Will Brehm 1:57
Rui da Silva, welcome to FreshEd.

Rui da Silva 2:00
Thank you.

Will Brehm 2:02
So, how did you get involved in Guinea-Bissau?

Rui da Silva 2:06
I get involved in Guinea-Bissau as education specialist in Portuguese program. I work since 2004 as education pathway in several Portuguese speaking African countries, and since 2009 in Guinea- Bissau.

Will Brehm 2:26
So, for some of our listeners that might not know where that country is located. Where is Guinea- Bissau?

Rui da Silva 2:34
Guinea-Bissau is a West African small state between Senegal and Guinea-Conakry, is a country with a population around 1.6 million.

Will Brehm 2:52
So, it’s a small state in that sense.

Rui da Silva 2:55
Yes. In that sense, small state. Yes, small state regarding to the size of the country and also the dimension of the population.

Will Brehm 3:04
And it was a small state that was colonized.

Rui da Silva 3:10
Yes. It was a former Portuguese colony. And in a very interesting thing is they declared unilaterally their independence in 1973 as a consequence of the liberation struggle.

Will Brehm 3:27
So, Guinea-Bissau declared independence unilaterally in 1973, you said, when did the struggle start for independence?

Rui da Silva 3:39
The liberation struggle started in 1974 … 64, sorry.

Will Brehm 3:46
1964. Right. And then nearly a decade later, they become independent. And then since the independence, what are some major events that have happened in Guinea-Bissau?

Rui da Silva 4:00
Unfortunately, Guinea-Bissau, the country experienced considerable political and military upheaval. So, since independence, there were 10 coups and there was a civil war between 1998 and 1999. So, during this period, yes, the country is … since independence experienced a lot of considerable political and military upheaval. So, for instance, you … this as a consequence in education system. Since independence until now, they took office, 33 Ministers for Education in 45 years almost.

Will Brehm 4:46
So, wow, wait, so 33 Ministers of Education in 45 years?

Rui da Silva 4:52
Almost 45 years. Yes.

Will Brehm 4:54
So, there must be so much change happening in the education system.

Rui da Silva 4:59
In fact, the political and military stability is rare in the country. Because as different ministers took office, the reforms and the changes doesn’t happen because there’s no one in office to put those policies forward. So, imagine, the first Education Act was published in 2010.

Will Brehm 5:27
Wow. Right. So, there’s … at the policy level, there’s a lot of ideas, perhaps by all these different ministers that are coming in and out. But they’re rarely put into practice.

Rui da Silva 5:42
Yes, and that results as the education system is marked by discontinuities, contradictions and unfinished reforms.

Will Brehm 5:51
So, tell me a little bit about the education system, kind of from a practical point of view, like what does it look like? What goes on? I mean, at the national level, it seems like there’s just constant change. What about at the school level?

Rui da Silva 6:06
The school level, the school level is the same. Imagine when a new minister took office … take office, usually the school principals change also. So, there’s a lot of instability and also the out of school children is very high. And 95%, for instance, the education budget is dedicated to pay teacher salaries. So, families have to make a huge contribution. And also, there’s lack of access. The schools available are not sufficient to accommodate all the children. So, there’s a lot of community and private initiatives in the country. For instance, around 50% of the students at primary education are within community schools, or madrassas, and 40% of the secondary students. So, the parents’ and the families’ contribution is high for the children who are lucky to have access to school.

Will Brehm 7:25
And you have been involved through your university where you work, is that correct?

Rui da Silva 7:33
Yes. The University I’m working now. Yes, I’m involved in the country with this research because I’m finishing my PhD. I’m waiting for the Viva now. So, I’m involved on that. But on the past, I work in … when I work with the country without doing research, I work with other organization.

Will Brehm 8:02
And which organizations did you work with in Guinea-Bissau?

Rui da Silva 8:07
In Guinea-Bissau, I work for the School of Education from the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo because we have a technical and pedagogical back up for this Portuguese aid project.

Will Brehm 8:26
And so, you are working through a university that’s connected to the Portuguese aid?

Rui da Silva 8:33
Yes. In the past, yes.

Will Brehm 8:36
Can you tell me a little bit about Portuguese aid?

Rui da Silva 8:39
Yes. Portuguese aid began in the mid-70s with the independence of the former colonies. And Portuguese aid is considered a fundamental pillar of the Portuguese foreign policy – the last decade. And was undergone with significant transformation to attend to adapt to the realities of the domestic and national contexts. Usually, these information include frequent institutional and organizational reform resulting and the creation and merge of an institution of different organisms. And Portuguese aid, one of the characteristics is decentralized. So usually, we have a development agency, but the other ministries also do participate in their own bilateral agreements with partner countries. But in 2012, as a consequence of the crisis in Portugal and we in 2012, we have emerged from the Camões Institute is the agency that promotes the Portuguese language and culture in foreign universities, and managed foreign Portuguese teaching with a Portuguese development agency. So now we have a new institution that is Camões Institute of Cooperation and Language. And this merge, for instance, as you look for an example is like in the UK, they merged British Council with DFID.

Will Brehm 10:40
And DFID is what? What is DFID?

Rui da Silva 10:44
In UK …  In Portugal, they merge the language agency with a foreign … the development agency. For the listeners, who are not familiar with these institutions, because they are Portuguese. You can imagine something like in UK, United Kingdom, merged British Council with DFID, the Department for International Development, and the language issue was began to … there was in the past but language issue is a top priority. So, this is changed in terms of policies that and the policies they implement.

Will Brehm 11:33
So, is the Portuguese aid in Guinea-Bissau, is it currently primarily concerned with language with promoting the Portuguese language?

Rui da Silva 11:44
Since the beginning, it was the top priority. But from 2009 to 2012, that not the language … the Portuguese language, it was also a priority, but priority as a strategy, not as an end in itself.

Will Brehm 12:07
Let’s take a short break. To see FreshEd continue through 2017, please consider making a donation to cover the show’s small operating costs. Any amount helps. You can find the donation link at our website, freshedpodcast.com. Let’s return to my conversation with Rui da Silva about educational development in Guinea-Bissau.

I want to kind of step back a little bit and talk a little bit more about Guinea-Bissau. It sounds like it’s a country that receives a lot of overseas development assistance.

Rui da Silva 12:50
Yes, that’s right, it is aid dependent. Since the independence, education and health are aid dependent. If there was no international assistance to the country, the education system and health sector doesn’t work. From independence until 1999, Sweden was the main donor of the country. Since ’99 until now, UNICEF and the World Bank were the main donors responsible for financing education systems and Portuguese aid was the main donor to supporting schools. So, UNICEF and the World Bank since 1999 support the macro-level, and Portuguese aid more the meso and micro- level within the schools. So, the presence of the donors in the education system in Guinea-Bissau over time shape the education system, particularly to conditionalities and we see that this support and this presence on the education sector, in terms of macro-level, in terms of the structure of the education system, the education sector become, the structure become more similar to the Western countries. Okay, but we cannot oversimplify these questions. So, these organizations have a role in this but also since the liberation struggle, it was a goal to expand and this desire of education for all and a national education system is a desire since independence and becomes stated as an objective from the liberation struggle that was from 1964 to 1974. So, after the independence, there was a desire to be a modern nation state and to match the levels of education progress in other countries. So, in some aspects, the goal of the country and the reforms and some things that were promoted by the national organization, they match, but since the ’90s with the structural problems, there was a setback in the investment and in the expansion of the education system. At the broader level, those organizations as the World Bank, UNICEF, Portuguese Aid, and other institutions may have been successful introducing their educational agendas in Guinea- Bissau education system. So, this organization promotes a kind of standardization of the education system, especially in the macro level, the organization of the system make it more similar to Western countries, as I said before. This standardization at the macro level is more evident at the tertiary education because of the pressure of the multilateral regional organization UEMOA. So, they are playing a key role in shaping the organization and the duration of the academic degrees. And what seems interesting is that this organization is promoting the some of the characteristics of the Bologna process, and this is not exclusive from Guinea-Bissau. If you go to Cape Verde, is also a Portuguese former colony, small state island, also the same. They’re putting the higher education similar in terms of organization and credits as the Bologna process. So, some of the principles of the Europeanization of the education is present at this level. At the broader level, it seems that the primary education policies have more influence from multilateral and non-governmental organizations and the post-primary education policies are more influenced by bilateral organizations. So, there’s also a great stimulus for increased the private sector. So, however, the research we conduct in Guinea-Bissau indicates that these local actors are both creators and interpreters of the policies, but their influence, these local actors, their influence at the macro-level is minimal. They are more able to do changes and to at the meso- and micro-level, especially within schools, but at the macro-level, these international organizations, multilateral or bilateral, have a huge influence in education systems, because they are … not only because of this, but mainly because they are aid dependent.

Will Brehm 18:53
Right. So, policymakers have to meet the conditions for these loans and these grants from these various organizations and so, that in a sense, ties their hands. Their agency is arrested.

Rui da Silva 19:11
Not at all. The macro level agency. You know they are not passive receivers but also a huge challenge and usually, you have in the country three, four, five, six months teacher strikes because of the lack of payment of salaries. And usually World Bank, the loans, usually cover the teacher salaries. So usually they and also UNICEF, but they solve the strike. They usually the strikes in the country because the loans allow the government to pay teacher salaries and then the school system starts working again.

Will Brehm 20:03
Huh, interesting. So, the teacher salaries are dependent on aid from the World Bank?

Rui da Silva 20:12
Sometimes. Not all times, but during the history of the country, you have that.

Will Brehm 20:19
So, what’s another example of where micro- or meso-level actors reinterpret some of what these aid agencies are trying to give to the country?

Rui da Silva 20:39
Okay, that’s a great question. So, yeah, for instance, we can go now to these Portuguese aid programs. So, they implement teacher resource centers in the schools. But on the beginning, they call language workshops. On the beginning, they start these places where teachers can go and have access to … teachers and students have access to ICT, and also to the language. But with the time, those places with the teachers and the students began … those places, they became teacher resource centers and resource centers to the schools, not only a language workshop. So that was also influenced … the local actors have influence on that. But also, when you go to the macro-level, the Minister of Education staff, also when they have assignments from the donors because they are within a project, they interpret that, but sometimes there are misunderstandings. So, for instance, when in 2011, between 2011 and 2012, when there were education reform, there was a language issue on the implementation of the program. They began to have working groups to prepare materials for the new reform. And the consultants were French. So, they have one subject, it was geste pédagogique. And they translate that directly to gestos pedagógicos but in Portuguese doesn’t mean anything. So, on the end, they try to adapt that donor driving policy with a translation problem. They try to implement that, and they try to adapt the policy.

Will Brehm 23:29
Was it successful? I mean, it sounds like that policy wouldn’t necessarily work if there’s a huge translation issue.

Rui da Silva 23:37
Yeah. Unfortunately, there was a coup in 2012. And it was a political instability since then. So, there will be … at the moment is other unfinished reform that we don’t know what’s going to happen because of the political instability. So, we need to follow up. What we know from that is another unfinished reform.

Will Brehm 24:07
It sounds like the donors have had huge power in the country and in the education system with designing these policies. But it also sounds like they make some, well, some simple mistakes that actually are quite profound. Like the one you mentioned with hiring a French consultant to design policy and curriculum and ultimately having problems with translation.

Rui da Silva 24:34
Yes, they have, but now within the Global Partnership for Education, it seems that the donors are coordinating better the efforts because they have the local education group but it seems, do not know for sure, but it seems they are now more coordinated, but because of the political instability, most of the policies that doesn’t follow, but what it seems very interesting in this case, in the article, we have figures that you can find … you never saw political and military stability, with coups, attempted coup, political assassination and changes of  Minister of Education. We have a figure when that was is represented. And you can see the instability. When you go there and you see the period from 2010 to 2012, it is these two years are one of the most stable periods of the country. The Education Act was approved. Another important legislation was approved, and education system work all year without a strike and without stopping. So, you can see the resilience of the education system, when you have stability, the education system starts working and doesn’t stop. And the donors have a key role on this because there was stability, considerable political stability, and then the donors support the education system, and the education system work for almost two full years.

Will Brehm 26:48
But do you also think that the development assistance from all these different donors contributes to the instability in the country?

Rui da Silva 26:59
I don’t think so. I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t think so that that they contribute to that. The instability is military and political. And we watch this since independence. I don’t know. I’m talking about the education sector. I don’t know the other sectors, if they contribute to that because there’s a huge presence from the security forces aid because of the reform of the security forces, because they are identified as a key issue to the stability of the country. In education system, I don’t think so.

Will Brehm 27:44
So, I want to turn to some of the work that you’ve done in Guinea-Bissau looking at the Portuguese aid intervention at the school level, particularly from that 2009 to 2012 period. So, kind of in that period of stability you’re talking about. And this program focused a lot on capacity development. Can you tell us a little bit about what this project was?

Rui da Silva 28:11
Yes, this project, it was, they work at since 2000 until 2012. The second phase from 2009 to 2012 implemented the capacity development approach. That was a period where Portuguese aid implemented a new strategy. And then the new structure was in 2005, and then between 2008 and 2009, they restructured the program, and this program, since then, implemented the capacity development approach, and then introduced a lot of changes within this program.

Will Brehm 29:03
So, whose capacity was being developed?

Rui da Silva 29:07
So, on the past, the focus was on especially on teachers and beginning on students, and then they start to develop the capacity of teachers, but within the second phase, there was adopted a broader capacity development approach. So, there is no single definition of capacity development, and the debate is complex. But however, there’s consensus in the various definitions that enticed to that develop existing capacities and involving the state, the public institutions within the process. The Portuguese also have, in 2010, have a strategy and capacity development and follow the OECD capacity development approach that limits itself at three levels, so at the individual level, individuals; the organization level, and then enabling environment. So, from 2009, the program tried to integrate these three aspects: the capacity development of the individuals, the organizational level, so supporting the individuals, the schools, the Minister of Education, and taking into consideration the enabling environments. So, it was a huge change within this program because on the first phase, the program was developed year by year based on the experiences, and the diagnosis made by the expatriate staff within the project. In the second phase, no, we have a document projects, we integrate this perspective, this capacity development perspective, and integrate not only expatriate staff but local staff working within the teachers, the schools and the Minister of Education.

Will Brehm 31:28
So, why did the Portuguese aid change its strategy in 2005, and then begin focusing on capacity development in 2009? So presumably, that approach didn’t exist in the first phase of this project from 2000.

Rui da Silva 31:48
No, no. It was not. The first phase was developed on the ground year by year. But since this new strategy in 2005, they start to restructuring the program. And this program also, as I said, integrated these three dimensions of capacity development and try to have context sensibility. And also promote the school networks.

Will Brehm 32:34
So, was it successful?

Rui da Silva 32:36
In some ways yes but we’re still examining this, but it seems that the success of this capacity development approach also have some links with the end of the project. Because on the past, there was coups and attempted coups, and political military instability. And the project never stopped because they were on the school level only. Usually, when there was a coup in 2012, the security of the staff wasn’t an issue. Because of this bilateral program, the government, Portuguese government, cut relations with the Guinea-Bissau government. So, the project stopped, but we … the period from 2009, especially 2010, 2012. Because of this capacity development approach, the organizational level, the link with the Minister of Education was more close. They even have a small office within the Minister of Education building. So, with a gap in the operations, the program stopped not … in the past, they continue promoting activities in the schools, when you don’t have only the school level, we have other levels that we think maybe is one of the reasons that the program didn’t continue. So, these bilateral relations, maybe the capacity development approach doesn’t work. Those is not the best strategy when you have a bilateral education program because you work more closely with the Minister of Education and the macro-level, the political level, and then there was a coup.  They changed; the new minister, the new government wasn’t recognized by the Portuguese government, so they stopped it.

Will Brehm 34:48
So, all of that infrastructure that the Portuguese aid had inside this national ministry all of a sudden stopped, was gone.

Rui da Silva 34:58
Yeah. But still Portuguese has a commitment I think with the country because the activities, the bilateral activities stopped it, but then most of the activities from this program passed it to a Portuguese NGO and they are implementing not the same strategy but the activities within the schools. They are still working with a NGO so the activities passed to a Portuguese NGO.

Will Brehm 35:37
Do you think that the Portuguese aid, or I should say, do you think that neocolonialism plays a role in the relationship that Portuguese aid has in the country?

Rui da Silva 35:57
I think so. In some level because since the beginning, the top priority for the Portuguese aid is the language issue. We didn’t talk there. But within the context of Guinea-Bissau, the Portuguese is official language, but only with the most optimist statistics, only about 5% of the people in the country can speak Portuguese. And also, Portuguese is the official and school language. And most of the children who go to school doesn’t speak Portuguese. Not all, but the majority. So, this is an issue, and since the beginning, since the independence, in some level, I don’t say is responsible, no, it’s not responsible, but in some level, have a role. And the language issue and the organization of education is a characteristic of the colonial education system still present today. So, it’s also related with the perpetuation of some of the colonial education system characteristics is the language, organization, and that excludes a lot of children from schools.

Will Brehm 37:28
Well, Rui da Silva, thank you so much for joining FreshEd. It was a really wonderful to talk and best of luck with your viva.

Rui da Silva 37:36
Thanks, Will. It was a pleasure to be on your show.

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