Early Life and Education
Kambarage Nyerere was born on 13 April 1922 in the town of Butiama in Tanganyika's Mara Region. He was one of 26 children of Nyerere Burito (1860–1942), Chief of the Zanaki. He began attending Government Primary School in Musoma at the age of 12 where he completed the four year programme in three years and went on to Tabora Government School in 1937. He later described Tabora School as being "as close to Eton as you can get in Africa." In 1943 he was baptised as a Catholic, taking the baptismal name of Julius. He received a scholarship to attend Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. Here he founded the Tanganyika Welfare Association, which eventually merged with the Tanganyika African Association (TAA), which had been formed in 1929. Nyerere received his teaching Diploma in 1947. He returned to Tanganyika and worked for 3 years at St. Mary's Secondary School in Tabora, where he taught Biology and English. In 1949 he got a government scholarship to attend the University of Edinburgh and was the first Tanganyikan to study at a British university. He obtained an undergraduate Master of Arts degree in Economics and History in 1952. In Edinburgh he encountered Fabian thinking and began to develop his particular vision of connecting socialism with African communal living.
Read more about this topic: Julius Nyerere
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