Higher Education and Development in Africa

196 Pages·2017·2.301 MB·English

by  Pedro Uetela (auth.)

Higher
Education and
Development
in Africa
Pedro Uetela
Higher Education and Development in Africa
Pedro Uetela
Higher Education
and Development
in Africa
Pedro Uetela
Maputo, Mozambique
ISBN 978-3-319-31140-1 ISBN 978-3-319-31141-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31141-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016941773
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P c o
reface and ontent utline of the
c
haPters
The debate concerning development has increasingly dominated
government agendas and policies in many countries, including those in
Africa. Although higher education is expanding across the African con-
tinent, it lags behind the universal opportunities that are available in the
rest of the world. The low placement of African higher education on the
global landscape has led researchers such as Teferra and Altbach (2004) to
suggest that African universities operate under inadequate conditions, and
that enabling them to catch up will be a very long process.
My analysis of African higher education is similar to that of Teferra and
Altbach (2004). As I illustrate through an examination of their hypothesis,
the failure of African universities to foster growth may partly be due to
the impact of social, political and economic disputes. As a result of these
upheavals, nations such as Cape Verde, Djibouti, Gambia, Seychelles, and
São Tomé and Príncipe have remained without higher education provi-
sion a long time. It took decades for those states to establish forms of
higher learning (e.g. in Cape Verde, the first higher education institution,
the Jean Piaget University, was created in 2001; in Djibouti and Gambia,
there was no higher education institution that fit the category of university,
at least previous to the period our research was undertaken). Furthermore,
in a continent with more nation states than any other (54 countries), in
2005 there were approximately 300 institutions that fitted the definition
of a university. This lack of higher education facilities threatens the future
of the continent if one considers universities as key for modernization
development and most significantly as the vital forces for transformation
in the knowledge era.
v
vi PrEFACE AND CONTENT OUTLINE OF THE CHAPTErS
What do we mean by “development”? How is it achieved, assessed
and measured? Has the expansion of higher education in Africa always
been linked with small steps towards modernization or with failing to take
them? How do we understand the process? In attempting to find answers
to some of these questions, this book discusses some of the dominant
narratives outlined by the international corporations concerning invest-
ment in higher education in Africa, especially those supported by agen-
cies such as the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund
(IMF). As they argue, the rates of return in higher education for African
countries are considerably lower than for primary and secondary educa-
tion, so investment in higher education is not seen as cost-effective, even
to the point of compromising the modernization of the continent.
Based on careful analysis, with special focus on the period from the dawn
of independence of African countries during the 1960s and 1970s to the
present, we explore the main theses regarding the connection between eco-
nomic growth and higher education which have divided researchers both
theoretically and in practice. The experiences of the ancient African univer-
sities are used to validate the argument that investing in higher education
in Africa is not per se a threat to growth, as appears to be thought interna-
tionally. Instead it can foster the knowledge generation that is n ecessary for
modernization and development through i ntellectual c apital, an approach
that has been neglected for Africa. Therefore, the u nderlying theme of the
five chapters is addressing the relationship between higher education and
economic development, how the linkage has been conceived, and how it
has been neglected with regard to the continent.
This book offers insights into the state of higher education in Africa
and globally. It also raises awareness that a knowledge-based economy can
be a vital force for economic development, and that investing in institu-
tions which generate such expertise needs to be prioritized rather than
neglected, as has happened previously in Africa. The book also offers
guidance for a range of educational leaders and policy-makers in general,
and for curriculum designers and those involved in higher education in
particular.
Furthermore, given that higher education in Africa is a new field of
study, I hope that this book will add to the few research results that are
available, and may prove useful to state authorities and researchers in higher
education institutions. It includes a synopsis of the historical development
of higher education in Africa from the institutions of ancient Egypt and
Timbuktu to the modern university, and will be an important tool for
PrEFACE AND CONTENT OUTLINE OF THE CHAPTErS vii
students and lecturers in the domains of history, philosophy, sociology,
leadership, governance, and policies of higher education internationally.
The book also discusses the underlying strategies that have defined the
relationship between higher education and economic growth, including
the arguments for supporting the universities.
This book reports on empirical data from the Mozambican higher
education institutions in southeast sub-Saharan Africa mainly, and on the
planning and policy reforms undertaken by some of the African coun-
tries since independence in the 1960s and 1970s—the era of the modern
university in Africa. On the link between higher education and develop-
ment, the book suggests that progress can be a social construct, and that
investing in higher learning is not per se either linked to growth or uncon-
nected. Therefore, my first research question refers to the place of higher
education in promoting economic growth on the continent. The second
inquiry is that given the fact that development is a social construction, is
how higher education can be considered as either a blessing or a curse in
Africa. The third question relates to the root causes of the contentious
relationship between universities and development, a subject that seems to
perpetually divide researchers and international agencies.
The debate presented in this book applies to a period in which inter-
nationalizing higher education, either in Africa or elsewhere, has become
a concern for governments, policy-makers and universities. In line with
internationalization and globalization, English is becoming the main lan-
guage in the global financial market, and in higher education. As Bourdieu
(1983) observed, it is through the languages which dominate the market
that prices and values are both established and determined (our translation
of Bourdieu, 1983); understanding the interaction of values and prices,
especially in higher education, is turning into a key interest for govern-
ments, universities and other stakeholders in higher learning.
Therefore, considering the book will be read mainly by Mozambicans
and others who use Portuguese as their first language, it has been carefully
written in accessible English—the language that controls the market—so
that readers will be alerted to the objective of raising the awareness of stu-
dents, researchers, policy-makers, government authorities and newcomers
in the field of higher education. These themes will be illustrated through-
out the book as follow:
Chap. 1 contextualizes the study and describes diverse approaches and
theoretical frameworks for thinking about development, and how it has
been addressed in the African context. It indicates how some of these
viii PrEFACE AND CONTENT OUTLINE OF THE CHAPTErS
approaches on development are either linked to or unconnected with
“blessing and curse” theories of higher education in Africa in terms of
access, funding and finance, governance, gender and research.
Chap. 2 addresses the global landscape of higher education, point-
ing to the differences and similarities in a cross-national perspective.
It examines how divergences across nations can be used to examine levels
of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, and the scepticism with which the rela-
tionship between higher education and development is perceived.
In addition, I formulate an equation to rank countries’ higher educa-
tion advancement in terms of (i) elitist, (ii) mass and (iii) universal higher
education in order to illustrate the relationship of the equation with the
theory of Trow on the stages of transformation of higher education. I
have selected nine countries at random, and grouped them into the three
categories represented by (i), (ii) and (iii) as a means of investigating
Teferra and Altbach’s (2004) argument that African higher education
faces unprecedented challenges which impact on its struggle for modern-
ization and development. I have re-interpreted some of the theories on
higher education enrolments and global population growth from 1965
to the mid-2000s (Bloom, Canning & Chan 2006) using my equation to
examine the interrelationships between the income of countries, the way
they invest in higher learning and their level of development.
Since higher education is not the only indicator of development nor
the unique area for investment by African governments, the final part of
Chap. 2 presents various theories on global development, especially the the-
ory of dependence and how it may be applied to the underdevelopment of
the African continent. This assessment may support the argument that eco-
nomic development in Africa cannot be understood in terms of economic
models and indexes, so any evaluation of advancement must instead con-
sider differentiated patterns, such as change, transformation, progress and
independence, which lead to a social construct theory of modernization.
In addition to dependence, almost all African countries fall under
the category of “periphery of periphery” (poorest nations) in the global
economy according to Sens’ 2012 theory on placement of states in the
global competition and dependence basis. It has often been proposed
that attaining economic development—moving towards the centre of
the centre in the global economy—will be achieved through knowledge.
Because countries in the category of the “periphery of the periphery”
serve the interests of all countries in the “centre” and in the “centre of
the periphery” group, the richer countries perceive them as a burden,
PrEFACE AND CONTENT OUTLINE OF THE CHAPTErS ix
and so underdevelopment in Africa may be justified from the perspective
of other regions’ interests. This approach opposes the theory that a lack
of investment results from low return indexes on higher education,
which thereby threatens modernization of the continent. To sum up, the
chapter demonstrates that, although higher education may be linked to
growth, it is not the only field in which African countries should invest.
There are other concerns to be targeted in the quest for development,
especially with the main focus on economic and political independence.
Chap. 3 revisits the genesis and early development of higher education
in both Africa and Europe. It hypothesizes that current scepticism regard-
ing the link between higher education and development in Africa can be
traced back to the failures of the continent to maintain the standards of
higher education models from ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyptians made
the highest advances in science and technology, through the categories of
philosophy that were later popularized as trivium and quadrivium and, as
a result, were role models for the early civilization of the continent. Teferra
and Altbach (2004) seem to agree with this thesis when they demonstrate
that the spread of higher education in Africa has been a very long process,
although colonization accounted for its destruction in some areas.
The emigration of African knowledge to the first universities in the
West and the high levels of investment in science and technology in those
institutions in modern times confirm the inability of the first African
higher education institutions to compete. Hence, we are left with today’s
dominant narrative that there is no direct connection between higher edu-
cation and development in Africa.
Despite these concerns, approaches in favour of the role of higher edu-
cation in African economic development are presented in addition. Chap. 3
also details the policy reforms undertaken by some African countries in
their attempts to link higher education and development. Therefore, some
of the strategies and plans for poverty eradication are critically examined in
relation to the link with higher education, and the challenges for African
higher education in the twenty-first century are also highlighted following
Teferra and Altbach (2004).
Chap. 4 addresses higher education governance and policy reforms. It
revisits a range of models of administration and control that have been
applied in higher education and how these have impacted on the African
states and universities. The case of Mozambique is discussed as an exam-
ple of country governance and policy reforms in order to further our
insights into the conditions under which higher education operates on the
x PrEFACE AND CONTENT OUTLINE OF THE CHAPTErS
continent. Despite the fact that the model of university governance and
policy applied in the the country (Mozambique) might not be representa-
tive of the state of higher education administration in the whole of Africa,
the example will help us to understand similar cases across the continent.
The university control mechanisms that are considered in Chap. 4
include those applied globally, in Africa and in Mozambique. We highlight
that, in order to understand the governance of the Mozambican higher
education system, it is important to revisit its historical advancement, both
political and economic, to appreciate the demands for the adjustment and
invention of new strategies of control. In addition, there is an examination
of the changing patterns of higher education which were attributed to the
demands of the liberal market, showing how these experiences challenge
the narratives regarding higher education as either a blessing or a curse.
Lastly, Chap. 5 ties together the discussions raised in the four previous
chapters sections. It does so by summing up the controversies between
the theories for and against the contribution of higher education to
growth in Africa. It also addresses the case of Mozambique based on a
discussion of the data and draws policy implications from the research.
Furthermore, it makes recommendations for African countries in general
and for Mozambique in particular as to future policies to follow so that
the dominant narrative that there is no direct connection between higher
education investment and development can be contradicted by evidence
from the field.
objectives, hyPotheses and Methodology
The aims of this book are threefold:
1. To outline the debate and approaches to the relationship between
higher education and development with reference to different and
changing conceptions of the African university’s role in advancement;
2. To investigate the challenges facing higher education in Africa today
and how these account for the scepticism on an association between
higher learning and modernization;
3. To examine and interpret the existing theories that link higher educa-
tion and modernization in order to reformulate some of these.
In terms of hypotheses, the study formulates the thesis that, despite scepti-
cism, higher education in Africa, does not per se conflict with development.