Accra — How to improve tertiary education in sub-Saharan Africa, and find ways to make it work, is the theme of a three-day conference being held in Accra, Ghana. Questions raised in the opening speech on Tuesday, by Ghanas Tertiary Education Minister Elizabeth Ohene, went straight to the heart of the matter. She said these were "challenging times for institutions of higher learning in Africa".
The Accra conference, organised by the Association of African Universities, the World Bank, the Association for Development and Education in Africa (ADEA) and Ghanas National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE), brings together academics, researchers and experts, as well as policy and decision makers from in and outside the continent.
The idea is "to share lessons learned in Africa on how to carry out innovative changes and transformation for the improvement of tertiary education in the sub-region," said Ohene, formerly a career journalist who campaigned for the governing New Patriotic Party in the 2000 elections in Ghana and was appointed a minister shortly afterwards by President John Agyekum Kufuor.
Ohene noted that many African countries were engaged in initiating or reviewing education reforms and drawing up strategic plans for tertiary education. But, she queried, "do these elaborate reports and strategic plans work? These are questions that need to be asked."
She pointed to multiple challenges, including an ageing faculty, the brain drain and weak private sector participation in tertiary education. Other weaknesses in the system included weak technical and vocational education and training facilities for industrial expansion, poor financial and logistic support to carry out research and development and disseminate research findings, as well as weak linkage of programmes with social and productive sectors of the economy.
Even more pressing problems, argued Ohene, citing the case of Ghana, were "the queues of desperate young people who have been besieging my office, looking for places at the universities," which are busy with admissions for the new academic year. Yet sub-Saharan Africa as a whole was facing low enrolment and a situation where a mere 3.5 percent of the continent's college-age community was registered at tertiary institutions; "indeed the experience in Ghana bears this out," she commented.
Ohene identified the need for more physical and academic facilities and resources, as well as a solution to the "everlasting problem" of financing tertiary education. And, she stressed, now was the time to take a "critical look" at what institutions of higher learning were teaching and to ask if they were meeting the needs of African societies.
"I hope this conference will provide us with some answers," for the things that work in funding university-level education, the Ghanaian minister said on a positive note. She recommended discussion on practical ways of collaborating among higher institutions in areas such as pooling knowledge, experience, expertise and resources, distance learning, ICT and faculty exchanges, as well as research and curriculum development.
But there are more questions than answers.
How, for example, could Ghana counter a "dramatic swing" away from the sciences towards the humanities? How too to "crack what seems to be the myth surrounding mathematics?" These are concerns that, no doubt, radiate throughout African universities and higher education institutions.
Returning to the issue of academics and the problem of ageing faculty staff and lecturers, Ohene wondered what might act as an incentive or enticement to encourage younger people to opt for academia. The answer, she said, was to ensure that lecturers in Africa were paid enough to "keep them happy" in their jobs.
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Another critical question, argued Ohene, was to look at who runs institutions of higher learning in Africa. Perhaps, she remarked, the best professor or Nobel Prize winner did not necessarily make the best university vice-chancellor. Was it now time to search for someone outside the university, she wondered, perhaps from the private sector, to take charge of a given university or "is that sacrilegious?"
Ohenes hope was that the education meeting in Ghana would seriously address these challenges and find lasting solutions. The task facing the delegates gathered in Accra for the Training Conference on Tertiary Education in sub-Saharan Africa will endure well beyond the end of the meeting.
