Call for help for HE in nations emerging from conflict

Policy-makers and academic leaders from Afghanistan, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo used the Going Global 2013 platform to call for more international collaboration and support to help rebuild higher education systems ravaged by conflict.

Dr Obaidullah Obaid, minister of higher education for Afghanistan and the survivor of an assassination attempt last year, said his country needed to build on the expansion of provision that had taken place during the past decade by focusing on quality, and he called for more international partnerships to achieve that.

Afghanistan was preparing to move to English as the medium of instruction so it could be part of the international education and scientific community and offer joint programmes, he said.

“The new plan is for quality improvement. We need to hire more quality teachers, produce quality graduates and encourage research,” said Obaid. Agriculture, health, business, mining, education and the public sector were priority areas.

The country had recently started to make use of technology to build collaboration between institutions within Afghanistan, which could be used to work with international partners.

He pointed to some gains over the past decade. In 2003, there were just seven universities. Now there were 31 higher education institutions and a further 73 private institutions, with more than 200,000 students enrolled.

The proportion of women had increased from zero to 23%, said Obaid.

Iraq

Dr Abbas Taher, scientific advisor for Kufa University in Iraq, made an impassioned plea for international support. “We need to raise our voice to the world, to those willing to support us. Iraq is of value for the stability of the Middle East and the future,” he said.

The country’s education ministry had tried to establish a new system of partnership and reconstruction to rebuild universities. “But we can’t achieve it alone, without the collaboration of the international community."

Iraq, he said, was trying to entice expatriate academics and draw on scholars in the Iraqi diaspora to support its efforts.

The country wanted to see franchising, joint research and supervision, exchange visits, access to libraries, a greater role for private provision, and collaboration in curriculum development. Digital communications in education could also be used as a tool for peace.

However, these pleas for support met with an angry response from one academic leader in Iraq. Professor Mohammad Jabir, vice-chancellor of Al Nahrain University, said: “There is always an unhealthy relationship between developing and developed countries.

“It sounds as if developing countries are always begging but don’t know what they need. They don’t know how to ask for it or how to give in return.

“I expected someone to say what we need and in what form.” Asking for money, he said, too often ended in corruption and seeking Western support for training exacerbated the brain drain.

“We don’t know how to care about our brains. We don’t know how to place them, or how to respect them,” he said.

He supported the role of partnerships, but wanted to hear practical solutions, such as how to develop the language abilities of students, and models for programmes that could be studied both in Iraq and overseas.

The Congo

Professor Germain Ngoie Tshibambe, dean of the faculty of social, political and administrative sciences at the University of Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), said that without international collaboration the brain drain would only increase.

The DRC was struggling to rebuild a dilapidated learning and physical infrastructure. Staff morale was low and academic standards were declining, he said.

“International partnerships are of great value. There is nowadays a global knowledge economy with some nations connected while others are disconnected,” Ngoie Tshibambe said.

“Globalisation implies the emergence of the global university.” This could help universities reform outdated bureaucratic structures impeding development.

He cited the Migration for Development in Africa (MIDA) Great Lakes programme – mostly funded by Belgium – as an important initiative to encourage the country’s diaspora to return to the Congo and support reconstruction.