New Directions for Carnegie Corporation of New York
A Report to the Board by Vartan Gregorian, President

February 2, 1999

Today, contrary to widespread perceptions in the United States, the majority of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa are led by freely elected individuals. An important transition to democracy is under way in Nigeria, and South Africa is organizing its second democratic presidential election. Where conflict persists, African states through their own regional institutions are making good-faith efforts to take charge of the negotiations to end the strife. Economic growth has continued in most of Africa, although irregular weather patterns and weak oil markets have slowed the gains of 1995 and 1996. Excluding the recent poor performance of South Africa and Nigeria, the region's gross domestic product actually grew at 5.7 percent in 1996 and 4.9 percent in 1997. Budget deficits and inflation were substantially lower in several countries. These results are encouraging because they appear to be principally due to better policy environments and higher capacity, not to improvements in terms of trade, according to a 1998 Global Coalition for Africa report.

Despite these encouraging developments, African countries have a long way to go before they can match their economic performance of thirty years ago. To accelerate growth, African governments must not only create a climate that encourages innovation and investment, they must also improve the education and skills base of their workforce, opening access to new information technologies and telecommunications networks. A detailed analysis in the 1998 African Development Report shows the importance of strengthening human capacity for sustained national development. Even if investments in human capital are not sufficient, they are essential if any nation is to become internationally competitive in production services and management. Fortunately, political leaders on the continent are recognizing the importance of knowledge in fostering modern development. There is a dawning realization that there will be little chance of closing the wealth gap between advanced and developing economies without closing the knowledge gap.

A major factor still limiting social, economic, and political progress in sub-Saharan Africa, however, is the dearth of skilled human resources able to manage the problems countries face. For many reasons, not the least of them the flight of talent outside the continent, the lack of an adequate reward structure within, and the continued weakness of those institutions responsible for the production, assessment, and dissemination of knowledge, African countries do not have enough qualified professionals — analysts, decision makers, and managers — in either the public or private sector to assess the ramifications of global changes for their countries, much less develop and implement effective policy and programmatic responses. Only when their citizens become informed, knowledgeable, and creative thinkers, with the tools in hand to advance ideas and put them to work, will African countries be able to take control of their fate. An urgent need is to give Africans from all sectors of the population a good basic education and to improve their access to higher education.

Carnegie Corporation will draw on its past experience with African education to develop a new program aimed at strengthening innovative African universities and university leaders, enhancing opportunities for women to participate in higher education, and assisting public libraries in becoming more effective and more accessible learning centers for African people. In addition, we will explore a few discrete projects focusing on the rule of law and private-sector development in Africa. In the latter, the university will be the locus of activity. In keeping with the Corporation's geographic mandate, grants will be limited to African countries that were members of the Commonwealth as of 1948. No unsolicited proposals for International Development will be accepted until after October 1999.

Currently, the participation of Africans in higher education is the lowest in the world. According to the 1997 World Development Report, in 1993 in high-income countries of the world, 56 percent of young people aged twenty to twenty-four were enrolled in some form of tertiary institution. The comparable figure for sub-Saharan Africa in 1990 was 2 percent (1993 World Development Report).

African universities have the responsibility to educate and train their country's political and academic leaders, yet many of them are in a crisis state, grossly underfinanced, inadequately supported by governments that tend to be suspicious of them, and suffering a brain drain. Declining financial resources in the 1980s depressed subsidies for faculty salaries, libraries, laboratories, and the physical plants, leading to deteriorated conditions in most tertiary institutions. Added to the institutions' internal problems has been the widespread perception within home countries that the national universities are to a degree detached from larger economic and social realities. According to an Association of African Universities (AAU) report, The African Experience with Higher Education (1996), "There is . . . a certain amount of disappointment and attendant disenchantment with the universities in Africa for their inability to have had more significant impact on the continent." When the public looks to universities for answers to problems facing societies, "they rarely, if at all, get the answers that they can understand or find relevant to their predicament." In response to the need to revamp African education systems as a whole, the World Bank in 1987 initiated a major review of education in Africa leading the bank to establish the Donors to African Education Program. With Ford Foundation support, a Working Group on Higher Education was formed as a part of this program. In response to the program's overall success (it had considerable donor input from bilateral development assistance agencies), the bank spun it off to form the Association for the Development of Education in Africa, opening membership to non-donors. The Working Group, one of whose members is the AAU, remains active, bringing together donors and African university vice-chancellors to conduct studies on ways to revitalize African universities.

The group's efforts have brought about a renewed commitment by university leaders and donors alike toward building the capacity of African universities to play a key role in national development. These efforts, in turn, have generated a consensus on the actions needed and on an optimal division of labor among institutions, governments, and donors. A joint publication of the AAU and the World Bank, Revitalizing Universities in Africa (1997), describes efforts now under way to meet these challenges, including preparation of strategic plans for university restructuring and developing new approaches to governance, management, and financial sustainability. More than twenty universities are in different stages of preparing such strategic plans. While this is a small percentage of the 148 members of AAU, the ripple effect is already noticeable. Overall, university leaders are showing a growing willingness to assume responsibility for the viability and relevance of their institutions and to reach beyond the campus to connect with the broader society.

For example, of the several universities that have prepared and implemented a strategic plan, the University of Cape Town's experience is noteworthy. It has the dual aim of achieving academic excellence and enhancing opportunities for disadvantaged applicants. Faculty members serve on government committees and are emerging as leaders in the public and private sectors. The library is being significantly upgraded to serve as a hub in an interlibrary loan program. With articulate leadership at all levels, the university is implementing sound principles of governance and management in all of its programs. It shows what an African university can do in managing complex issues of institutional transformation. Based on our discussions with a wide range of experts from Africa and elsewhere, reviews of recent literature on higher education and development, and analyses of past Corporation and other donor experiences, we see opportunities for effectively assisting selected universities in Commonwealth Africa and for helping restore them to a prominent place in African national development. We are undertaking this in the firm belief that universities in Africa are potentially the most capable institutions in their countries. As Revitalizing Universities in Africa makes clear, "They are often the only national institutions with the skills, the equipment, and the mandate to generate new understanding through research. University roles in research, evaluation, information transfer, and technology development are therefore critical to national social progress and economic growth." If African universities are to help serve the goals of national, political, and economic development, they must be able to develop, or have access to, the best available knowledge and information, and they must have the intellectual capacity to transform that information and knowledge into policy-related ideas and communicate them to leaders. Ideally, universities should be a source of independent thought protected under the mantle of academic freedom. In these circumstances, scholars can provide important advice to government, which in turn can call on universities to undertake research and training shaped by national needs. In recent years, this kind of reciprocal relationship between African researchers and policymakers has been encouraged under Corporation grants for high-quality policy-oriented research. Our grants, for example, have led to establishment of an inter-institutional working group on trade policies in the service sector that is providing advice to governments. Through such exposure to ideas coming out of university faculties and research institutes, government ministries have come to realize they have much to gain from collaboration.

Two approaches the Corporation will consider are, first, to nurture research and analyses and teaching within African university faculties and, second, to build bridges between academia and policy leaders, not only in the public sector but also in the private and civic sectors. Any approach taken, however, must be in the context of an overall plan by a university to ensure sound institutional management, transparent and accountable governance, a thriving intellectual environment, adequate facilities for faculty members and students, and, above all, effective leadership. The Corporation will commission studies to review progress by selected African universities toward these goals and then explore specific opportunities for university strengthening during the balance of 1999.

For generations, women have been the backbone of African agriculture, and, in many communities, they are highly respected and influential. In recent history, African women have seen some improvement in their social and economic status. Despite progress, however, most women face formidable barriers to full equality. For example, even though there is nearly universal agreement about the importance for development of women's and girls' education, by the fourth grade more than 50 percent of girls drop out of school, the majority of them before having fully learned to read and write. On the whole, women constitute less than 20 percent of university entrants in Africa.

Researchers have identified a wide range of problems affecting girls' and women's participation in formal education, but the studies have not yet moved systematically from problem identification to policy-relevant solutions, and they remain descriptive. Moreover, the problems typically are not analyzed in the context of national development strategies. Corporation-supported projects have been working to promote policies that support the involvement of women and girls in all aspects of education. Drawing on their experience and our recent programs to advance African women's health, education, legal status, and leadership, the Corporation will examine the possibilities for scholarship programs enabling more African women to obtain undergraduate college degrees. These studies will assess the conditions facing young women at African universities, determine the points of entry to facilitate women's progress through the educational pipeline, and explore opportunities for project development in partnership with universities and African women's organizations. Other avenues the Corporation will investigate are the sponsorship of interdisciplinary policy research and advocacy aimed at removing obstacles to women in the educational pipeline.

The advent of electronic communication has increased both the amount of information available and the speed with which it can be obtained. These technological advances are enabling some developing countries, especially in Latin America, to work more rapidly toward their desired economic, political, and social goals. They can capitalize on the research and development work and investments made by others, and, it is argued, economically "leapfrog" over older technologies that have never been widely available to begin with. Unfortunately, for many poor countries, the growing "digital divide," which impedes access of the poor in wealthier countries to the new technologies, has its international counterpart. Less-developed countries often do not have full access to global flows of information and are becoming increasingly constrained from making progress because of this gap. The African continent is, in fact, the last region to participate in the new information era. While progress has been made at the national level in some countries, gaps are now appearing between those people who can acquire such access and those who cannot. It is critical for these countries to press for greater equity in access to information. Regional institutions in Africa have fully embraced the concept of promoting development through free and open access to information. A number of donors are working with African governments to create the enabling environments that will make such access possible. Most proposals received from African institutions and organizations include the acquisition of information technology and Internet connectivity. Clearly, electronic access to information has been widely identified as a priority.

In the resource-scarce environment of Africa, public libraries are seen by many as the logical information hub. Their role in improving literacy levels, increasing access by students and the general public to books, journals, and eventually information technologies, and providing a quiet haven for study could be significant. Public libraries have the mandate to serve as a democratic source of information and knowledge, but the low priority given them by governments and by public, private, and international funders has led to a severe deterioration of stock and services. With the exception of those in South Africa, most are in a parlous state. As Kay Raseroka, senior librarian at the University of Botswana, has explained to us, "The stagnation of the African economies and lack of basic necessities such as food and health care have reduced the finances available for library services. The crucial question faced by all African public libraries is how to justify themselves to government. Studies to find what role public libraries play in supporting education have shown they are in decline because of lack of government commitment towards their funding."

Very little is known about where, how, and why public libraries in Africa function. Questions that need to be asked include: What is the current capacity of libraries? How are they meeting user needs? What are the best uses of new information technologies for libraries? What are the most cost-effective ways of introducing and maintaining these technologies? What training is being provided for librarians? What results from previous Corporation efforts in this field have proven the most longlasting? Can libraries be modernized and the changes sustained through private individual and organizational support, supplemented by government funding? How widespread are subscription libraries? The Corporation will support efforts to collect baseline data about holdings, quality of staff and training, type and cost of services, user needs, funding patterns, the state of existing facilities, and prospects for future growth. Our hope is that in dealing with these and other questions we can develop in over three to five years an effective grants subprogram emphasizing three or four pacesetter initiatives in public library development.