courses. 51Forsberg was put in charge of writing the Centre's first correspondence course in English, after which it was translated into Swahili by staff at the College. 52It is striking how the CEC's courses were seemingly designed and launched with a minimal amount of preparatory research or theoretical reflections on the process of teaching by correspondence in the rural East African context.Short on staff, high on enthusiasm and with huge demands to meet in Tanzania's rapidly growing co-operative societies, Holmberg and Forsberg virtually began producing course letters directly on arrival in Moshi.Considering that they both completely lacked previous experience of Tanzania, it is safe to say that they adapted Swedish course material to an unfamiliar context on a largely intuitive basis.
In the next few years this method of immediate immersion was all but abandoned."Correspondence education in developing countries" became a field of expertise in its own right and NIB/SIDA found itself at the centre of this transnational development which, in part, it had itself helped set in motion.While Holmberg and Forsberg were producing their first courses, the ICCE turned its attention to the theory and practice of correspondence education in the developing countries at its Stockholm conference.In 1966 Edström argued that adult education had to be related to the everyday life of the students in "a deeper sense" than simply adapting the contents of the courses from abroad."As long as the African student receives an education which is deeply rooted in foreign culture, his environment will be at odds with what he learns." 53 The Uppsala seminars in 1967 and 1968 continued this professional specialisation, focusing as they did on correspondence education in African coun-49 Elgström (1992), 50, 60.Radetzki, Forsberg and Jonsdotter (1968), 38.50 Holmberg's and Forsberg's respective CV:s (both undated) can be found in vol.78, NTP, SNA.51 Howarth to Bonow, letter dated 1 November 1963, vol.78, NTP, SNA; "Rapport över studie-och kontaktresa 1-15 augusti 1964, dated 20 August 1964, vol.78, NTP, SNA, 1.  52 "Översikt av verksamheten 1964, läget vid årsskiftet och planerna för 1965, " dated 26 December  1964, vol.78, NTP, SNA, 2, 4; "Annual Report 1.7.66-30.6.672," dated 20 July 1967, vol.78, NTP,  SNA, 2.  53 Edström (1966), 33.The "Aidification" of National Experiences tries.They resulted in two anthologies, based on the lectures given at the seminars, which brought together a range of experienced correspondence educators who had begun to turn their attention to the challenges of development. 54One contributor to the seminars and their publications was the Australian Renée Erdos, who at the Stockholm conference was elected president of the ICCE.At this point she had limited professional experience of working in developing countries, but in the wake of her UNESCO-publication Teaching by Correspondence (1967), she was employed by UNESCO as Head of Correspondence Study at the Teacher Training College in Francistown, Botswana.From there she was recruited by SIDA to head the new NCI in Dar es Salaam in 1971. 55Thus by the time her second UNESCO book was published, Establishing an Institution: Teaching by Correspondence (1975), she, like Edström, had become an authoritative figure in the new subfield of correspondence education and development.
Erdos' UNESCO books and much of the Uppsala seminars focused on the logistics and institutional set-up of correspondence teaching.A series of different blueprints and illustrated workflows were produced in these years, reflecting just how much more technical educational aid had become by the end of the 1960s.Mass education demanded elaborate organisational designs for planning the production of materials and handling student correspondence.The complexity and scale that this systemic approach to correspondence education aimed at was very different from the operation that had begun at the CEC under Holmberg and Forsberg in 1964.If the latter two can be likened to enthusiastic missionaries, then Edström and Erdos were more like consultant engineers."Showing by doing" was replaced by "advising" and "facilitating, " course writing replaced by suggesting methods, formulating theories and hosting workshops.
Clearly the involvement of Nordic professionals did have some influence on Tanzanian education policies and institutions.The original Plan of Operation for the NCI, the key document on which Swedish funding was based, for instance included descriptions of correspondence education that Swedish adult educators would feel completely at home with."The principle will be upheld that the student learns only when actively engaged in solving problems" and correspondence course would at times be run as "study-circles." 56 Although these methods were not exclusive to Sweden, it is fair to argue that the fact that Edström helped write the Plan of Operation was a factor in shaping the new institute's direction.If nothing else such recognisable educational ideals must have made it attractive for SIDA to fund the project. 57ater, when a World Bank funded research team studied Tanzanian co-operative movement's "self-help approach" it even listed among the problems that the content and the instructional materials "sometimes carried an inappropriate Scandinavian Plan of Operation for the first five years" (undated version), 77, F14, SIDA-TAN, SNA, 7-10.57 C.f. Simensen (2010), 64.bias because of the large role played by Scandinavian technical assistance experts in helping to prepare them." 58 However, such instances aside, the precise extent of the Nordic "impact" on Tanzanian education is difficult to ascertain since the attributed national origins of its characteristics tended to open to interpretation.As has been pointed out in the literature, one recurring purpose for seeking to export national systems and practices is to legitimise their position at home.This was true also when forging solidarity-based partnerships.KF with its ageing membership base was particularly eager to brand its efforts in Tanzania as de facto Swedish to the domestic public.To its members, KF explicitly described the correspondence courses in Moshi as based on a Swedish template. 59According to one Swedish Resident Tutor at the Institute of Adult Education the radio campaigns co-produced by the CEC were initiated by "Swedes in particular, " and the method had been entitled "Radio Study Groups" in order to "not unnecessarily provoke our British colleagues with our Swedish concept 'study circle.'" 60 Another participant in the campaign however, a Canadian at the Institute of Adult Education, described such organised listening groups as international phenomena and highlighted the Canadian experience as perhaps the best known. 61At the same time, from the Tanzanian government's perspective, this form of education through dialogue "fits the Tanzanian ideology of development" as defined by TANU. 62This simultaneous claims-making made the lending and borrowing process attractive to all parties involved in the new development-centred partnerships.The acceptance of several historical origin-narratives was what made it possible for the nationalistic proponents of staunch Tanzanian self-reliance to rely on Nordic support while, at the same time, KF could promote its "Africanised" adult education in Sweden as evidence of a successful "Swedish" model.

Appropriations: Political education
The members of the Tanzanian political and administrative elite that took over at Independence, writes Andreas Eckert, "shared the conviction, inherited from their British predecessors, that they alone knew the solutions for the manifold problems of the young nation-state." 63 A key part of its "African democratic socialism" was the role of co-operatives.Under the new TANU regime there was a proliferation of elit- ist, state-supported co-ops, and the mismanagement of most co-operative societies led to a massive state intervention in 1967, when democratic control by the members was transformed into bureaucratic control by the state. 64Yet it had been a staunchly democratic grassroot co-operative ideology which had led the Nordic co-operatives and aid authorities to Tanzania in the first place.From their perspective, the co-operative movement was seen as a necessary organisation of free peasants and workers for building a democratic society from below.In KF's correspondence institute Brevskolan's correspondence course Afrika fritt ("Africa Free, " 1961), the co-operative movement's governance structure was held up alongside the trade unions and Christian missionaries as a key component in Tanganyika's strong democratic tendencies.Nyerere was described as Africa's most democratic leader. 65This idealised view of what the movement really should be remained strong throughout the 1960s and 1970s. 66At the same time, the Swedish government's support to "progressive" Third World governments such as Nyerere's intensified during this period, and much of its development aid became quite explicitly motivated on political grounds.As Paaskesen has shown, while the Tanzanian state became increasingly centralised and authoritarian in the 1970s the CEC inevitably became an enabler of TANU's "topdown" policies rather than the peasants' and workers' emancipation. 67n 1967, the same year as the government took full control of the co-operatives, the CEC began giving courses that consisted of sixteen radio programmes and listening manuals.In each primary society, groups of approximately 10 farmers were to discuss the co-operative themes raised in each broadcast, prompted by the instructions that were supplied in the accompanying leaflet. 68The experiences of the 1967 campaign would soon be applied on a national scale in collaboration with the government and the Institute of Adult Education.The most extensive campaign, Wakati wa Furaha, was launched in 1971 to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of Tanzanian independence.Conceived within the Institute of Adult Education, it was said to be the largest radio study group campaign in Africa.It was estimated to have reached an audience of around 40,000, and blended elements of organised listening group and study group education.It consisted of radio programs, organised listening groups with trained group leaders, a text-book and points for discussion.The CEC contributed its considerable experience of organising study group work, and provided its existing organisational structure of about 1,200 groups.The objective of the campaign was purely political.The purpose was to "create a deeper sense of national awareness" and highlight Tanzanian achievements since Independence. 69he political role of aid-funded education became even more explicit in the case of the NCI.As SIDA officers saw it, educational reform in Tanzania was inseparable from both the government's development policy and TANU's propaganda."Correspondence education constitutes a part of Tanzania's adult education programme, which plays an important part in the country's development efforts and is a central part of the country's political ideology." 70 Although they formally were apolitical civil servants, the quote suggests that employees at SIDA largely shared the government's conviction by the 1970s that if a recipient country pursued a socialist agenda then the probability increased that Swedish foreign aid would attain its objectives. 71Consequently the significant privately owned, market-oriented section of the Swedish correspondence education sector was deemed irrelevant in the aid context.According to the ruling ideology of African socialism, the market was a vehicle of stagnation and exploitation, and the existing private correspondence courses offered in Tanzania were roundly criticised by both the Tanzanian government and its Swedish counterparts.Edström, who had himself previously worked at a private correspondence institute, concluded in his report from Africa that "few fields of education have suffered so heavily from commercialisation and profiteering as correspondence instruction." 72 Nyerere criticised the very notion of education having a "market value, " a claim that as it so happened constituted a recurring theme in adverts for correspondence schools in the Swedish press. 73Discussing the different meanings of liberation, the president directed his criticism at the idea that education would be emancipatory for the individual.A man in isolation could be neither liberated nor educated, he argued."It is individuals that are educated.But they are educated by their fellows, for the common purpose of all members of society." [The] antithesis of education is still too often the effect of what we call education in Africa-and in Tanzania.There are professional men who say "My market value is higher than the salary I am receiving in Tanzania".But no human being has a market value-except a slave […] [I]n effect they are saying "This education I have been given has turned me into a marketable commodity, like cotton or sisal or coffee." 74 Instead of providing education that was a market commodity, the NCI's Plan of Operation therefore stated clearly that Institute's correspondence education was to serve the ongoing state-driven, and thus TANU-led, efforts to build a new society in Tanzania.From the start the most prioritised course was therefore one originally called "National Policies and Development, " more commonly referred to as "Political Education." When the first course-writer's workshop was held in Dar es Salaam at the NCI, the Tanzanian Minister of National Education, Chedial Mgonja, laid out the government's view of the purpose of its education policy: "Political Education is a star that guides all our plans of Adult Education, " he proclaimed."All other branches of knowledge such as agriculture, commerce, mathematics and science should be written and taught on the lines of our national policy." According to the Minister, the course-writers at the workshop were to ensure that Tanzanian adult education became "a tool with which to build Socialism and Self-reliance." 75 The writing of the course was therefore placed firmly in the hands of the political elite and its designated civil servants.TANU-officials were actively involved in its contents, asking for extensive revisions of the first drafts, and officially approving the final version and accompanying radio scripts prepared by the Swedish Radio Tutor. 76Having entered Swedish foreign policy through the expanding field of development aid, Swedish adult educators now found themselves working as technical experts in the service of an increasingly authoritarian state.At the same time, many of them remained convinced that democracy in Sweden had been built on adult education institutions autonomous of the state that had helped forge a democratic society from below.
An outcome of a process of lending and borrowing between equal partners was that Swedish adult educators could use their involvement to re-imagine the very policy they were making lendable.In 1969, while closely involved in the preparations for the NCI, Edström published a book intended to stimulate domestic Swedish debate entitled "Reform the adult education system now!" (Reformera vuxenundervisningen nu!).In the foreword he explained that the Uppsala seminars had taught him to look at the Swedish system with new eyes.Sweden, he had realised, had been isolationistic in its views on adult education. 77Both developed and developing countries faced the same challenge of coping with rapid, comprehensive change.Citing his own work published in connection with the Uppsala seminars, he explained that all societies had to enhance their "absorptive capacity, " and this could not be reduced to the economic perspective of Theodore Schultz's and Arthur Lewis's theories about human capital.A political and social perspective was equally necessary argued Edström, and the part of the education system that was most readily mobilised "in the service of change" was adult education.This led him to the examples set by Guinea's President Sekou Touré and Tanzania's Julius Nyerere.With admiration he explained that governments like theirs "strive to mobilise and engage the masses to participate in social, political and economic development." 78 For Edström, the experience of translating his expertise as an educator into that of an aid worker, provided him with an applicable model which could be introduced not only in countries like Tanzania but in Sweden as well.Drawing on the notion of equal partnership to its full conclusion, he argued that the state-led ideological basis which Nyerere and Touré formulated could in turn be disembedded and borrowed by Swedes.In the ongoing debates about the social and individual value of education, Swedish engagement in foreign aid introduced fresh arguments in discussions about domestic national policies. 79Africanised adult education, as it were, could now be Europeanised.

Conclusion: The aidification of education
This analysis has offered a case study of how policy lending and borrowing were used in the establishment of new international relationships in the wake of decolonisation.Three related findings can be highlighted.One is the formative role of NGOs and international professional associations.They articulated development challenges and formulated potential solutions which the Nordic governments then incorporated into their expanding foreign aid agendas.Another is the rhetorical ambiguity that the actors involved used: at once owning and disowning policies: while much was made of "Africanising" education methods in Tanzania, there was a simultaneous tendency to frame them as essentially "Swedish" when communicating back home.These two points underpin a third, more general point that can be made: all the actors involved in some sense benefitted from the formation of partnerships through policy lending and borrowing.Aside from the Tanzanian government, which received funding and could pursue its ideological agenda, Nordic governments, cooperatives and professional organisations also stood to gain from playing their part in the ongoing aid rush.The pressing global development agenda offered new ways to gain political legitimacy, claim cultural relevance, and activate the grassroots.Getting involved was both considered a moral necessity and a strategic opportunity.At the same time it left no organisation unchanged.
Not only were the organisations changing through involvement in foreign aid, but so were the "contents" of their educational methods and practices.In the throes of decolonisation, Nordic declarations of Third World solidarity led to inventories of what, financial and rhetorical support aside, these countries actually had to offer their new allies in the global South.At this very practical level, the resort to a general ideology of goodness simply did not suffice.Rather, expanding on Svendsen and Svendsen's argument, the present study indicates that whatever ideological production was going on at home, in practice there were few simplistic ambitions of directly "exporting" successful Nordic or Swedish "models." Right from the start such visions were complicated by the hands-on challenges of working in international settings.Instead of outright "model export" it seems more fruitful to think in terms of the strategic identifying of adaptable national experiences.Through the subsequent interactions between individuals, NGOs and state authorities those experiences became re-contextualised, lent, transformed and borrowed.One outcome of those processes was that the resulting educational practices were often rhetorically re-nationalised and branded as essentially Swedish, Nordic or Tanzanian.However, all such epithets were always a simplification.
The dual dynamics of changing organisations and changing educational agendas were expressions of the aidification processes taking place throughout the world at 79 For critical point about the oft-cited ideal of "mutual learning, " see also Dahlstedt and Nordvall  (2011), 255.The "Aidification" of National Experiences this time.Within the emerging transnational field of utbildningsbistånd ("educational aid") teachers, co-operative leaders and civil servants found themselves assuming new roles; as expatriates, technical experts and unofficial diplomats.They successfully established a platform for themselves within the new Swedish foreign policy direction, and in doing so they contributed to the professional urgency of, and international attention directed at, the government's new activism in international affairs.Aidification connected NGOs, businesses, educators, government departments, and international organisations in new ways.It altered how organisations operated, added new policy objectives and demanded new professional competences.The aidification of adult education was inherently influenced by an ideal of partnership with the recipients of aid.On the one hand, transferring Swedish funds, expertise and experiences was therefore framed as a means to realise Tanzanian aspirations.On the other, the premise of self-reliance meant that not only was Tanzania to be in control of the transfer, but that the policies in the process in fact became essentially Tanzanian.It was in this context that education by correspondence was constructed to fit the mould; at once a Swedish/Nordic "speciality, " inherently democratic and admirably successful, and-paradoxically-also a problematically unique, parochial case which had to be extracted and transformed if it was to be of any use in the postcolonial world.
10 On this, see for instance Ole Elgström, Foreign Aid Negotiations: The Swedish-Tanzanian Aid Dia- logue (Aldershot: Avebury, 1992), 56-59.The administrative structure surrounding the projects, not dealt with here, changed throughout the course of the 1960s.The Swedish Agency for International Assistance (NIB) was established in 1962 to administer Sweden's growing aid program.After a few chaotic years it was replaced by the government agency SIDA in 1965.It was under SIDA that the field office in Dar es Salaam was set up in 1967.In the early 1970s the office became an integrated part of the Swedish Embassy.
23 Laura Michelle Portnoi, Policy Borrowing and Reform in Education: Globalized Processes and Local Contexts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 149.24 Maria Eriksson Baaz, The Paternalism of Partnership: A Postcolonial Reading of Identity in Develop-Appointment with the Third World: Experts and Volunteers in the Field: Their Work, Life and Thoughts (Stockholm: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, 1974), 67.See also Baaz (2005), chap. 5.

54
Studies in Adult Education in Africa: A Selection of the Papers Presented to the Dag Hammarskjöld Seminars in 1967 and 1968 on The Use of Correspondence Instruction in Adult Education: Means, Methods and Possibilities (Uppsala: Dag Harmmarskjölds minnsefond, 1969); Lars-Olof Edström, Renée Erdos and Roy Prosser, eds., Mass Education: Studies in Adult Education and Teaching by Correspondence in Some Developing Countries (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1970).55 Kevin T. Livingstone, "The work of Renée Erdos, " Distance Education 7, no. 2 (1986), 301-6.56 Institute of Adult Education, University of Dar Es Salaam, "National Correspondence Institution: 58 Philip H. Coombs and Manzoor Ahmed, Attacking Rural Poverty: How Nonformal Education Can Help (Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 84.59 Radetzki, Forsberg and Jonsdotter (1968), 97.60 Sundén (2000), 9,; 102.The ascribed "Swedishness" of study circles had shifted over time, see Anne Berg and Samuel Edquist, The Capitalist State and the Construction of Civil Society: Wakati wa Furaha: An Evaluation of a Radio Study Group Campaign, " unpublished report produced within the Institute of Adult Education, University of Dar es Salaam, F14, vol.79, SI-DA-TAN, SNA, 6. 63 Andreas Eckert, "Useful Instruments of Participation?Local Government and Cooperatives in Tanzania, 1940s to 1970s, " The International Journal of African Historical Studies 40, no. 1 (2007), 108, 110.The "Aidification" of National Experiences