Teaching, training, and research

Student surveys frequently describe difficult environments for teaching and learning in many African universities, with overworked and underpaid professors teaching hundreds or even thousands of students. Teaching styles do not encourage students to ask questions or offer independent opinions. Students often describe a lack of mentoring and interaction. Dropout rates in many countries are undesirably high, with far fewer than half of entering students graduating (see link: dropout rate), and while financial hardship is the most commonly cited reason for dropouts, the second most common is academic failure. Loss of qualified professors to emigration or more lucrative jobs is a recurring problem. In some countries (e.g. Ethiopia, Central African Republic) students described the absence of local experts to teach required courses, forcing universities to import expensive foreign lecturers.

Approaches to supporting teaching in Africa's universities can involve providing training opportunities for students or lecturers, funding teacher exchanges, improving working conditions for lecturers (higher pay, smaller classes, research funding, internet access), linking African and international universities, and encouraging expatriate academics to return to teach.

Providing student opportunities was the second-most common response of students surveyed to the question "how can donors help African university education?" (following only "send computers"). Students repeatedly suggested funding "conditional" graduate scholarships at universities abroad, i.e. with a requirement of return to Africa to work or teach.

African students have a long history of international study, with the first arriving to study in the U.S. over a century ago and numbers peaking in the 1980s. Although the numbers of students dropped in the 1990s as Africa's economy suffered, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics reports that tertiary students from sub-Saharan Africa are still among the world's most mobile, with nearly 6% (ca. 200,000) studying abroad, many or most on scholarships or fellowships.

Global tertiary student mobility (UIS)

Scholarship opportunities are haphazard, with most likely coming from individual universities. Small subject-specific programs contribute somewhat (e.g. the World Bank's Robert S. McNamara Fellowships, funding 6 scholars a year in developmental economics). Larger efforts include the Fulbright Program, which provides ca. 1300 scholarships a year for postgraduate students worldwide (199 for sub-Saharan Africans in 2003/4, most for master's or doctoral degrees). The Ford Foundation is also a leader in providing scholarships. In 2001 the foundation instituted a new International Fellowships Program offering over 350 grants each year to fellows from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, or Russia for up to 3 years of study in the U.S, enough for a master's degree. The program continues through 2010. (See also this description from Association of African Universities). The Institute for International Education administers many smaller programs and the Fulbright itself. The overwhelming majority of the 200,000 African students studying abroad, though, have found other funding with no requirement of return to Africa.

Teacher exchanges. Funding the education of African students is one means of transferring knowledge and skills; another is working with teachers (either sending teachers to Africa or providing opportunities for African faculty to visit abroad). U.S. and European professors would readily volunteer to do short teaching stints in Africa (see the AIMS success story), though busy senior faculty would hesitate to take an entire year off. For some needs, a postdoc or even senior graduate student would suffice, and those younger academics might be open to longer time commitments. Several of the African students surveyed described a lack of local professors to teach necessary advanced undergraduate courses in their fields: in the Central African Republic, for example, no local professor teaches partial differential equations.

-- read this survey from the Central African Republic for the difficulty of learning when no local teachers exist to teach a subject. --

Several small programs currently fund U.S. residents to teach at African universities. The International Foundation for Education and Self-Help (IFESH) has run a Teachers for Africa program since 1992, largely for primary and secondary schools but with some placements at universities (over 50 total placements per year). MIT has a small program to send graduate students and even undergraduates to teach computer programming in African universities, something identified by African students as a critical need (and indeed the MIT program was started by a Kenyan MIT doctoral student). See article or program website. The Fulbright program does not currently sponsor university-level teacher exchanges in Africa, though its teacher exchange program works with universities elsewhere. All these programs could be expanded given more funding.

For exchanges in the other direction (African professors visiting universities in the U.S. or elsewhere), a few funding sources exist, including the Fulbright visiting scholar and scholar-in-residence programs, which bring over 800 foreign academics a year to the U.S.

University links. Joint research efforts between African and U.S. or other international universities can be an effective means of training students, enriching professors' work and research, and transferring knowledge. Currently a few agencies specifically support collaborations (e.g. the Fulbright New Century Scholars Program, to which African faculty members can apply directly). Usually, however, collaboration occurs only when U.S. (or international) researchers allot funding from their individual research grants. Those grants are awarded by agencies that have science as their mandate, not development.

The Notre Dame project was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and in part by private donors (the West Foundation, Indianapolis, and the Veldman family). The same model could be applied more broadly: an NGO or agency could set up a fund to supplement science grants for researchers proposing to work with African colleagues.

Retention of professors. Loss of faculty to emigration is a large problem for African universities, especially for medical and nursing schools. Teaching or working in the U.S. or Europe offer higher salaries and better opportunities to do science: research budgets in sub-Saharan Africa (other than South Africa) are tiny. Many of the actions discussed previously (internet access, research collaborations) are dual-purpose: they both improve students' education and tempt faculty to stay. The Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, a joint effort of the Ford, MacArthur, Rockefeller, Hewlett, and Mellon Foundations and the Carnegie Institute, is working with individual African universities. A university atmospheric science coalition (the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)) has also proposed an initiative to support African research and faculty retention (under consideration by the AAAS). UCAR's proposal includes offering foreign-trained African researchers $100,000 grants to start research programs in their home countries.

Other donor-funded programs are numerous, but most focus on primary and secondary education, not universities. These include the UNESCO's Teacher Training Institute for Sub-Saharan Africa (TTISSA), USAID, and the Association for Development of Education in Africa (ADEA). The Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie is a Canadian organization assisting universities throughout the French-speaking world, including West Africa and Madagascar. The African Science Academy Development Initiative benefits universities indirectly; it provides grants to African science academies to strengthen their voice in government policy-making.

Need for graduate programs. Research-focused graduate programs are rare in Africa. Several students surveyed wrote that lack of graduate programs in their countries forced them to emigrate for study. Despite the need for engineering in Africa, a distressing number of students reported being unable to study engineering because of lack of places or schools. Many writers on development now emphasize the importance of science and technology. If this is true, then Africa's development depends in part on training more scientists and engineers.

Science and technology training. The Royal Academy for Engineering pilot study on engineering capacity in Africa celebrates four new programs or institutions that are helping increase science and engineering capacity in Africa.

Another of the four programs mentioned in the Royal Academy report is even smaller, awarding 3 fellowships a year. The third is a university in tiny Rwanda. These successful small programs can produce teachers for the next generation; they can transfer knowledge; they can raise demand among African researchers for improvements in teaching and research conditions. But they cannot alone solve Africa's need for engineering and technology.

African Institutes of Science and Technology. The fourth program mentioned by the Royal Academy, the proposed African Institutes of Science and Technology (AIST), is a larger undertaking that would produce 5000 scientists and engineers a year from four campuses modeled after the successful Indian Institutes of Technology (see also article). Students would be drawn from throughout Africa. The carefully thought-out AIST proposal was developed by the Nelson Mandela Institute, an African NGO. It does not yet have secure funding.

Professional training. Counting diplomas in science and engineering does not provide a complete picture of a country's technological capacity. For example, South Africa currently suffers an acute shortage of engineers. South Africa also has a large number of unemployed engineering graduates. How is this possible? Because the graduates' undergraduate training does not prepare them sufficiently to assume responsibility for engineering projects, and conservative firms would rather hire expensive expatriates than train junior engineers. The South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE) has identified this as a critical problem for the country (see report summary). Without civil engineers there are no roads, buildings, water systems, or sewage treatment plants.

The overall lesson from this example is that expertise must run deep in an organization, and that a constant stream of qualified new engineers is necessary to keep a country running. The SAICE is now seeking to maintain the flow of trained engineers in South Africa by pairing students and new graduates with mentors in the civil service for on-the-job training. If this effort is needed in comparatively wealthy, well-educated, and industrialized South Africa, it is surely needed elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa as well. (Almost no data exist on engineering capacity in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa).

Can outside donors help? Existing programs that offer engineering assistance to sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. Engineers Without Borders and Engineers for a Sustainable World) emphasize providing services for the poor rather than training local engineers. Some programs do offer training in other professions (e.g. the former IFESH Best and Brightest African Bankers), and similar programs could be created for engineering. Alternatively, training can occur alongside work already occuring in Africa. Donors and African governments alike can ensure that any donor-funded infrastructure project includes training of local professionals. African governments can require that multinational corporations operating within their borders provide apprenticeships for local hires.

The need for venture capital in Africa. Demand for tertiary education in sub-Saharan Africa is high and growing because students believe a university education can better their lives. Their efforts can in turn boost national economies -- if their entrepreneurship is not stymied. African graduates with ideas and skills cannot now readily turn them into viable businesses, because venture capital is almost nonexistent outside industrialized South Africa. (Even in South Africa, lending is extremely risk-averse). The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) described in 2001 the benefits of venture capital for sub-Saharan Africa and proposed to provide it (see report, in html or pdf). Nothing seems to have come of this proposal. In 2002 a financial writer with the Modern Africa Growth & Investment Company stated: "private equity does not really exist in Africa" (see article).

Venture capital for small and medium size firms in Africa would find many takers. It may eventually even prove a good investment. The author of the 2002 article, Paul Inbona, stresses that Africa is not a uniquely forbidding region for business: "African risks are not much different from those experienced by investors in other African markets. They may be amplified sometimes, due to the prevalence of conflicts and diseases such as AIDS and due to the very low income levels and lack of infrastructure, but they are certainly not unique to the continent." Private equity firms have however so far declined to take those risks.

This situation is one where international donors can provide an invaluable service. In the last decade, NGOs pioneered microlending to the most destitute and showed that banking for the poor was both possible and effective. They were so successful in this endeavor that private equity has now stepped in to take over the field. The Economist writes that donors interested in lending should now "[leave] the best credit risks to profit-seeking lenders and concentrate[] instead on those still stuck outside the system." At present those stuck outside the system are small and medium-sized businesses in Africa.

Venture capital attempts. Providing VC in sub-Saharan Africa without a charitable component is difficult at present. At least one private organization had proposed a large VC fund for Africa. Origins VC Fund geared up in 2005 to spend $25 million each in East, Southern, and West Africa, planning to invest between $100,000 and $1 million in each business supported. Investors pulled out of the project in 2006 (see article). A donor- or publicly-funded venture capital fund, on the other hand, could accept that returns may not be high and may even be negative initially. The goal would be economic stimulus for the country, not immediate return on investment.

Several organizations are now cheerleaders for venture capital in Africa:

No organization provides capital for lending.