Paper long abstract:

In 'developmental states' education plays a particular important role in achieving wider objectives of the state, with two factors commonly characterising educational policies: a high degree of centralised planning accompanied by an integrated approach towards economic development and human capital formation, and considerable emphasis on the social and moral dimensions of education. This is equally the case in Eritrea, a developmental state in which the state 'substitutes itself for society in the definition of societal goals'.

The proposed paper will take the example of Eritrea's human resource development strategy to discuss more generally the scope of individual actors versus the powerful Eritrean state. In concrete, it will look at one group of people who are destined to become part of the future elite of the country: students at Asmara University. Methodologically, the paper is based on life history and observation data collected during the academic year 2000/2001, supplemented by survey data from a wider sample of students. This is put into a more recent context, including the 'militarization' of formal education, based on observation and interview data collected between 2002 and 2004.

It will be shown that on the one hand the Eritrean government has been extremely successful in mobilizing human resources and creating an imagined identity that puts the nation first, what has also been described as 'personal nationalism'. At the time of the main study most young educated Eritreans were willing to go along with government interference into their personal lives. On the other hand globalisation has not bypassed the country. Global dynamics are strongly enforced by the Eritrean Diaspora and are transforming personal and national aspirations.

Eritrea in its current nation-building state of development is at a crossroads. It can follow the present path of constructing policies from above and mobilise or lately coerce the population to follow those for their own benefit and the nation's development. Or it can genuinely start from people's multiple realities, and take the aspirations people have for their personal lives seriously. Only in the latter case will a majority of the educated population remain committed to work for the development of Eritrea - instead of taking up the opportunities offered by the global environment beyond. Ultimately, the most important legacy of the 'Eritrean revolution' might be to have created the conditions for parts of the post-independence generation to aspire for and actively bring about a different future.