Abdul Rotimi Mohammed

In my last post, I had discussed the effect that globalization was having on universities worldwide and noted the relatively little role African universities were playing in the phenomenon. I had hinted that perhaps this was because African universities were beset with more fundamental, internal problems that would need to be resolved before we could truly get a place on the world stage.

These problems, I know, are not news to the majority of people reading this post because they would have known these problems in the most intimate way possible, they would have lived through them. Still, it is important to discuss such problems in a systematic and rigorous manner. This being the data age, perhaps we should start by delving into statistics that show how African universities stack up against global averages.

The sub-Saharan African average gross enrolment ratio for tertiary education increased marginally between 2013 and 2018, from 8.9 to 9.4 per cent. Over the same period, world average increased from 33 to 38 per cent. Of the Arab states in North Africa, many have relatively high gross tertiary enrolment rates for both sexes, in the case of Algeria (51%) even well above world average. For Mauritius, the figure is 41% and Morocco 36%. Corresponding figures are 68% for Europe, 61.5% for North America, 51.8% for South America and 28.9% for Asia.

Gross domestic expenditures on research and development (R&D) in African countries range from 0.82 % (South Africa) to 0.01 % (Madagascar). The median for African countries is 0.30 %. World average is 2.22%. The result of this is that Africa only accounts for roughly 1.3% of global R&D. Furthermore, African research output is heavily skewed to a handful of countries on the continent, with just Egypt and South Africa accounting for roughly half of Africa’s scientific publications; an additional 25 percent is generated collectively by Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, and Tanzania.

Public spending per student is at about $1,000 with some claiming that this figure is declining. This markedly contrasts with public spending per student in the developed world, which is the region of $9,000 to $18,000.

The number of researchers per million people in African countries ranges from 1,772 (Tunisia) to 11 (Burundi). The median for Africa is 91. For the world it is 799.

One in every nine people who are born in Africa and have a university degree is a migrant in one of the 34 member stated of the OECD – the world’s most developed countries. There reportedly are more Sierra Leonean doctors living in the Chicago area of the state of Illinois, USA than in Sierra Leone.

We have seen the data, but what do they mean exactly? What implications do they hold about what happens on the ground on a day to day basis? To that discussion, we turn to next. To kick that off, perhaps a recounting of the history of the evolution of the African university system might be in order.

In the 1940s, Africa had just a handful of universities, about 31 in 1944 (out of about 3,703 worldwide). The numbers rose to 170 in 1969, 446 in 1989, and about 1,279 officially recognized universities in 2023 according to the uniRank database (with roughly at least 25,000 globally). Another source put the figure at 1,639, as early as 2015 (out of 18,808 worldwide). Up until the 1960s, African university students were typically educated to the highest international standards, with a substantial number receiving part or all of their education at universities abroad. In the 1970s and early 80s, while it was still common then for students to undertake at least a part of their studies abroad, economic conditions in many African countries had become so harsh, that a substantial number of African students receiving the education in foreign institutions who could afford to stay abroad did so. This was also a politically difficult period for African universities as the many authoritarian governments created a hostile environment in order to prevent the more radical elements within the university community, from questioning the legitimacy of their regimes. Thus began the “brain-drain” phenomenon. By the mid-1980s, access to opportunities for study abroad, especially in Europe, had so diminished that most had to undertake their entire education, from first degree to doctoral studies, at home. This occurred at a time when the range and quality of library holdings, as well as the quality of teaching and research at most African universities were in decline. The IMF induced Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) of the 80s and 90s, and studies done by its sister organization, the World Bank, also played a key role in creating an environment hostile to the growth of the African university system. SAP led to reduced government investment in critical social sectors like education and public health. In the 80s, The World Bank published a series of papers suggesting that investment in basic education yielded a greater return on investment when compared to investment in higher education. This led a lot of donor countries that had making funds available for the development of the African university system to withdraw their support. This was a major source of source of the decline of African universities in the 80s and early 90s. It should be noted that the World Bank study was not without detractors. A retraction was even made by the Bank in 2002. 

Fortunately, as the 90s progressed, there was the beginning of a change in perception of African universities, which had led to their somewhat rapid proliferation in numbers both in terms of the number of schools and in their enrollment numbers, particularly those that are privately owned. Despite this, much of the problems that started in earlier decades that have essentially come to define the character of African universities remain. These problems run the gamut of inadequate funding, corruption, inadequate infrastructural facilities, shortage of qualified academic staff, strike actions, brain-drain, poor research (in terms of quantity, quality, research environment and often, in terms of relevance), poor remuneration, weak administration etc. Let’s delve more deeply.

Africa in the last few decades has had to cope with harsh economic conditions leading unsurprisingly to the severe underfunding of higher education. This of course was exacerbated by the significant withdrawal of international aid as a result of the aforementioned World Bank studies. Even in circumstances where such aid is made available, much of it is rerouted to donor countries to fund scholarships at donor universities. Only about a quarter of the funds released actually get to African universities, and when they do, the funds marked for research have their agenda set by international interests rather than local. Another issue with this research funding is that often enough the monies are not funneled through the universities’ institutional mechanisms for handling research on a university wide level but are going directly to individual researchers who managed to hustle some international grant. This pattern of funding does not support the building institutional capacity. It is also not likely to make much of a contribution to systematic theory building, which is required for fundamental breakthroughs.

In addition to the problems of funding research are problems with the nature of the research itself. The research output from African universities is very low and much of it of questionable quality. Further problems include relevance of the research carried out. As much of it is externally funded, topics researched may not be of direct relevance to national development. Even when it is, there is the added problem of such research not making an impact because it is disconnected from the policymaking circles in the country, compounding this is the fact that the research is written up in esoteric journals that policymakers have neither the time or the inclination to decipher. Still on the topic of research, much of modern research is carried out in multidisciplinary teams; too many African researchers still work in isolation. It will be hardly surprising to know that much of the problems with African research stem from hostile environmental conditions. The key elements of a research infrastructure such as laboratories, equipment, libraries, effective systems of information storage, retrieval, and utilization; appropriate management systems; and policies that facilitate and support the research enterprise including incentives that recognize and reward high-calibre research are often missing and sometimes glaringly so.

As a result of all of this, even though African universities are exclusively built on the research university model pioneered in Germany, that I mentioned in my last post, it would be a great stretch to call a lot of them research universities. They aren’t great halls of teaching either. This in part stems from the use of the lecture method, which to be fair is necessitated by the fact that African universities admit far more students than they can adequately cater for, which itself stems from the soaring demand for university education. Lecturing to large classes does not encourage independent and critical student thinking. At the post graduate level, African graduate study and post-doctoral training are considered weak by international standards.    

Another dimension to problems faced by African universities stems from the quality of bureaucracies running the universities. Problems in this area include unsatisfactory recordkeeping, bureaucratic corruption, ineffective structures and systems of coordination, which all hamper the effective functioning of universities.

Yet another problem is the paucity of university-industry links in Africa, the reasons being that the small and mostly informal nature of African economies make such relationships difficult initiate and sustain; that the universities lack the institutional capacity to make such linkages meaningful, resulting in the confidence on the part of industry in the abilities of universities to deliver research findings that will be useful to industry; that the lack of policies that spell out the role of universities and their precise contribution to society, make it difficult for universities and industry to engage one another in meaningful collaboration; that even when such policies exist they aren’t usually enforced; that a cultural divide makes it difficult for universities and industry to see eye to eye; the ever present issue of a lack of funding, and often, the sheer lack of interest in relationships on both the part of universities and industry, among many other reasons.

We have looked at problems, now time for a brief look at solutions. A good number of the problems turn on the issue of lack of funding. That is an issue that won’t be solved overnight. Lack of funding ultimately stems from the low productivity of African economies. I have mentioned before that productivity is the key to wealth. How nations like the UK and the US have solved the productivity problem in centuries past and nations like Japan and China more recently is through the aggressive use of industrial policy. This takes the form of government selecting a few strategic industries that it wants to drive growth and then sending very strong signals to the private sector in form of import tariffs, production subsidies, tax holidays, clear regulatory and competition frameworks that keep uncertainty to the barest minimum etc., that strongly encourage investment in productivity raising sectors. Doing so would begin reduce the size of the informal economy in Africa which is abnormally large. Estimates run between 50 and 70% of GDP compared to about roughly 7-10% for nation like the US, UK and China. Greater formalization of the economy will increase the tax base, making more money available for investment in the universities. In the light manufacturing industry, there many sectors like textiles and footwear that have started many a country on the path to wealth creating productivity that do not initially require the deep scientific expertise that is the forte of universities. Such sectors can serve as a springboard to further deep science industrial activity further down the line. A cynic might ask wat is there to compel government to follow through. That is where you, me and everybody else come in. Formation of strong civil society groups is essential for social development. In successful societies, civil society forms an effective counter weight to government. That needs to happen in Africa as well.   

In the short term, there should be some minimums that the university should be able to guarantee. A university is supposed to help students do at least the following:

• Think logically with words and numbers
• Write and talk clearly
• Respond aesthetically
• Establish a moral framework
• Embark on a journey of lifelong learning

These happen to be the essential constituents of critical thinking. We shall look at that in the next post.

BEFORE YOU GO: Please share this with as many people as possible. Also check out my book, Why Africa is not rich like America and Europe.

Bibliography

1. Okolo Michael Monday et al ‘Higher Education in Nigeria: Challenges and Suggestions’ Middle European Scientific Bulletin
2. Adu, Kajsa Hallberg ‘Resources, relevance and impact – key challenges for African Universities’ The Nordic Africa Institute NAI Policy Paper 2020
3. Sawyerr, Akilagba ‘African Universities and the Challenge of Research Capacity Development’ JHEA/RESA Vol. 2, No. 1, 2004, pp. 211–240
4. Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe ‘The Giant Challenge of Higher Education in Africa’ The Elephant
5. Wolhuter C.C et al ‘Higher Education in Africa: Survey and Assessment’
6. Sa, Creso M. ‘Perspective of Industry’s Engagement with African Universities’
7. Huber, Richard M. 1992 How Professors Play the Cat Guarding the Cream: Why We’re Paying More and Getting Less in Higher Education. Virginia: George Mason University Press

There are few factors that are as critical in determining the level of development (or underdevelopment) of a nation as the quality (or lack thereof) of its education systems. This is especially true of the tertiary education system, which includes among others, the universities, polytechnics, teachers’ colleges, professional institutes etc. For the sake of brevity, I shall be concentrating on the universities because they are charged with producing a nation’s intellectual elite who man the commanding heights in government, business and society, and on whose shoulders a disproportionate share of the responsibility for national development fall on. Universities are also charged with producing the research that serves as the intellectual fuel of national development.

There is plenty afoot going on in the world’s universities that any nation’s leaders and engaged members of the public ought to be mindful of, given the critical importance of the university system’s twin missions. There is a growing trend in which potential university students are increasingly likely, to shop for a university education beyond their nation’s borders. This is largely driven by domestic supply’s inability to meet the burgeoning demand and by an increasing taste for a world class education. This is putting immense pressure on universities everywhere to upgrade their facilities, standards, courses etc. in a bid to attract this fleet footed army of student hopefuls, who bring with them hard currency and more importantly, often number among the best and brightest from their home countries and thus are a potential source of research talent that are fed into the pipeline of the host nation’s development engine. This race by universities to build global stars takes place along a number of dimensions and we shall explore them one by one.

The forces of globalization have worked to create a more open, increasingly borderless world. Higher education has not been spared the effects of this phenomenon, and as a result universities have become increasingly more global in outlook, both in terms of practices and the recruitment of students. The U.S, leads the way here and has done so for long time. Nations as diverse as China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Germany and France among others, are caught up in a race to create U.S.-style research institutions designed to be competitive at the highest levels. The UK (Particularly Oxford and Cambridge) and Australia have for some time now given the US some measure of competition, but it remains the unquestioned leader for now. It perhaps behooves us to briefly look at the American University model that happens to be the object of such worldwide admiration.

The US began its ascendancy to the top of global university space shortly after World War 2. It overtook the previous leader Germany, for two reasons. The first was Germany, obviously being distracted with the rebuild effort after the horrors of WW2. The second being that the US borrowed and perfected a university model originally pioneered by Germany in the 19^th century, which placed heavy emphasis on research, thus bringing to the fore the graduate school experience, many say to the detriment of undergraduate teaching. Prior to this German innovation, universities all over the world, focused almost exclusively on undergraduate teaching. In the US today, there are still many tertiary institutions that focus exclusively on undergraduate teaching. Such institutions are referred to as colleges, while the appellation, universities is reserved for those institutions that in addition to the undergraduate portion, offer graduate programs and professional programs like medical, law and business schools. Often the undergraduate portion of a university would be referred to as a college. For example, the undergraduate portion of Harvard University is referred to as Harvard College.  The rebuild of Europe and the adoption of the research model in America, combined to make the US, the premier destination for the best and brightest, seeking the best education globally available.

It is tempting to ask where this so called best and brightest come from. According to Open Doors, an NGO that tracks these things, the percentage break down of country of origin of international students for 2022/23 are as follows:

China – 27%  India – 25%  South Korea – 4%  Canada – 3%  Brazil – 2%  Nigeria – 2%  Japan – 2%  Taiwan – 2%  South Korea – 2%  Saudi Arabia – 2%

China and India alone account for 52% of all international students. A population that numbers over 6.4 million people in 2021.

I should also point out that upgrading indigenous universities to world class standards is not the only modus operandi of countries looking to build global universities. Forming partnerships with, or local campuses of internationally recognized university brands is another method being actively pursued. Singapore is a good example of this. It has partnerships with Yale University, Chicago Graduate School of Business, Johns Hopkins University, Carnegie Mellon University, and INSEAD among others. It has also done quite well in building world class universities of its own given that its National University of Singapore (NUS) has attained global recognition. Saudi Arabia is another rather interesting example. In 2009, it launched the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). In a country that typically segregates male and female students from each other, KAUST is uncharacteristically co-educational. A necessary compromise, if it was going to be successful in attracting the top flight students, faculty and partners from around the world that it was hoping to attract. Its initial partners included the mechanical engineering department at the University of California–Berkeley; the Institute for Computational Earth Sciences and Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin; Stanford University’s computer science and applied mathematics departments; the biosciences and bioengineering departments at the University of Cambridge; and the departments of chemical engineering, materials science, and engineering at Imperial College, London.  

The globalization of universities has led to or perhaps grow along side with and become intertwined in a parallel development that though mired in great controversy, shows no sign of going away. I am talking about the emergence of various rankings of universities at the national, continental and global levels. Rankings ostensibly fill a market need, the desire for a simple, reliable metric for gauging the quality of education attainable at a given university, but there is so much passioned debate about how reliable that metric is. Criticism runs the gamut of, that rankings have a heavy research bias and not enough emphasis on the quality of teaching, that there are important institutional quality factors that can’t be captured by numbers, that they often focus on reputation instead of actual accomplishments, that rankings focus excessively on “inputs” rather than “outputs” by giving colleges credit for admitting well qualified students rather than for how well they actually educated those students, that they encourage fraud, that the factors used in the rankings provide colleges with perverse incentives to focus on the factors that are measured rather than taking on the more elusive task of providing the best possible education for their students, that there is insufficient academic rigor underlying the rankings, and that it is just a meaningless exercise as an instrument of national policy.

The various rankings have tried to evolve in response to these criticisms and wholly new rankings have been created to cater to specific criticisms. However, ranking are increasingly used not just by potential students but also by policy makers and industry officials. Also others have pointed out that rankings have the potential to radically democratize the entrenched academic pecking order and thus force the leading universities to continue to earn their places at the top of the academic food chain.  What is clear and unquestioned about rankings is, love them or hate them, you can’t just ignore them.

Yet another important trend in the global university education space has been the emergence of education companies that provide university education services to market segments that are very different from the traditional clientele of traditional universities. Most traditional universities around the world are public universities. The most prestigious universities in the US, though private are non-profit organizations. These education companies run universities that are clearly out to make a profit like a traditional business. They also tend to target working adults who want practical, part-time courses that will improve their standing in the job market as opposed to the traditional universities that target the national or global student elite. The education companies tend to aggressively leverage technology to provide flexible courses and to bring down costs of administration. The market for the services these education companies offer is very large, running into at least several hundreds billions of dollars and as demand as demand for post-secondary education continues unabated in the developing world, the market for flexible, practical, career-oriented education will only get larger.

I have tried to give a picture of the evolving global education landscape. In researching this piece, I couldn’t help but wonder what Africa’s place in all of this was. The main text I used for research barely mentioned Africa at all. It would seem that Africa, like in the case of global free trade, seems to be again on the periphery of the global free trade in minds. The continent’s university education system seems to be beset by more fundamental problems. It is to this I turn, in my next piece.

BEFORE YOU GO: Please share this with as many people as possible. Also check out my book, Why Africa is not rich like America and Europe.

Bibliography

1. Wildavsky, Ben. 2010 The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World New Jersey: Princeton University Press

In the very early 17th century, the English crossed the Atlantic in a bid to colonize North America. In this, they were following the Spanish who had a 100 years earlier colonized South America, which was considered the better half of the Americas because it was rich in gold and silver. The English colonists founded their first settlement called Jamestown in 1607. They planned to capture the Leader of the native Americans and through him force the rest of the populace to work for them, the same way the Spanish had conquered South America. However, they would soon find out that this was not possible because the native Americans of North America lived in widely dispersed, largely independent, relatively small groups. This was in stark contrast to the South America that the Spanish found, which had achieved very large degrees of political centralization, such that there were at least 3 major empires, the Aztec (central and southern Mexico, and parts of Guatemala), Incan (Peru, western Ecuador, south central Bolivia, northwest Argentina, a bit of southwestern Colombia and a large portion of Chile) and Mayan (southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras and El Salvador) empires. Another major difference was that North America wasn’t rich in mineral resources such as gold and silver, the way South America was. The very different trajectories of North and South America up to the present after the initial founding of the English colony in Jamestown, again shows that true national wealth isn’t built on natural resources but on sound institutions and technology.

When the colonists realized that the native Americans couldn’t be made to work, they resorted to trying to trade with them as they were running dangerously low on supplies. It is here that a character some of us know from the Disney animated movie, Pocahontas made the most singular contribution. Captain John Smith was a part of the Jamestown colonists and he led the trading missions with the Indians. During one of them he was captured and taken to the chief of the Indian tribe that captured him. It is here that he was reportedly saved from death by the chief’s daughter, Pocahontas, but in real life at the time, Pocahontas was little more than a girl, probably around 11 and not the strapping young adult ready for her first taste of love as depicted in the movie. At some point, the colonists lost the trust of the Indians (with good reason) and so they would no longer trade with the colonists. At this point John Smith realized if the colonists were to survive they would have to work the land themselves to produce food and other needed supplies.

Now the colonists’ expedition had been sponsored by a company back in England called the Virginia company. They had been backing the expedition financially for 2 years at this point and had seen no profit. By this time, John Smith, after showing uncommon courage and resourcefulness that saved the colony from starvation on numerous occasions, had been sidelined by the company, and had since gone back to England, disgruntled. The Virginia company had by now, decided on a new mode of operation. If the natives could not be forced to work, they would force the English settlers they had sent into accepting a draconian work schedule that would generate the wealth they were looking for. This new scheme too, could not work because of the extremely low population densities of North America at the time (more than 500 times less than that of South America). If the work became too stressful, there was plenty of unoccupied land that the colonists could run away to. The Virginia company was then forced to provide incentives that would make the colonists they had sent to work willingly. These incentives would eventually grow into the inclusive institutions that would be developed by the original 13 colonies that would eventually form the United States of America. Note that this was not a smooth process, and it took roughly a century. In the original colonies there existed a governing elite who tried time and time again to put in place extractive institutions that benefited a privileged few like what Africa has had through much of its history and mostly has, till now. Each time the attempt failed for the reasons cited above. 

America’s inclusive institutions would eventually become firmly grounded, making it possible for the Industrial Revolution to occur there in the 19^th century, to such an extent that it would overtake Britain as the world’s leading economic powerhouse. 

In 1868 Japan was an economically underdeveloped country that had been controlled since 1600 by the Tokugawa family, whose ruler had taken the title, shogun (commander) in 1603. At this time, Japan was as poor as Djibouti, a small country in the horn of East Africa. The Japanese emperor had been sidelined and played a purely ceremonial role. The Tokugawa family, along with their military retainers, the famous samurai warriors, ruled a society that had strict occupational categories (Your occupation as an adult was determined by the part of the social hierarchy that you were born into), restrictions on trade, and high rates of taxation on farmers.

The Tokugawa’s domination of Japanese society wasn’t complete though. In the south of Japan, there were parts that were relatively free of the Tokugawa’s control. In one such area, an enlightened samurai realized that Japan’s institutions required radical reform if it was to make real progress. He formulated a plan to overthrow the shogun but disguised it under the pretext of wanting to restore the emperor to his rightful position. The plan was successful. Soon after, there was a radical transformation of Japan’s institutions which provided the foundation for the modern, successful, wealthy Japan that we know today. The event is referred to as the Meiji Restoration.

By 1890 Japan was the first Asian country to adopt a written constitution, and it created a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament, the Diet, and an independent judiciary. These changes were decisive factors in enabling Japan to be the first beneficiary from the Industrial Revolution in Asia.

Over this three-part series (Here are part 1 and part 2), we have looked at examples of both extractive and inclusive institutions operating in very different societies and at different points in time throughout history. It should be clear that despite these differences, extractive and inclusive institutions where ever they occur manifest themselves in similar ways that we all can recognize. They transcend skin color, religion, tribe and any other marker for differentiating human beings into groups. We might have also noticed that preventing extractive institutions from dominating a society requires active resistance by the populace. The reason this is so lies in a fundamental fact of human nature. Given the opportunity, most human beings would set up a system to benefit themselves, to the exclusion of others. This is true of human beings in general, not just politicians. So in order to avoid this, those who stand the risk of being exploited need to stand up to the potential exploiters. This fact highlights what the major attraction of democracy is.

The major attraction of democracy is not that it is perfect or that democrats are supposed to be honest but that it is a system of government that formally recognizes the right for the populace to express dissatisfaction and provides mechanisms for expressing it, the most well-known being the vote. That in itself, is a great advance over the monarchism, feudalism and military dictatorships of the past. Unfortunately, expressing dissatisfaction and suing for social change will often need to go beyond mere voting. Two notable examples of this would be the civil rights movement of 1960s America and the feminist movement globally in 20^th century and continuing into the 21^st. These two groups couldn’t have used the vote to change things because one of the changes they were suing for was the right to vote. It should also be noted that these two groups largely achieved their aims without violence, hotheads would do well to take note.

Oftentimes, for meaningful changes to occur, broad coalitions of many disparate groups would have to apply concerted effort using the institutional mechanisms available for expressing dissent in a bid to influence public policy. Some may ask what would be the goal in concrete terms?

The goal would be a successful modern society. I have taken a lot of pains in my posts to a paint a picture of what a successful modern society looks like. A successful modern society runs along the lines of science, technology and reason, not faith, tradition and natural resources. It is almost impossible for the bulk of a society to live above subsistence, without that society running on scientific precepts. So the plan would be to look at what economic institutions and policies are necessary to bring this about and what is it about the current economic institutions and policies (or the lack of them), that prevents them from coming into being. Such an investigation will ultimately lead to the political institutions that shape the economic institutions. Reforming these too, would also be necessary. Constant monitoring by the broad coalition will be necessary to make sure that the changes are not merely a façade on the surface while things continue being done pretty much the same way on the inside. This is truly a tall order but only with the achievement of this, will we truly be on our way to mass prosperity.

BEFORE YOU GO: Please share this post with as many people as possible and check out my book Why Africa is not rich like America and Europe on Amazon.  

Bibliography

Acemoglu, Daron et al.  2012 Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. London: Profile Books Ltd

Birkland, Thomas. 2015 An Introduction to the Policy Process: Theories, Concepts, and Models of Public Policy Making. London and New York: Routledge