Ministerial Conference on Higher Education in Africa: "Engaging African Universities in the Development Agenda"

Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) in partnership with the organizations listed below, convened a conference in Lusaka, Zambia on February 23-27.

On the agenda were the following topics:
1. Mobilise political commitment for increasing investments in Higher Education in Africa;
2. Facilitate networking at all levels to spur and sustain high quality Higher Education in Africa;
3. Mobilise African universities to re-engineer their human resource development programmes through proactive engagement in the continent's development agenda and to make their due contribution to research and innovation; and,
4. Highlight the importance of higher education to Africa's development.

Below is more information from the conference organizers:
"Despite significant increases in both student intake and number of tertiary institutions, Africa lags behind the rest of the world in investing in its people. There are already warnings of a 'missing generation of African scientists', and the institutions charged with capacity building themselves are in a sorry state. African innovation capacity remains curtailed, retarding progress towards attainment of the Millennium Development Goals in the Continent. The limited capacity means that Africa will not be in position to sustainably tackle the persistent problems of widespread poverty and food and nutritional insecurity, particularly in light of emerging global challenges such as climate change and increasing food and fuel prices. A recent World Bank study notes that African universities and other institutions of higher learning will ultimately be responsible for replenishing the stock of human capital, and for providing them with the required broader set of skills necessary to grow agriculture in the 21st century. Unfortunately, they are ill prepared at the present to train the continent's next generation of agricultural scientists, professionals and technicians. In realization of this, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) notes in its Framework for African Agricultural Productivity that 'urgent action must be taken to restore the quality of graduate and postgraduate agricultural education in Africa'."

Partner organizations:
New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)
Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA)
Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)
Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FARNPAN)
African Network for Agriculture, Agroforestry and Natural Resources Education (ANAFE)

Click here for more information.