Starting from Scratch

One of the many things that need rebuilding in Afghanistan is university education for its future leaders. Since 2002 the German Academic Exchange Service has co-ordinated an aid programme by German universities

. Sabine Ripperberg reports

Women in a school in Quetta, Afghanistan (photo: AP)
In all of Afghanistan, there are some 8,000 female students. This may not seem much, but in 2002 there were none at all

​​As part of the aid programme by German universities under the aegis of the foreign office in Berlin, an Afghan delegation has been at a conference in Berlin and is now visiting universities in six German cities.

What began as ad hoc aid has grown into a programme. The first activities were summer and winter academies for Afghan university staff aimed at giving them basic knowledge in certain disciplines over four weeks. Alexander Kupfer is with the German Academic Exchange Service.

25 years of isolation

"You have to know that for 25 years Afghanistan was cut off from developments in certain areas of knowledge and badly needed to catch up," Kupfer explains. "It also showed what Afghanistan needed to acquire, so that the summer academies were combined with an equipment donating programme. The returning lecturers took home with them computers, laboratory gear, literature and the like."

After the first phase in 2002, priorities were jointly set for promoting subject areas.

"These are the natural sciences, earth sciences, management studies, mathematics, information technology and German studies," Kupfer goes on to say. "Curricula are being developed and implemented, German guest lecturers go out and Afghan academics study in Germany. The donations programme continues."

There was also much practical help to get tertiary teaching going again. For example, the first computing centre in the country was installed at Kabul University by the Academic Exchange Service and Berlin Technical University.

The same partners set up a department for information technology at Herat University. The Afghan Minister of Higher Education, Sayed Amir Shah Hasanyar, reminded the conference in Berlin of the roots of the German-Afghan education partnership reaching back to 1957.

In the decades of war and especially from 1992 to 1997, university operation had almost been destroyed, he said. In the new Afghanistan everything had had to start from scratch.

8,000 female students and 15 female professors

"When the doors of higher education opened in 2002, there were 4,000 students," Hasanyar says. "Now we have 40,000 students. This means within four years the number of students jumped ten times. So in 10 years we'll be having 100,000 students."

The minister said in 2002 there were no female students. Now there are 8,000 female students and 15 female professors. While in teacher training women already made up 40%, especially in Kabul, in Kandahar or Khost there are still no female students. The minister said women needed to be given more chances, especially in education, so that their numbers could also increase in the government, in offices and factories.

The minister said one main task was to disperse education away from Kabul into the countryside. This made long-term partnerships especially important. Whereas there used to be just one university in Afghanistan, there are now 19 institutions of higher learning.

There are good relations, for example between the universities of Bonn and Herat, Cologne and Kandahar and the Technical University of Berlin and Djalalabad.

The German Academic Exchange Service is also helping to draw up a higher education act and exemplary university statutes and is helping to set up a standing conference of university heads. The programme of the Afghan delegation included talks at the Federal Foreign Office and visits to universities in Bonn, Cologne, Berlin, Bochum, Würzburg and Karlsruhe.

Sabine Ripperger/Diet Simon

© DEUTSCHE WELLE/DW-WORLD.DE 2005

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  • German Academic Exchange Service
  • Germany's Federal Foreign Office