Without government backing, HE will not move forward

As the 15th general conference of the Association of African Universities (AAU) ended, it was clear that the continent’s higher education institutions are in distress. Academia is facing inadequate funding, decaying infrastructure, deficient human capital, low research output, slow and unreliable internet connectivity, and issues of leadership and governance in almost every country in Africa.

This means that African universities have also struggled to fulfil their mandate to lead the continent’s development agenda. And the pandemic has aggravated an already dire situation.

In her presentation to the conference, Professor Sarah Anyang Agbor, the African Union Commission’s commissioner for human resources, science and technology, said that, without the political will and proper investment in higher education, Africa’s universities would not help deliver on Africa’s development agenda.

“If education is the only key to the development goals, why is education in Africa so under-developed? We should make decisive decisions about our universities,” Agbor said.

It is clear that African universities will not be able to improve the quality of their education without strong backing from their governments.

Nor will they be able to increase the gross enrolment ratio for tertiary education, which currently stands at 9% in Sub-Saharan Africa. This led a frustrated academic at the conference to comment that “perhaps it is not so important to give university education to everybody”.

Funding woes

Many of Africa’s universities have been both under-funded by government and under pressure from students and other stakeholders not to raise tuition fees. As a result, universities are searching for sources of additional income.

Suggestions include endowment funds, university-industry partnerships, the commercialisation of services and products, and alumni associations and entrepreneurship, but none of them appear robust enough to enable universities to take the lead in the realisation of the African Union’s Agenda 2063, ‘The Africa We Want’.

Such fundraising will not be easy, cautioned voices such as that of Dr Violet Makuku, project officer of the Harmonisation of African Higher Education Quality Assurance and Accreditation Initiative at the AAU.

“Skill sets in grant writing and communication will be required, while ethical issues about funds management are at the heart of fund-raising activities,” she said.

Another problem highlighted at the conference is the high average age of professors. Universities often struggle to replace retiring professors with suitably qualified people. Reasons for this include that early-career academics often receive scholarships or pursue other opportunities elsewhere in the world, and then do not return.

“In most instances, there has been no return on investment in some higher education students that disappear to foreign countries, or get jobs outside the universities,” said Professor Jane Ngila, acting executive director at the Nairobi-based African Academy of Sciences.

Digital infrastructure

The conference also heard that many researchers continue to publish their work in predatory journals or are promoted by the universities for having published papers in publications that have not been peer-reviewed.

To overcome this problem, Makuku proposed the introduction of high-quality institutional journals that are not only peer-reviewed but also properly indexed.

“Why follow others, and why should they even determine quality for us?” she said.

While the pandemic has hastened the shift to open and distance learning, access to digital resources remain a major challenge. Many African countries still lack fast and reliable internet connectivity at higher education institutions, and many students do not have access to laptop computers and smartphones.

As the conference concluded, there was excitement when the AAU announced it would uphold the position of the AU on the African diaspora as a sixth region in addition to North, West, East, Central and Southern Africa. The AAU confirmed that it believed the diaspora could bring about transformative change on the continent.

In keeping with the African Union’s Agenda 2063, the conference recommended granting full AAU membership to universities at which community members consist of 50% people of African descent, as well as working closely with historically black colleges and universities in the United States.

Perhaps the mood and tone of the conference was captured, not just by the lofty academic papers and other presentations, but also by the pop song Africa by Wiyaala Djimba, a Ghanaian singer and songwriter, that was frequently played by the AAU TV during intervals:

The lyrics start off with:

The land is good, the land is fine
Gold we have, Diamonds we mine
Yet we fight, we covered it all in blood
Tell me why we wallow in the mud
Africa Africa Africa Africa yeah ...

Maybe Djimba is telling us that what is ailing African universities is not merely the shortage of funds, but also a lack of political will, as well as poor governance and leadership at institutional level.

But what was left unanswered was the rhetorical question posed by Professor Orlando Antonio Quilambo, president of the AAU’s governing board, in his closing address on 8 July: What kind of universities does Africa want?