AfDB to empower African students through capacity building

By Isabella Gyau Orhin

The Vice President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Mrs. Zeinab El-Bakri has said the Bank is prepared to empower the people of the continent through capacity building.
Speaking at a stakeholders meeting in Accra last Thursday Mrs. El-Bakri said “as a multilateral development bank, we are determined to transform our institution into a knowledge bank and build the capacity for an African voice.”
The meeting was on the Bank’s strategy orientation and support for higher education on the continent. It was in collaboration with the Association of Africa Universities (AAU).
According to El-Bakri, investment in knowledge increases the probability that new goods and services are generated through the use of this knowledge.
Knowledge creates opportunities for growth by developing new ways of making more efficient use of existing resources. She also said the Bank strongly believes that higher education not only serves this purpose but also plays a key role in nation building by being an important place for the popularization of democratic values, the protection of human rights, the promotion of good governance and the rule of law, and by helping society understand itself, its history, its culture and its institutions.
Further, she said a robust and technology base is a prerequisite for sustained economic growth in the context which is accumulation of physical capital, human capital, the rate of innovation and the technological change.
“The East Asian experience is there for us to learn from,” Mrs. El-Bakri said adding “Africa must be seen to be increasingly convinced that such economic transformation is within our reach.”
She said comparable or much higher living standards must be seen as a promise that we owe to the next generation.
Higher education is able to make significant contributions to he provision of scientific and evidence –based knowledge on the key development issues prevailing in our economies.
Today’s new technologies also present higher education with the largest platform to disseminate knowledge to an exponentially larger number of people than ever before.
“We also need to strengthen alliances and relationships with government, the private sector, civil society, professional associations and with he international donor community to meet he MDGs,” she said.
The African Union has included Science and Technology in its second Decade Education Plan of Action which is from 2006-2015 and has adopted Science and technology.
Also one major articulation of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is to bridge the technological divide between Africa and the rest of the world through the promotion of cross border cooperation and connectivity by utilising knowledge currently available in existing centres of excellence in the continent.
The President of the AAU Professor Akilagpa Sawyer said university enrolment in Africa has exploded with political independence rising four fold between 1975 and 1985and almost tripling again over he next decade.
In spite of this the pressure for further enrolment and expansion is relentless.
The number of universities in Sub-Saharan Africa increased dramatically following the wave of political independence.

From a total of 52 in 1960 to over 300 in 2000 and still climbing.
In spite of these, he said many African countries have only one, two or three universities.
Also, a dramatic explosion of private universities and other institutions of higher education are beginning to provide some relief to the pressures on the dominant public institutions.
Prof. Sawyer however said the African faculty is “greying” as the first and second generations of academics go into retirement and are not replaced at the rate and at the levels of quality required by the demographics and knowledge required over time.
Africa’s universities according to Prof. Akilagpa Sawyer are faced with a dual challenge; On one hand we have the old problems of access, equity, funding, quality, etc. On the other hand we must deal with the new demands of the knowledge society namely, high-end research and innovation, linkage into industry and international networking, he observed.
He said Africa’s universities should be assisted to integrate fully into the global knowledge pool.

Opening the meeting, the Minister of Education, Science and Sports Papa Owusu
Ankomah said Africa abound with rich natural resources. What is lacking is the capacity to harness the available resources through technological knowledge and application for economic growth.
Speaking at a recent AAU meeting on Higher education, Papa Owusu Ankomah said the rich history of higher education in Africa dates back to the flowering of the Nubian civilization through the great temples of knowledge in ancient Egypt to the era of the great centres of learning in Timbuktu in the middle of hate second millennium.
“Those who understood the role of a university in the greater human setting correctly referred to the scholars of Timbuktu as “ambassadors of peace.’
“Timbuktu was not only a great intellectual centre of the West African civilizations of Ghana, Mali and Songhai but also one of the most splendid scientific centres and contributors to the period described as the European Medieval Renaissance eras.


He also said the African higher education system now cannot but be an important and critical part of the overall continent’s renaissance

The Minister explained that during the 1980s and the 1990s, the significance of higher education institutions was played down in favour of basic education and this policy bias, combined with economic difficulties of most African countries at the time led to a weakening of public support for higher education.

This he said happened at a time when demographic pressure was leading to an enrolment explosion in Africa’s higher education institutions.
Some continental bodies including the AAU and a few African bodies resisted the relegation.”
The Minister however said that in the mid 1990s African Ministers of Finance started making a case for higher education.

“We need to remind ourselves that the current situation of the African higher education system is part of a change process, with a past shaped by many factors, a complex and evolving present and a future that can go a number of different ways, depending on factors some of which are within our control,” he said.
In a continent where 43 percent of the population is under 15 years and another 28 percent is between 15 and 30 years of age, the Minister said African leaders are today asserting the right to an independent place of the world and are engaged in efforts to rebuild the continent.