The Minister for Education, Prof. Silas Lwakabamba, has called on African varsities leadership to adapt higher education systems to the continent’s aspirations for socio-economic development.

Prof. Lwakabamba was opening the 18th biennial conference of the Association of African Universities (AAU) in Kigali yesterday.

"This conference of academicians, policymakers and partners in education should streamline ideas on how to enhance the quality of higher education in Africa and adapt the knowledge to the continent’s economic development in order to turn it into a knowledge-based economy,” Prof. Lwakabamba said.

He added that from the profiles of the participants, he had no doubt that the conference would come up with answers for the continent’s various challenges.

The four-day conference, dubbed "Internationalisation of Higher Education in Africa,” has attracted more than 250 participants from 44 countries across the world, according to AAU President Prof. Olusola Oyewole.

Lwakabamba commended AAU for its contribution in engaging African higher learning institutions to set up strategies to support the economic growth of the continent.

"I must say that this theme has come at the right time when our continent needs to redesign and streamline our higher education systems to respond to our people’s expectations for socio-economic development.

Internationalisation is an integral part and major driving force for change in universities,” he said.

A previous AAU conference in Gabon focused on graduates’ employability.

"AAU will continue to address issues impeding our continent’s development by empowering our graduates. This conference will provide academicians with excellent opportunities to grab clear understanding of how to internationalise their programmes,” said Prof Oyewole.

"Access to higher education has increased over the past ten years and more successful stories are worth to be told but we need to improve Africa’s global competiveness, foster the culture of research, and address challenges over the lack of political will towards education, scarcity of infrastructures and political instability issues”.

Prof. Lwakabamba said the level of teachers was the main threat to quality education.

"Ideally, we should have 100 per cent PhDs within our higher education institutions. Our aim is to have at least 50 per cent, but most of the African universities are lingering around 20 per cent, in spite of Africa’s tremendous efforts to train many (lecturers),” he said, adding that the internationalisation approach will partly solve the problem by working with other universities worldwide.

Brain drain

Prof. George Magoha, the immediate former president of AAU and former vice chancellor of the University of Nairobi, attributed the lack of PhDs in African universities to the fact that the people who are sent to study overseas do not return to serve their countries.

"I served the University of Nairobi for 10 years in high capacity and we used to train (for PhDs), at least 120 people every year. However, 80 per cent did not return to Kenya. Most of them stayed in American, European or Asian countries, while others are working for more developed African countries,” he said.

Magoha said internationalisation of African higher education should address the wrong perceptions of many Africans who think that there is greener pasture away from home.

"I have travelled to all continents and I affirm to you that there isn’t green pasture anywhere. We should change the mindset of our own lecturers because if you earn more money somewhere else, the purchasing power index will take away all that money,” he said.

The Vice Chancellor of the University of Rwanda, Prof. James McWha, said the institution was coping with the problem of a few PhD holders by building strong partnerships with other universities and that Rwanda was fortunate as most of its students return to serve the country after completing their studies abroad.

He said, on return, however, some of the scholars join the business sector instead of serving tertiary institutions, but that the University of Rwanda strives to build intellectual capacity of the country.

McWha said University of Rwanda was envisaging to have above 50 per cent of PhDs within its permanent staff in the next 10 years.

Grouping 320 higher learning institutions from 46 African countries, the AAU was founded in 1967 to promote the cooperation between African universities and the international academic community.

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