thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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 Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 4:57 am Post subject: Africa's storied colleges, jammed and crumbling |
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http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/19/africa/18college.php?page=3
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DAKAR, Senegal: Thiany Dior usually rises before dawn, tiptoeing carefully among thin foam mats laid out on the floor as she leaves the cramped dormitory room she shares with half a dozen other women. It was built for two.
As a result, universities across Africa have become hotbeds of discontent, occupying a dangerous place at the intersection of politics and crime. In Ivory Coast, student union leaders played a large role in stirring up xenophobia that led to civil war. In Nigeria, elite schools have been overrun by violent criminal gangs. These gangs have hired themselves out to politicians, contributing to the deterioration of the electoral process in Nigeria.
In Senegal, the university has been racked repeatedly by sometimes violent strikes by students seeking improvements in their living conditions and increases in the tiny stipends for living expenses. Students have refused to attend classes and set up burning barricades on a central avenue that runs past the university.
In the early days, postcolonial Africa had few institutions as venerable and fully developed as its universities. The University of Ibadan in southwest Nigeria, the intellectual home of the Nobel Prize-winning writer Wole Soyinka, was regarded in 1960 as one of the best universities in the British Commonwealth. Makerere University in Uganda was considered the Harvard of Africa, and it trained a whole generation of postcolonial leaders, including Julius Nyerere of Tanzania.
"If I went abroad maybe I would have more salary, better equipment, fewer students," Tin� said. "I studied on a government scholarship abroad, so I felt I owed my country to stay. But it is very hard."
Tin�, 58, plans to stay in Senegal for the rest of his career. But many educated Africans will not. The International Organization for Migration estimates that Africa has lost 20,000 educated professionals every year since 1990. Those who can afford it send their children abroad for college. Some of those who cannot push their sons and even their daughters to migrate, often illegally.
The disarray of Africa's universities did not happen by chance. In the 1960s, universities were seen as the incubator of the vanguard that would drive development in the young nations of newly liberated Africa, and postcolonial governments spent lavishly on campuses, research facilities, scholarships and salaries for academics.
But corruption and mismanagement led to the economic collapses that swept much of Africa in the 1970s, and universities were among the first institutions to suffer. As idealistic postcolonial governments gave way to more cynical and authoritarian ones, universities, with their academic freedoms, democratic tendencies and elitist airs, became a nuisance.
And more of those children have gone on to high school: Africa has the world's highest growth rate of high school attendance. Abdou Salam Sall, rector of the Cheikh Anta Diop, said 9,000 students earned a baccalaureate in Senegal in 2000, entitling them to university admission. By 2006 there were more than twice that. The university cannot handle the influx. Its budget is $32 million, less than $600 per student. That money must also maintain a 430-acre campus, pay salaries and finance research.
Even those lucky enough to graduate will have difficulty finding a job in their struggling economies. As few as one third of African university graduates find work, according to the Association of African Universities.
Governments and donors in some countries are starting to spend more on higher education. The World Bank chipped in for Cheikh Anta Diop's library renovation, and a coalition of foundations called the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa has pledged $200 million to help African universities over the next five years.
Attempts to reduce the student population by admitting fewer students are seen as political suicide � student unions play a big role in elections, and the country's leaders are fearful of widespread discontent among the educated youth. Senegal has created new universities in provincial capitals like Saint Louis and Ziguinchor, but few students want to attend them because they are new and untested, and the government has not forced the issue.
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I don't know if the university is where they should sending youth of totally poor nations. It would seem to me that the trades would be far more useful at this stage. Africa doesn't need English majors. She needs people with skills that can build things.
Either way, this article gets to the heart of Africa's woes. A full failure, outside of maybe Botswana, to properly manage political and economic institutions since decolonization.
I don't think more aid should be sent. Now, that aid just props up the political institutions and politicians that keep the continent permanently in poverty. I believe it would be better to let them fully collapse. As it is, we keep them just slightly above collapse...inches away from freedom.
Also, migration. All the best and brightest head to the West, and the mediocre head to Russia and elsewhere. 20,000 professionals a year leave. Think of that, the next time immigration to rich Western nations comes up. We absorb the only skills they have, and feel us so morally strong for our immigration system. |
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