- Guy Pfeffermann
- Tue, 28 Dec 2010 04:42PM EST
-
The Secretary General of the East African Community proposes that the university should respond to the challenges of development.
THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE: PERSPECTIVES FOR TANZANIA
PAPER PRESENTED BY AMBASSADOR, DR. JUMA V. MWAPACHU,
SECRETARY GENERAL, EAST AFRICAN COMMUNITY, AT THE TANZANIA HIGHER EDUCATION FORUM ON “UNIVERSITIES FOR
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: TRENDS, PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES”
ARUSHA, 12TH MAY 2010 (excerpts).
New skills and expertise in the new regional and global economic environment also have
close bearing on entrepreneurial capabilities and management of knowledge economy
enterprises. In the East African context, for example, deepening integration that would be
unleashed by the entry of the Common Market with its central drivers of free movement of
labour, services and capital will demand that countries like Tanzania quickly develop a new
breed of multi-skills and professional expertise in economic activities ranging from tourism
and hospitality, capital markets, banking, auditing and corporate management consultancies,
medical insurance, financial services and a wide range of transport and trade logistics.
Unfortunately, the tertiary education system in Tanzania is very weak in most of these
knowledge economy sectors. This weakness is reflected in the very low place Tanzania
occupies in the global index of quality of higher education and training, at 128 out of 134, in
accordance with the Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010.
It thus follows that the competitiveness of the Tanzanian and, indeed, of most African
economies, crucially hinges on the development of new skills and expertise that fit the new
global economic landscape. Concomitantly, it is important that the University of the Future in
the East African region seriously takes the challenge of producing university graduates who
are regionally and globally minded; who not only think local and act global but also think
global and act local. And much as many critics believe that globalisation is another form of
neo-colonialism and imperialism, logic and evidence of global interdependence shows that a
win-win global trade relationship can emerge on the basis of mutual respect but also of Africa taking command in promoting and defending its interests.
To address well all these new factors and conditions that impact tertiary education it would
be imperative that a new system of what Professor Calestous Juma describes as “governing
economic learning”, a complex process that “involves interactions among Government,
industry, academia and civil society” is structured and put in place. It is a system that views
government as an agent of entrepreneurial leadership in promoting technological and
management competencies through alliances with private enterprises and tertiary education
institutions. It is regrettable though that the linkage between university research and the
private sector in most African countries and in Tanzania in particular is very weak. The lack
of such linkage, in the view of Professor Juma, “stands out as one of the main sources of
inertia and waste in Africa’s knowledge-based institutions”. Promoting the linkage could act
as a powerful strategic vehicle for translating basic research into marketable commercial
products as well as for stimulating a whole set of scientific innovations. The University of the
Future must create such linkage in a robust way.
But equally important, in responding to the growing demand for a larger pool of good quality
graduates and postgraduates who fit the professional needs of a fast changing and competitive global, regional and national economic landscape, is the push to expand tertiary enrolments which public and private universities are currently unable to rise to for reasons of inadequate public funding and costly private investment. It is in this context that the Challenge to the South, the Report of the South Commission proposed that, “university expansion will have to be carefully planned and linked to development needs and priorities”.
The luxury of having huge university complexes that offer numerous academic disciplines
some of which are of little relevance to the needs of the day require revisiting. In addition,
the application of what the South Commission Report calls “cost effective way of satisfying
some demand for higher education”, for example, distance education, should be given greater
attention. Distance education is yet to pick up in Africa. Tanzania has taken leadership in this
area with the establishment of the Open University of Tanzania which, in its short existence,
has made positive headway in addressing both the challenges of tertiary enrolment and of the
needs for lifelong learning. Currently, the Open University of Tanzania has an enrolment of
22,000 students. In contrast, the University of South Africa (UNISA) had an enrolment of
250,000 students in 2008. It is clear that there are huge untapped enrolment opportunities
which the Tanzanian University of the Future must grapple with.
