Regional
15 Regional Institutes for Talented Graduate Students by 2020
The NextEinstein Initiative [1] provides graduate training in mathematics and computing to highly talented African graduates at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences [2] (AIMS) in South Africa, and it will be joined in 2011 by a new AIMS in Senegal, followed by institutes in Ethiopia and Ghana. Within a decade the AIMS NewEinstein Initiative plans to launch 15 institutes across Africa.
The non-profit, donor-funded NextEinstein Initiative (NEI) seeks to educate Africa’s brightest graduates in mathematical problem solving and computing skills. The goal is to empower them to innovate in science, technology, industry and government to help meet Africa’s urgent needs. It hopes to discover an ‘African Einstein’ within the next decade.
The AIMS-Senegal project will train Africans in mathematical sciences at a relatively low cost, offering graduate mathematics diplomas, masters and PhD courses in French and English.
The NEI builds on the experience and track record of AIMS in Cape Town, which was established in 2003 and provides a successful model ready to be replicated across Africa. The South African AIMS is a collaborative project of the universities of Cambridge [3], Cape Town [4], Oxford [5], Paris Sud XI [6], Stellenbosch [7] and the Western Cape [8]. It offers a graduate diploma in mathematical sciences, teaching widely applicable mathematics and computing skills and providing exposure to areas of importance in Africa. The school receives more than six applications for every place – and it has proved highly successful, accepting students from more than 30 countries, attracting dozens of top lecturers from around the world, placing 96 percent of last year’s class in strong masters or PhD programs and building a 210-strong alumni network.
By creating a network of centers and partnerships, NextEinstein will also develop opportunities for Africans to study, teach and work in Africa. Groundwork has already been laid in several countries to establish 15 AIMS centers across Africa – in Benin, Botswana, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. A connected web of AIMS Centers is also planned.
– University World News [9]
August 30, 2009
Pan-African University to Begin Classes Early Next Year
The African-Union supported Pan-African University [10] (PAU) is a project aimed at promoting research and graduate training through a continental network of institutions, and the first location is reported to be opening its doors to its first 100 students next February at the University of Stellenbosch [7] in South Africa. The center at Stellenbosch, one of five institutions that will host the project, will focus on space sciences.
The multi-campus university will eventually comprise a main campus linked to a network of five regional centers, chosen for their academic and research strength and the relevance of their work to Africa’s needs. The centers will be located in North, West, East, Central and Southern Africa. A second satellite campus, focusing on energy and water research, will be launched in Algeria next year. The other regional centers – in the fields of life and earth sciences, basic science and engineering, and governance and social sciences – are expected to open in 2011.
In addition to PAU, another pan-African initiative, known as the African Institute of Science and Technology, [11] was launched in 2007 by the Nelson Mandela Foundation [12] in South Africa. That project – launched in Nigeria in 2007 and funded by the World Bank – will operate science and technology campuses and affiliated centers of excellence around Sub-Saharan Africa.
– University World News [13]
September 13, 2009
Egypt
Public Places Cut, Private Places More Expensive
The Egyptian education authorities have cut by 15 percent the number of new students accepted this year by the medical schools and other departments of state-owned universities, and raised required entry scores to 98 percent. Anticipating increased demand and facing increased tax burdens, several of Egypt’s 17 private universities have reportedly raised their fees.
– University World News [14]
August 30, 2009
New Foreign Universities Face Opposition
A Japanese university of science and technology is getting ready to open its doors in Egypt, and a Chinese university is in the works, despite heated debate over whether the country needs any more than the two foreign universities currently operating in country.
The American University in Cairo [15] has been there since 1919, under an agreement between the Egyptian and American governments, while the Arab Academy for Maritime Transport [16] was established through an agreement with the Arab League. There are other universities with affiliations with foreign partners, such as the Al Ahram-Canadian University [17] in Cairo, but they are Egyptian-owned private universities teaching foreign curricula. The new Japanese university will be located in Bourj Al Arab near Alexandria, Egypt’s second biggest city.
Those in favor of allowing the establishment of more foreign universities point to the fact that the 35 universities currently in operation do not come close to meeting demand. Those opposing the expansion of the foreign university sector argue that they will do nothing to help out the vast majority of Egyptians who do not have the funds to attend such expensive universities and need additional public university places.
– University World News [18]
September 12, 2009
Gambia
10-Year Higher Education Strategy Launched
Africa’s smallest country, Gambia, recently launched a 10-year higher education strategy to build its human resources and strengthen tertiary infrastructure. The aim is to produce the high-level intellectual and technical skills essential to drive socio-economic and technological development. A third of Gambia’s 1.7 million people live below the poverty line of US$1.25 a day.
The government recently created the Ministry for Higher Education, Research and Technology. The new ministry will be responsible for implementing the government’s higher education plan, which will see the University of The Gambia [19] establish relationships with other tertiary institutions in the country to strengthen its infrastructure and develop the nucleus for an enduring and sustainable higher education system.
The University of The Gambia was established in 1999, and it comprises four faculties and Gambia College [20]. There are schools of agriculture, science, education, nursing and midwifery, and public health. With assistance from Venezuela, the university will construct a new science department with modern infrastructure and equipment, to be completed in 2010.
Other parts of the plan focus on integrating higher education institutions and structures, in an effort to use available resources more efficiently and effectively and to develop a robust sector that is more responsive to student and labor market needs. There will also be a focus on staff development and training. However, a lack of finances may derail the well-intentioned plans, despite initial grants from international development banks, such as the Islamic Development Bank.
– University World News [21]
August 30, 2009
Namibia
Nation’s First Medical School to Begin Classes Next Year
The Senate of the University of Namibia [22] (UNAM) has approved the curriculum of the first medical school in the country, which means Namibia will, for the first time, begin training its own medical doctors beginning next year. Until now, medical professionals in the country have largely been trained in South Africa, when seats have been available.
The UNAM curriculum was developed over a ten-month period in consultation with several universities including the University of Cape Town [4], University of Stellenbosch [7] in South Africa, the University of Berlin [23] in Germany, the University of Oulu [24] in Finland, and the University of Botswana [25].
The first 50 medical students to enroll next year will come from Namibia, but non-Namibians may be considered if sufficiently qualified Namibian students cannot be found. Students will graduate after six years of study.
– Africa Files [26]
September 1, 2009
Nigeria
Parents Prefer Private Universities
According to the findings of a survey by The Guardian, one of Nigeria’s leading newspapers, just 20 percent of parents in Nigeria would send their children to public universities, if given the choice between a public and private option. Of those that said they would send their children to public universities, many said it was because they offer professional courses in medicine, pharmacy and to some extent engineering, which are capital-intensive and demand highly skilled and scarce personnel.
According to the newspaper, most parents – approximately 70 percent – said that if cost were not an issue, they would send their children to private universities, while 10 percent of parents would send their children to study abroad. This consensus has been solidified in recent months after a ten-week university strike that led to the delay of entrance examinations at public universities. Nigeria’s 33 private universities have reportedly experienced a surge in applicants as a result.
– The Guardian [27]
September 2009
Rwanda
Emphaisze Quality!
Rwandan President Paul Kagame told his nation’s institutions of higher education in August to focus on emphasizing quality as the only way to produce a skilled and professional workforce. Speaking at the National University of Rwanda [28], Kagame said the country still had a long way to go to graduate students who are capable of tackling the country’s challenges and also who are able to compete with non-nationals.
Kagame, who was responding to concerns that have been raised about expatriates taking jobs meant for Rwandans, said that until universities and colleges developed the means to produce quality graduates, the country would have to seek people from other places with the skills needed to bridge the country’s huge skills gap.
The President noted that feedback from companies employing Rwandan graduates or the universities they go to for further studies indicated that the problem is rooted in the education system and the teachers themselves, because the students have the ability to learn and catch up.
– The New Times [29]
August 23, 2009
Uganda
Makerere University Thrives While Continuing to Face Challenges
Known historically as one of Africa’s flagship universities, the University of Makerere [30] has undergone huge changes since its post-independence days in the 1950s and 60s when it enrolled an elite crop of 3,000 students on full government scholarships. Today the university enrolls more than 35,000 students – most of whom pay fees and attend classes in shifts around the clock – while over the last decade, a lack of funds has led the university into near bankruptcy and left facilities in a state of disrepair. Yet, the tide has begun to turn, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education.
In the past eight years, the university faculty has grown dramatically, new multistory buildings have been erected to accommodate hugely popular departments, such as computing, which is building partnerships with companies like Google and Nokia in hopes of positioning the university as a regional hub for information technology. Flush with new donors, partnerships and ideas, Makerere is one of a handful of African universities that are “really moving quickly in a positive direction,” says Joyce Moock, a higher-education consultant formerly with the Rockefeller Foundation [31].
Today, Makerere is conducting research in areas vital to Africa’s future, such as HIV/AIDS, natural resources, and food security, and it has attracted dozens of partnerships with universities, foundations, and development agencies in the United States and Europe. However, most of the university’s facilities and faculties remain in a state of disrepair, accommodating huge numbers of students in packed lecture halls, and housing an unwieldy bureaucracy, and facing perpetual faculty unrest.
Students complain of overcrowded classrooms and transcripts that take months to issue, while faculty members gripe that they earn only half as much as their counterparts in Kenya and Tanzania.
Makerere was once the only university in Uganda, but now finds itself both competing with new public and private institutions and charged with training the academics to staff those institutions, though it faces its own shortages of qualified academics. Now the university is embarking on an ambitious 10-year strategy to raise its research output and graduate-level training.
Money from donors and, increasingly, the Ugandan government, which has begun to see the value of investing more in higher education, has enabled the university to construct new buildings, improve graduate-level training and research capacity, overhaul its curriculum, and invest in strategic planning. Begun in 2001, with money from the Rockefeller Foundation, the program offered competitive grants to support research and curriculum development in areas related to the university’s new rural-development and antipoverty focus.
The strategy has enjoyed great success and seen tangible results in poverty stricken parts of the country, yet without outside funding the university’s funding model remains unsustainable, and the future continues to be uncertain.
– The Chronicle of Higher Education [32]
September 7, 2009