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Chad

Chad’s Camel Schools

Chad’s Education Ministry says it plans to revive the “school-on-a-camel system,” with teachers traveling on camels within nomadic communities to provide children with schooling throughout the year. The camel school, which was thriving 40 years ago, disintegrated during the ethnic strife in the 1970s. Today, Chad’s educational system is reportedly in shambles, mostly due to a shortage of teachers, resistance to schooling, and the difficulty of bridging religious and linguistic divides. At present, 50 percent of boys and 30 percent of girls attend school in Chad. On average there is only one teacher for more than 200 pupils. A few years ago UNICEF sponsored a program to boost female enrollments by paying families to send their daughters to school. However, the scheme backfired, as parents began keeping their sons at home to perform the tasks normally performed by girls.

Part of the schooling crisis stems from enduring religious conflicts. Christian teachers from southern Chad who work in the Muslim-dominated North generally attribute the resistance to classroom education in those territories to Islam, and more specifically to the marabouts (Muslim holy men), who promote home-based religious instruction. Muslim ministry officials in turn are critical of Catholic priests who open and run primary schools in the North. Language differences further complicate schooling, as nomadic communities often speak minority languages, such as Peul or Gorane, in contrast to the official languages of French and Arabic, and colloquial Chadian Arabic.

The new project introduces a flexible approach to primary teaching. A number of pilot classrooms will be established in sedentary communities, extending along two main routes: from Kanem province in the south and then west to Mayo-Kebbi, and from Batha Province into Salamat. Mobile schools, consisting of a teacher on a camel with a basket, are expected to begin their routes in three years.

— BBC World Service
Feb. 9, 2001

Kenya

Teacher Training Project is Launched

A new distance-learning program developed by Kenya’s Education Ministry and funded by Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID), was recently launched in Kenya as part of the Strengthening of Primary Education III project. The objective of the five-month program is to improve teaching and learning in subjects that record poor performances in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination. English, mathematics and science are cases in point.

Some 50,000 primary-school teachers are expected to benefit from the program. At least 15,000 teachers from the Eastern province will participate in the first phase of the School-Based Teacher Development program, which targets teachers nationwide. Teachers who successfully complete the program will be awarded professional development diplomas.

— Africa News, AllAfrica.com
July 3, 2001

Morocco

International Business School Launched

The General Confederation of Employers of Morocco and the Brussels-based European Foundation for Management Development have launched an international business school in Casablanca, scheduled to open in the fall of 2001. Dr. Pedro Nueno of Madrid’s IESE Business School at the University of Navarra and coordinator of the project explained that the new Moroccan school is modeled after the successful China Europe International Business School based in Shanghai. HEC Paris, IESE and Bocconi University in Milan have all expressed interest in this venture.

— World Higher Education Reporter
May 14, 2001

Mozambique

Economic Briefing on Education

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, Mozambique currently spends 22.6 percent of its annual budget on education. The number of students increased from 1.2 million in 1992 to 2.6 million in 2000, with the vast majority enrolled in basic primary education. Higher education has reached a state of crisis. At present there are only 23 secondary schools that provide pre-university education in the entire country. In addition, no more than 20 percent of the students enrolled at the University of Eduardo Mondlane, the country’s main university, graduate each year.

— UN Integrated Regional Information Network
June 7, 2001

Namibia

Walden Online in Africa

Walden University, a U.S. distance-learning institution specializing in graduate training, is offering a series of interactive online programs through the University of Namibia. These programs provide instruction to faculty members on how to teach courses online. The initial 18-faculty-member class will initiate online programs designed to reach 66 percent of citizens unable to attend classes at the school’s main campus in Windhoek.

Walden has launched a similar program with Kenyatta University in Kenya, and has discussed setting up additional partnerships with educators from Madagascar, South Africa and Swaziland.

In addition to creating the “Teaching in the Online Environment” course, Walden will convert two courses from a traditional delivery model to a distance-based model for both the University of Namibia and Kenyatta University. In addition, Walden plans provide a fully funded scholarship to one qualified staff or faculty member from each of the two universities.

— World Higher Education Reporter
May 14, 2001

Nigeria

ASUU Continue to Strike, Accusing Government of Insincerity

Members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), incensed by a recent government injunction on pro-chancellors and vice-chancellors to reopen the universities yesterday, restated their resolve not to return to classes until their demands are met. Education Minister Babalola Borishade declared ASUU’s demands to be “nothing but a cascade of booby traps with the detonators resident in the secretariat of ASUU, and programmed to be detonated at anytime between now and the year 2003…”

ASUU members condemned the government’s failure to honor a December 2000 agreement it had reached with their union leadership warning that no strategy by anyone intending to break their ranks would succeed. In the statement, the teachers maintained that the strike would continue as long as the government relied on “lies, vilification and force” to resolve the crisis, rather than face the truth. The strike was triggered by the current administration’s reduction of the education budget to 7 percent of the total yearly budget.

— The Guardian
June 7, 2001

Rwanda

New Partnership for Rwanda

Michigan State University’s Institute of International Agriculture and Natural Resources (IIA) was awarded a three-year $2.9 million grant by the Association Liaison Office for University Cooperation (ALO) to form a partnership with Texas A&M University, the Universite Nationale du Rwanda (UNR) and the Institut des Sciences Agronomiques du Rwanda (ISAR).

Backed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), this partnership will help rebuild the agricultural sector of Rwanda that was badly damaged by the 1994 civil war. The collaboration, known as the Partnership for Enhancing Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages, will help restore the former capacity of UNR and the national agronomic research center (ISAR). The partnership will train faculty and researchers in agricultural sciences, providing much-needed opportunities for degree training.

To learn more about this partnership in Rwanda, visit the ALO Web site at www.Aascu.org/alo or MSU’s Institute of International Agriculture Web site at www.iia.msu.edu.

— Michigan State University Bulletin, vol. 2-spring 2001
Spring 2001

Somalia

Degrees of Normality for Somali Students

More than 500 Somali students sat for their annual exams at Mogadishu University this year, not far from the former green line dividing the capital. Their graduation represents the first since the collapse of the regime of President Siad Barre in early 1991. More than 80 percent of the students taking higher level exams in history, languages and law were men. There are few women attending the university, and those in attendance wear strict Islamic dress.

Even though the university has been operating for four years, it has not attracted as many students as hoped. Tuition fees amount to $300 per year and outside help is limited to insubstantial financial support from universities in Canada and America. In addition, security risks remain high even though the university was moved to a new location after the former campus came under attack, and school buildings was looted by armed clan fighters.

— BBC WORLD SERVICE
May 21, 2001

Togo

Students Boycott Classes at University in Togo

Students at Lome University in Togo, backed by the university’s faculty union, boycotted classes last month in protest against the government’s failure to pay stipends for the past 16 months. They also objected to the expulsions of student leaders and the presence of security personnel on the campus. The students rejected President Gnassingbe Eyadema’s offer of one month’s stipend. Meanwhile, conditions at Lome have deteriorated drastically: lecture halls are still leaky, dormitories suffer from overcrowding, and there is no sign of the government building new living quarters for students, as it had promised.

President Eyadema claimed that the government lacks the money to pay arrears or build new dormitories, but said he continues to be committed to higher education.

— Chronicle of Higher Education
June 15, 2001

Tanzania

An African Success Story at the University of Dar Es Salaam

The University of Dar es Salaam is one of three African institutions (the others are Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique and Makerere University in Uganda) benefiting from a five-year, $100-million aid package for African higher education. The economic assistance was granted through a program that brings together four U.S.-based foundations in providing these schools with aid for strategic planning, curriculum development and increasing financial autonomy. The Carnegie Corporation of New York, one of the four foundations, has awarded the university a three-year, $3.5-million grant for new technology, library improvements, and to study the effectiveness of recently implemented reforms.

Since embarking on its Institutional Transformation Program in the early 1990s, Dar es Salaam has begun creating new degree programs in public health, computer hardware and software, and transportation engineering. Most campus buildings are connected to the Internet via high-speed fiber-optic cables. The university has also cut costs by sharply reducing its nonacademic staff and by contracting services like cafeteria operation and dormitory cleaning to private companies. Evening degree programs in business administration for fee-paying students, consulting and training services for companies and government agencies, and sale of computer services and software are also offered, generating additional sources of income. In addition, Dar es Salaam has instituted an affirmative-action program, which has augmented female enrollment from 16 percent of the student body seven years ago to 29 percent today.

In 1994, a 39-page strategic planning report tackling the problems of financing, management, academics and living conditions for students, has served as the basic guide for university reforms ever since. The plan, while placing the burden of financing the university on the state, called for the gradual introduction of tuition. The authors of the program also sought to expand enrollment, which has doubled since 1990 to 7,000, and is expected to reach 13,000 by 2008.

Donors appear eager to continue supporting a rare African institution that shows tangible results for the money. About 40 percent of the $28 million that the university spent last academic year came from overseas development agencies, mostly in northern Europe. Compare this with only 20 percent before reforms were implemented.

— Chronicle of Higher Education
April 6, 2001

Uganda

Alliance Builds Medical Training Facility

A new alliance of African and Western infectious disease experts, called the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa, will build the first large-scale HIV/AIDS clinic in Africa. The new facility will train medical personnel from across the continent on the latest treatment options and bring the highest standard of care to patients. At least 80 clinicians are expected to undergo training there each year and, once the facility is operational, up to 50,000 HIV/AIDS patients will be treated. The clinic is set to open by early 2002.

The alliance is comprised of: the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, international and local non-governmental organizations, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and participating pharmaceutical research-based companies. It is headed by internationally renowned experts on AIDS and infectious diseases. The new clinic is to be located at the Makerere University Medical School and will be operated by the alliance in partnership with the university.

An estimated 820,000 people are living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda, and there are 25 million HIV-infected people on the African continent.

— NewsRX-TB & Outbreaks Week
July 3, 2001

Zimbabwe

Armed Police Close Off Three Campuses in Harare, Zimbabwe

Heavily armed police prevented students from marching into the city of Harare to protest the privatization of on-campus catering services and to demand an increase in vocational training loans. Students at the Harare Institute of Technology, the Belvedere Teachers’ Training College and the Harare Polytechnic College found that they were unable to leave their campuses after the police, armed with guns and teargas, sealed the main gates of those schools.

Itai Zimunya, vice president of the Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU,) said that 54 students from Seke Teachers’ College were arrested and fined for malicious injury to property and public disorder. ZINASU Secretary-General Tinashe Chimedza, who had addressed the marching students and called on the state-run Herald newspaper to report the students’ strike accurately, was detained for five hours, and only released after his lawyer intervened.

— UN Integrated Regional Information Network
June 7, 2001