8 September 2022  Issue No: 373

The higher education sector in Africa, in particular in areas of work linked to industrial development and infrastructure building, will benefit from US$1.8 billion in official Japanese development assistance, which forms part of a total package of US$30 billion in public and private contributions to the continent. This includes the training of 300,000 people.

Academics have stressed the importance of ensuring African graduates secure jobs after their studies, ideally linked to the expertise they have gained during their courses. They spoke out at the second Annual Academic Summit, an international conference hosted by the Honoris United Universities network of private universities, in Tunis.

An African Centre for Innovation and Smart Agriculture will be set up in Tunisia with technical and financial assistance from Japan in a bid to promote Africa-Japan cooperation in innovation, training, higher education, research, climate-smart agriculture and the creation of start-ups in the field of agriculture.

Intellectual dependency fostered by teaching methods used in many African universities promotes a culture of intellectual laziness that is ultimately detrimental to the development of Africa, a continent that needs citizens who are creative, innovative and critical in order to address its challenges.

In the end, it will be an ordinary start to the new university year in Algeria, on 17 September. After the restrictions due to COVID-19 and some upheavals, distance education, the group rotational system and the safety measures against the pandemic have come to an end.

To help confront the widespread value system failure across Africa, including ethical challenges witnessed in leadership, governance and research, universities have to introduce measures such as establishing directorates of ethics and include ethics in the curriculum to teach students as future leaders the ethical way of doing things.

My name is Enock Rugut. I am a second-year masters student at Egerton University located in Njoro, Kenya, where I am working on a degree in plant breeding. My research project involves different activities – including planning, land preparation, acquisition of inputs and management of harvest to post-harvest handling.

The COVD-19 pandemic’s expansion of online learning has created higher education opportunities to teach Africa’s prison inmates, even if administrators of correctional facilities have been reluctant to take advantage of these options. The idea that prison can deliver reform and punishment is not universally accepted across the continent.

The safety of the university community who form part of the civilian population in Ethiopia’s Tigray region is in doubt following reports of airstrikes by Ethiopia’s air force on the regional capital, Mekelle, which caused deaths and injuries.

The history of Zhejiang University, one of China’s oldest universities and among the fastest growing globally, suggests that through constant adaptation and transformation, and by adopting a ‘global problem-solving mindset’ and collaborating internationally, universities have a better chance of becoming powerhouses for social progress.

In what is claimed to be the first “real world field study” of inoculation theory on a social media platform, United Kingdom psychologists, cooperating with Google experts, found that a single viewing of a pre-bunking video clip is effective in raising awareness of misinformation.