Ochieng’ Ogodo
Journalist-Kenya
[NAIROBI] Enhancing
regional collaboration among universities through staff exchanges has a high
potential in improving academic mobility on the African continent and developing
the quality of higher education in Africa.
Dr. Moses
Osiru, the Deputy Executive Secretary at the Uganda-based Regional Universities
Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) Secretariat, says it is
also a means to ensure rationalization of existing capacity in Africa-
including infrastructure, programs, staff capacity and resources.
RUFORUM that
evolved from a predecessor program of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Africa
program (called the Forum on Agricultural Resource Husbandry) is currently
involved in the enhancement of regional collaboration among universities
through staff exchanges.
According to
Osiru, the focus of the FORUM was to provide mission and peer support to
African faculties of agriculture to strengthen research and postgraduate
training. The program run for 10 years before coming to an end in 2002.
“The
University members who were part of FORUM created RUFORUM in 2004. Immediately
upon the creation, the focus of the program began to evolve to take into
account the needs of the initially 10 university members,” he says.
The members,
according to him, were concerned about the need to ensure long-term capacity of
the university to support high level skills building for the continent. They
noted the need to ensure staff capacity building at PhD level, beyond the initial
masters focus of the RF.
“They also
noted the importance of strengthening collaboration, rather than just
competition among the network members. Membership has since grown from 10
members to 12, and progressively to the current 66-member universities,” he
points out.
Geographical
focus has also been enhanced from Eastern, Central and Southern Africa, to West
and North Africa, and the entire continent is now covered.
In 2014, the
Vice Chancellors initiated the Graduate Teaching Assistantship program of RUFORUM
and committed to train 325 PhDs using the GTA approach. Under this program a
university would identify strong programs in its university and provide up to 5
tuition waivers for staff from RUFORUM member universities wishing to pursue
PhD training
The
university would also provide office space and request that the incoming PhD
student participate in teaching and departmental responsibilities. The sending
university would then pay the cost of tickets, research and student upkeep
costs for the staff member on PhD training.
RUFORUM also
ensures that short term staff exchanges continue to take place and staff from
East Africa go to West Africa to teach for short periods ̶2 weeks to 3 months ̶
and vice versa.
To date, Osiru
explains, over 70 PhD’s have been placed at various universities across Africa.
This adds to the over 2000 postgraduate students trained through RUFORUM,
including 356 PhD student.
The staff
exchanges have led to increased understanding of local situations across
Africa. they have also been important in creating networks of researchers
across the continent that are now responding to calls for proposals from
funders and undertaking innovative research. The end result is a stronger
continent, along the vision of the African Union Agenda 2063.
On a
wider scale, according to Osiru, regional collaborations and integration are
critical to higher education reform in Africa: “The staff exchanges were seen
as important mechanisms to ensure increased staff capacity building in the
region. As universities continue to mushroom, staffing challenges also
increase.”
The regional collaboration and staff exchange
has important benefits for the universities. Firstly, staff members retention
rates significantly improved as it was found that over 98% of the staff
remained in the region, and 94% remained in their own countries, much lower
than for training programs that involved ‘sandwich programs’ with northern
universities. Secondly, due to the sharing of capacities, staff from one
university could also support in the teaching at the other university and to
support the strengthening of university programs
For this
purpose, RUFORUM Vice Chancellors (all 66 of them) signed an MoU to facilitate
the sharing of staff capacity for teaching in the different member
universities. Thirdly, costs were significantly reduced with training being
done at nearby African countries. The program provides for greater opportunity
for postgraduate training in the African universities. It also strengthens
internationalization of program and reduces inbreeding.
Most
Universities in Sub Saharan Africa have limited regional and international
collaborative activities required to boost and conduct cutting edge research,
quality teaching, and resource mobilization in support of post graduate
programs. We must highlight that there are many universities that have initiated
strong innovations that demonstrate quality in research, teaching and learning.
But
challenges still remain. Many African university have been challenged with limited
research, quality teaching and resource mobilization for various reasons. The
universities are limited in terms of key resources needed to pursue a research
agenda. There is the lack of funding and research infrastructure are critical
limitations to research
At the same
time, staff capacity continues to be a constraint with many senior staff often
leaving research positions, either to move to administrative positions in the
same university or out of the university
Qualified
staff often are head hunted by international institutions, such as the
Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and other
advanced research centers among others.
In addition
to staffing challenges, incentive mechanisms are poor, with staff lacking
adequate incentives to publish, or even more limited as incentives to enhance
community engagement and impact on the community
Other
challenges include the lack of pedagogical training for new staff who enter the
university. Young academics are usually selected based on their performance at
the undergraduate level and they move to teaching professions often without any
teaching theory; There is
also large classroom sizes that leave little time for staff to pursue research,
or even excellence in teaching. As well, they faced with lack of strong quality
assurance mechanisms that would ensure that students participate in evaluation
of teachers, or monitor the research process adequately.
Osiru
says there are various things that be undertaken as the way forward. Building
on local and international best practices, strong regional platforms provide a
means of bringing together regional and international best practices is one of
them.
“Networks
like RUFORUM offer an important platform to engage African vice chancellors to
support institutional transformation led from the inside,” he says
Therefore, enhancing
regional collaboration among RUFORUM member universities through staff
exchanges will ensure quality academic programmes and research outputs in
various, according to him.
“Regional
collaboration among RUFORUM member universities will ensure that universities
are able to overcome common challenges through working together and increasing
collaboration.”
Key
challenges that will be overcome include capacity for resource mobilization, lack
of specific offices to support internationalization, lack of support for
families and related needs, particularly for women and language barriers.
The
collaboration will also help overcome research that does not respond to
national needs, inability to return home/institution after training and use of
equipment unavailable at home
It will also
help address the high cost of training and inadequate use of ICTs for teaching,
learning, research and innovation
Lack of
funding to support staff exchanges has been major hindrance to regional and
international collaboration. But, Osiru says, RUFORUM is supported by African
Governments and a consortium of donors including the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, the MasterCard Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York,
the Rockefeller Foundation, the European Union and others.
