Remarks by His Excellency Paul Kagame,

President of the Republic of Rwanda

Creating a Higher Education Sector for Africa’s and Rwanda’s Development

29 April 2008

 

• Ms Henrietta Fore, US Agency for International Development (USAID);
• Leaders from academia, government, business, and the foundations;
• Summit Participants from Overseas;
• Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen;

 

I thank you very much, Ms Fore, for those kind and encouraging remarks – indeed the pleasure is all mine, and I appreciate very much the opportunity to contribute to this important Summit that has brought together leaders from academia, government, business, and the foundations not only from the United States, but also from around the world.

I congratulate the Secretaries of State and Education, and the USAID Administrator for convening this timely Summit on higher education. I hardly need to overemphasize the critical role this sector plays by creating knowledge assets upon which ultimately, socioeconomic transformation is based.

As I will shortly illustrate, however, higher education is not always accorded its due importance. Summits such as this restore the proper perspective on the sector by putting it back where it belongs – among our global development priorities.

Once again, I commend the organizers of this Summit for their foresight.

My goal this evening is to share with you Africa’s and Rwanda’s higher education circumstances:
What particular hindrances are we in Africa and in Rwanda facing, in building a more relevant and dynamic higher education sector that addresses our development needs?

What are our prospects of removing these obstacles, and what lessons can we draw from countries such as the United States of America?

And, finally, how can we strengthen global collaborative efforts for better results in building more viable higher education institutions on our continent?

I am of the view that Americans will likely be the most understanding with regards to Africa’s and Rwanda’s quest for a relevant and dynamic higher education sector to drive our own progress.

This is because higher education played an indisputable role in transforming this country into modern agriculture, industry, economy, and subsequently to lead the knowledge, innovation, and service economy worldwide.

Particular mention should be given to the crucial role played by the “land grant” system.

I am told that prior to the establishment of the public university system in the 1860s, higher education in the United States, comprised of private institutions, with prohibitive tuition fee structures that severely restricted access to most people.

The land grant system changed all that – by drastically increasing access to relevant knowledge and skills in critical fields, especially in agriculture and related research, extension services, engineering, and economics in every state of this country.

And here is the most critical lesson for us in Africa – America’s form of higher education combines formal university education, non-formal education training, research, and information dissemination.

This integrated approach has a far reaching impact across all sectors of American society, in that it ensures that many, not few, are part of the learning process.

Clearly this system of higher education is anchored at various levels, from communities, to the state, the federal government, the business sector and private foundations.

The impressive and vast knowledge, innovation and skill assets in America that originates from the combined dynamism of private and public universities – together with governmental funding for research as well as the ever presence of industries that absorb the knowledge capital, is undoubtedly the crucial cornerstone to America’s remarkable development trajectory.

As we reposition Africa’s higher education system to power our own development, we face a number of anomalies and challenges.

The first challenge is to recover from the ‘false start’ at the end of colonial rule in the 1960s.
At the time of independence higher education in Africa ranged from non-existence in some countries to mediocre in many others. There were a few good elite universities and training institutions in Africa but these were reserved for the very few.

Subsequent conflicts, socioeconomic instability, bad leadership, and poor governance during Africa’s “lost decades” of 1970s through to the early 1990s had a devastating impact on the higher education sector, leading to a vicious cycle that we have struggled to end.

The net effect of all of this was the mass migration of African professionals to overseas markets – the so called ‘brain drain’ – which, crucially, also included our top academics, scientists, researchers and sector specialists.

This led to further decline of the already weak higher learning institutions. A significant number of graduates from these institutions still leave Africa including students who do not return upon completion of their overseas studies – and so the vicious cycle continues.

For example, it is estimated that currently over two hundred and fifty thousand (250,000) professionals have left Africa and transferred their skills and talents mainly to developed countries, especially the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and Australia. These countries eagerly and rightly absorb this human capital into their economies.

Someone has remarked that this outflow of African professionals is in fact our continent’s form of developmental assistance to wealthier western nations.

In my judgment, not even the financial remittances by these professionals to their home countries, which rose from seven billion dollars ($7bn) in the year 2000 to thirteen billion dollars ($13bn) in 2005, can offset the adverse effects of this skill migration.

We only need to look at the severe skill shortages in most of the major sectors critical to Africa’s development – in such fields as energy, agriculture, health, education, and training of science, technology and engineering.

The second challenge revolves around Africa’s overreliance on short-term solutions to fill capacity gaps.

As is widely known, our continent resorts to the donor technical assistance that is generally based on expensive but not necessarily effective short-term and ad hoc consultancies.

These consultants are estimated to number over one hundred thousand (100,000) per year at a cost of five billion dollars ($5bn) in the form of loans and grants to African countries.

You will agree with me that this is not a viable solution as it creates a revolving door of consultants coming and going – leaving the capacity situation more or less as they found it.
The irony should not be lost here.

We are exporting skilled African professionals by default and importing their replacement by design at a higher financial cost and in an unsustainable fashion.

These “economics” simply make no sense – and have costly implications for Africa’s and Rwanda’s development prospects and future.

The third challenge relates to the mindset of some of our development partners that has added considerable confusion with regard to the role of higher education in Africa. When, for example, the World Bank claimed in the mid-1980s that higher education was a luxury Africa could not afford, international support for the sector quite literally collapsed.

Most multilateral and bilateral agencies, as well as major private foundations abandoned the sector.
The World Bank has since made a U-turn as demonstrated by its two publications “Higher Education and Developing Countries: Peril and Promise” in 2000 and “Constructing Knowledge Societies” in 2002.

Both of these reaffirmed the vital role of higher education in socioeconomic transformation. While this policy reversal is welcome, unfortunately the misunderstanding among donor partners on this issue remains a fact of life.

Preference for investment and support in primary education over higher education still looms large in the donor community.

This in fact is a false debate because primary and higher education are both necessary – and so there is no need to single out either of them for more attention.

In Rwanda we are providing free education to all children in primary schools and up to the first three years of secondary school. But it hardly needs a second thought to realize that primary education is not an end in itself.

It is part of the knowledge value chain and therefore a critical foundation for higher education and development in general.

If I may bring all of this closer to home – higher education in Rwanda did not exist before 1963 when the National University of Rwanda was established at the end of colonial rule.

Even then, due to bad governance and related socioeconomic and political upheavals throughout much of Rwanda’s postcolonial history, this University did not acquire the capabilities necessary to develop adequate human capital.

Shockingly, in the thirty years that followed, only two thousand (2,000) students graduated from our National University – barely enough to meet the needs of any one sector let alone those of the country as a whole.
We are trying to make up for the lost time and opportunity.

The national university has expanded to graduate over three thousand students (3,000) a year – alongside new public and private universities established in the last several years.
But these institutions are not yet in a position to adequately address our skill shortages both in terms of quantity and quality.

It is in this context that, together with our American partners and friends in the business and academic community, we are keenly executing a strategy of utilizing institutional and human capacity from the United States.

The objective is to have individuals join us on a medium-term basis and get the job done, while transferring skills to Rwandan institutions and individuals. Key segments of American society from which to mobilize skills and talents include the “half-timers”, retiring baby boomers, faith-based professionals, and academic institutions.

We are also nurturing a critical mass of young Rwandan talents in vital fields through national and overseas scholarships – a strategy that involves several universities in the United States and other countries.

In another scenario, we are establishing world class science and IT training institutions in collaboration with leading American universities – which will serve Rwanda and the entire region.
It is in this context that I commend this Summit for encouraging the creation of the Global University Network for building capacity in science, technology and engineering in developing countries.
This effort would most certainly add considerable value to our own effort of building a strong and relevant higher education sector.

Let me end by revisiting higher education system in the United States and the lessons we can draw from it to enable us to confront our own development challenges in Africa and in Rwanda in particular.

The principal lesson is that an effective education system is always anchored in the needs of society and must become accessible to all.

From this, it follows that a higher educational system that propels society forward can only emerge if it is a product of a shared purpose between communities, government, and business focused on delivering essential and relevant knowledge, skills, and talents.
We are determined to learn from this approach and wisdom.

I conclude by thanking American institutions and individuals that are already supporting Africa’s and Rwanda’s development endeavors; Rwanda hopes to develop partnerships with more of you.

I trust that the deliberations at this Global Summit will provide practical pathways for increased collaboration between higher education institutions in the developed and developing countries.

We look forward to your call for action and time-sensitive strategies for building a dynamic global higher education sector – and I assure you that we in Rwanda are ready to play our part in realizing this vision.

I THANK YOU FOR YOUR KIND ATTENTION