The Lands of Strikers and Scholars

Literacy initiatives and structural adjustment programmes in West Africa have led to a decline in the public higher education system, which has recently been facing competition from private universities. Some of the problems are, however, homemade. Frank Wittmann reports.

​​"Whenever we used to go to the disco in Dakar, we used to drop our student ID cards inconspicuously and wait until they were found and handed over to the DJ. He would then call our names over the microphone and we enjoyed the admiring looks from the women as we collected our lost ID cards from the DJ." Student Cheikh Diouf roguishly relates an anecdote from the student days of his professor.

Since then, however, the reputation of Senegalese students has got so bad that no-one now dares to brag about being a student in public. Sadly, the reputation of the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), which was founded in 1957, is now equal to that of its students in every way.

With the exception of the Institut Fondamental de l'Afrique Noire and institutes linked to universities such as the Conseil pour le Développement de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales en Afrique, the Dakar university is trapped in a downward spiral.

Money shortages and a strike culture

Ultimately, the deterioration in quality is the result of the fact that both education and development policies in the country focus on literacy and primary school initiatives.

The situation is compounded by the fatal consequences of the structural adjustment programmes that have been imposed on the West African state by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund since the 1980s. These programmes have deprived the state of the funding it needs to guarantee the costly upkeep of scientific tuition and research.

Because their basic salaries are so low, professors are forced to top up their earnings elsewhere. They often hold down jobs in ministries or non-governmental organisations, or earn their money on lecture tours. This mixture of jobs has an adverse effect on higher scientific education.

It also explains why most of the lecturers are not "au fait" with the latest research developments in their respective fields. Quite apart from this situation, poor and out-dated library stocks and the extortionate price of books in commercial bookshops mean that it is very difficult to keep up with the latest international developments in the field of science in Dakar.

A brain drain with a catastrophic effect on culture

This is why many researchers and students emigrate to Europe and North America as soon as the opportunity arises. This exodus, which is referred to locally as the "fuite de cerveaux" (brain drain), has a fatal effect on the cultural life of Dakar.

The desolate status quo is further aggravated by a very pronounced strike culture. Students and professors take it in turn to strike, thereby crippling the university.

Some of the student strikes have also ended in confrontations with the police; the death of the student Balla Gaye in 2001 has yet to be cleared up. But it was in early May 2004 that the violence peaked: following a confrontation with the office of the dean, some students from the law faculty lynched a janitor.

Are private universities the solution?

The situation in neighbouring Guinea-Bissau is somewhat different. Here, where the 1998/9 civil war led to a collapse in public law and order, the Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa (INEP) and the national archive and museum were partially destroyed in military confrontations.

For example, the Senegalese intervention force was quartered in the buildings of the INEP at the behest of the Guinean president Nino Vieira. Out of a blend of ignorance and malice, documents and books - some of which dated from pre-colonial times - were destroyed when they were used as fuel for the little ovens used by the Senegalese soldiers to prepare tea. Today the INEP is slowly being rebuilt with international support.

In some West African countries, (semi) private universities are being built as a response to the decline of the public higher education system. The Amílcar Cabral University is one such semi-private university in Bissau.

Alternatives to emigration

It is the task of this university to meet the urgent need for well-trained teachers and provide tuition and research programmes that are attractive enough to give the local intelligentsia a decent alternative to emigration, primarily to Portugal.

This is why the University of Lisbon is involved in the development of all areas of its sister institution. This project is supported by a decree of the government of Guinea-Bissau, but only as long as it doesn’t constitute a drain on the state budget. A private foundation has been set up to guarantee funding.

It is doubtful whether university president Tcherno Djalo will be able to meet his ambitious targets under such conditions. But for the moment, the young university is making good progress. It started an experimental one-year tuition programme in March of this year.

The semester fees paid by the 1,250 students, who hail from all of the country’s ethnic, religious, and social communities, cover the university’s administrative costs and the wages of its staff.

The tuition programme includes subjects that are considered to be of great importance to the development of the country: teaching, energy, agriculture, medicine and the caring professions, business, social science, and literature.

It is hoped that other subjects will be added in due course and that existing colleges will be integrated into Amílcar Cabral University. In this regard, an agreement regulating co-operation with the INEP has already been concluded.

The price of education

In English-speaking Gambia, even more progress has been made. The University of Gambia, which started a limited tuition programme with Canadian support, opened its doors to students in 1998.

The university overcomes its chronic lack of professors by hiring lecturers from other African countries with a comparably intact higher education system such as Nigeria or Cameroon.

In terms of its facilities and the subjects it offers, this small university is nowhere near as good as the private universities in Dakar. In the Senegalese capital, the Université du Sahel has been steadily building up its reputation over the past few years.

It is succeeding in continually improving its courses and now boasts impressively high-quality administration and tuition. Its blend of experienced and up-and-coming lecturers means that it is already a serious alternative to the public UCAD.

Moreover, it is much less expensive than the Dakar branch of Suffolk University, which offers two courses: management and information technology.

Matriculation fees almost unaffordable

However, the matriculation fees here are just as unaffordable for future students from the middle class as those asked by the Université Virtuelle Africaine.

This Nairobi-based university, which was founded on the initiative of the World Bank in 1997, aims not only to educate the next generation of civil servants, business men and women, engineers, and scientists, it would also like to contribute to the dissemination of local knowledge.

This is all very well, but the matriculation fees cost US$ 900 per annum. Anyone with that sort of money can generally afford to attend a course in Europe or North America, and prefers to emigrate.

This is a typical example of how the solutions proposed for and by Africa do indeed lead to an increase in the range of courses on offer in the higher education system, but have still not achieved real success. Whether this success will ever be achieved is uncertain in view of the political, economic, and social conditions on the continent.

Frank Wittmann

© NZZ, Switzerland

Previously published in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 27 August 2004

Translation from German: Aingeal Flanagan