Regional
News
Africa
ANGOLA
UNICEF
Workshops to Train Teachers
Angola has been at peace for almost two years, and after 27 years of fighting,
the government has committed US$44 million to get 1 million grade-schoolers
back in class within a year. International children’s charity UNICEF
will train 29,000 teachers in three national workshops. The aim is to
cut the number of children under age 11 who have no basic primary education
from 44 percent to just 4 percent. In a country where 70 percent of the
population of 13 million is under age 24 and more than half are children,
the benefits will be felt far beyond the classroom, considering the multitude
of problems — including AIDS, poverty and malnutrition — Angola
faces.
Angola is
famous for its endemic corruption, but with money already earmarked for
education, Angolans are hopeful it will find its way to the children.
Part of the challenge has been to persuade people at all levels of society
of the importance of investing in schools. During the last four years
of the war, the country spent just 4.7 percent of its GDP on education;
in 2002, it spent 7 percent, and the plan was to increase that to 10 percent
in 2003. The success of a pilot program in two Angolan provinces, which
was backed by regional and church leaders, helped win the argument.
—
The
Guardian
Oct. 28, 2003
KENYA
Lecturers
End 3-Month Strike
The three-month old strike by public university lecturers is, for the
time being over, and their unions have finally accepted a government assurance
that a salary deal will be tabled by the end of February. All six public
universities in Kenya were closed Nov. 10 after the lecturers went on
strike. Three universities re-opened Jan. 7, but the remaining three stayed
closed as lecturers continued to protest government inaction. Talks broke
down Jan. 12, and activities at all six public universities were again
suspended, prompting student riots at Jomo
Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.
After a further
two weeks of cancelled lectures, an agreement was reached for classes
to resume. In keen anticipation of the salary package, union members said
it is the culmination of a determined effort to push the government to
recognize their role and status in the development of the nation. Should
the government fail to come up with an acceptable package, the teachers'
union has warned that serious learning in public institutions will not
resume. Meanwhile, students have reportedly started to filter back to
campuses, but very few classes are said to have restarted.
—
Allafrica
December 2003/February 2004
No Funds
to Avert Lecturers’ Strike 
The Government is broke and cannot afford lecturers’ pay demands.
This statement by Minister of Education George Saitoti last week effectively
shattered lecturers’ hopes for a better pay deal.
Saitoti moved
to avert a planned lecturers’ strike by announcing a modest increase of their housing allowances. However, he said the basic salaries remain
at the rates suggested by the Inter-Public University Council Consultative
Forum in February – already rejected by the Universities Academic
Staff Union. Statements from union officials suggest that the new move
would harden the union’s resolve to carry out its strike threat,
slated for April.
—
The
Nation
March 10, 2004
MOZAMBIQUE
Language
Key to New Curriculum
Education is a key instrument in the fight against absolute poverty, declared
Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi at the January launch of a new curriculum
for basic education. An immediate priority is tackling the illiteracy
rate, which stood at more than 90 percent in 1975. Today, according to
Mocumbi, that rate is down to 53 percent.
The new curriculum
allows Mozambican languages to be the medium of teaching in the first
years of primary school. Educational experts have long argued that teaching
6-year-olds in Portuguese, a language many of them have never encountered
before, is a recipe for failure. Mozambique is a mosaic of many ethnic
and linguistic groups. In the first stage of the new curriculum’s
implementation, Mocumbi said, it will only be possible to introduce the
10 Mozambican languages whose written form has been standardized.
The new curriculum
also introduces moral and ethics education, and attempts to make schooling
more relevant to the needs of local communities.
—
Agencia
de Informacao de Mocambique
Jan. 19, 2004
NAMBIA
India
Courts Unam Officials
An academic team from the University of
Namibia (Unam) recently went on a two-week trip to India for academic
development and to strengthen ties between Unam and institutions of higher
learning in India. The team visited a number of high-profile institutions
and also such Indian educational organizations as the All
India Council for Technical Education. The trip already has produced
plans for an academic exchange that will lead to India being profiled
as a quality educational destination for Namibians.
—
New Era
Jan. 23, 2004
NIGERIA
Three
Professional Schools Earn Approval
Thirty years after its establishment, the Nigeria Institute of Journalism
gained approval in December from the National Board of Technical Education
to offer programs in mass communication. Ronik
Polytechnic in Ogun state and Allover Central Polytechnic in Lagos
also satisfied the requirements of the governing board to offer programs
in engineering, science and business studies.
—
This
Day
Dec. 31, 2003
Open
University Up and Running
With support from UNESCO, the Commonwealth
of Learning, India and the United Kingdom, National Open University
of Nigeria welcomed its first 32,000 students in January.
Speaking
at the orientation ceremony for the first students, Minister of Education
Fabian Osuji said programs offered at the institution will fill the gap
created by the closure of satellite and outreach campuses of conventional
universities. He justified the government’s decision to embark on
the project by arguing that conventional universities lack the capacity
to absorb eligible candidates for university education. According to the
minister, Nigeria’s 54 existing universities have the capacity to
enroll 200,000 students — less than 15 percent of the 1.5 million
applications the Joint Admission and
Matriculation Board received last year. Considering the statistics,
the minister argued, it has become imperative for Nigeria to adopt open
and distance-learning options. The ministry expects the new Open University
to enroll 68,000 students by the end of the year.
—
This
Day
Jan. 27, 2004
SOMALIA
Private
Education May Hold Key to Future
Despite the collapse of the central government in 1991 and the chaos that
followed, parents, teachers and aid agencies have managed to piece together
a private education system that ranges from preschool to newly founded
institutions of higher education.
Because most
Somalis are poor and have no money for tuition, many children are left
out of the nascent school system. A report released by the United
Nations Development Program found that only 16.9 percent of primary-school-aged
children in Somalia attend school. “Children in Somalia are either
learning or looting,” said Abdulrachman Abdullahi, chairman of trustees
for Mogadishu University.
Abdullahi helped rebuild his country seven years ago by establishing the
first functioning university in Somalia since war broke out in 1991. The
university now has 6,000 students enrolled in nine programs. Fees are
several hundred dollars a semester. “We’re trying to convince
Somalis that education is a commodity, like rice and oil,” he said.
Ridiculed
at first, the former army officer’s initiative has been followed
by others, and universities have opened to meet the growing demand. In
2003, Banadir University’s medical school was restarted (see WENR
July/August 2003) with 22 students. On Dec. 25, Sudan’s Al-Neeylain
University opened a branch in Somalia. Funded by the Sudanese government,
the university already teaches 4,000 Somali students at the main campus
in Khartoum and plans to serve thousands more in Mogadishu. Mogadishu
University is building a 20-acre campus north of the city, and educators
predict that if peace is reached and a stable government returns, students
will enthusiastically fill classrooms again.
—
Mail
and Guardian
Jan. 21, 2004
SOUTH AFRICA
Complications
Await Institutional Mergers
A new era dawned in the South African higher education sector on Jan.
1 with institutional mergers leading to the birth of four new universities:
the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Tshwane
University of Technology, North
West University and the University
of SA (Unisa). While this signals new beginnings for the sector, the
US$450 million dollar merger exercise will not yield immediate transformation
results given the complexities of rationalizing 36 institutions into 22.
For cash-strapped and poorly governed institutions that have been given
a second lease of life, the merger process is a fraught process.
Massive challenges
and administrative nightmares lie ahead. The four newly integrated institutions
still do not know which staff will be taking voluntary severance, so they
cannot plan enrollments or staff allocations. The schools have not finalized
their new mission statements or consolidated their curriculums and program
offerings. Buildings have to be consolidated and new satellite campuses
have to be set up, while more mundane administrative issues such as designing
new letterheads, brochures and joint registration processes also have
to be dealt with. In April, a new funding formula will be enacted to add
to their woes. The amount of state funding will then depend on the universities'
three-year rolling plans, graduation rates, research outputs, staff and
student equity and other targets. There are also sure to be lengthy battles
between management and staff unions as the emotional issue of salary gaps
starts to cloud important governance issues.
For a full
list of merging institutions, please visit the September/October 2003
issue of WENR.
—
Business
Day
Jan. 12, 2004
National
Register Aims at Fraudulent Degrees
South Africa is struggling to contain an explosion in university-degree
fraud. It is estimated that more than 15 percent of South Africans obtained
their jobs on the basis of bogus education credentials. The huge scale
of the problem has forced South Africa’s leading universities to
create a National Qualification Register to help employers confirm the
veracity of academic claims.
—
The
Times Higher Education Supplement
Nov. 19, 2003
TOGO
New University
Opens
Togo’s second university is in the northern town of Kara. The foundation
stone for Kara University was laid some four years ago; however, it is
still sitting in an empty field. Because the government cannot afford
to build the campus, lecturers and students are making do with the buildings
of a former teacher training college.
The new university
is expected to reduce crowding at the University
of Lomé, Togo’s only other university, in the capital
city of Lomé. The new institution offers classes in economics,
management, history, geography, modern languages and biological sciences.
Annual tuition fees at Kara of US$50 are half those in Lomé.
—
UN
IRIN
Jan. 27, 2004
UGANDA
4 Universities
Shuttered
The National Council for Higher Education has shut down Nakaseke, Kabale,
Mbale Elgon and Farland universities. The council also deferred issuing
operating licenses to five other universities, including Kampala International
University, in a crackdown on substandard institutions of higher education.
The council granted charters to Uganda
Christian University in Mukono and the Uganda
Management Institute.
—
New
Vision
Jan. 28, 2004
ZIMBABWE
Teacher
Shortage Closes Nursing School
Zimbabwe’s already strained health sector will come under even greater
pressure after one of the country’s biggest nursing schools failed
to open. Harare Central Hospital, with an annual intake of 180 nursing
students, could not open its doors to new students because of a crippling
shortage of instructors. Students were turned away Jan. 4, when hospital
authorities said they would be called to return at a later date. Students
and nurses who talked to the U.N. Integrated Regional Information Networks
said the school had been left with only three instructors; a minimum of
15 are needed to operate. The situation is set to worsen — the remaining
instructors have all submitted their resignations.
—
UN
IRIN
Jan. 9, 2004
Strike
Continues for University Lecturers
Lecturers at the University of Zimbabwe
have been on strike for several weeks and Minister of Higher Education
Herbert Murerwa recently said the government has no money to meet their
demands. Late in February, lecturers resolved to stay on strike until
the government comes up with a solution to their grievances, which include
unacceptable housing and transport allowances.
—
Zimbabwe
Standard
Feb. 29, 2004
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