Testimony of Mr. Franklin Moore
Deputy Assistant Administrator
U.S. Agency for
International Development
Bureau for Africa
to the
House Foreign Affairs Committee
Subcommittee on Africa
and Global Health
Hearing on “Higher Education in Africa”
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Good Morning Chairman Payne
and Members of the Subcommittee. It is
an honor to speak with you today about this very important topic, “Higher
Education in Africa” and the U.S. Agency for
International Development’s experiences in this regard. The timing of this hearing is especially
fortuitous, as it comes on the heels of our convening, with the U.S. Department
of State and Department of Education, the “Higher Education Summit for Global
Development” held on April 29 and 30, 2008.
Following the Summit, which brought together over 300 University
Presidents and Chancellors from the U.S. and developing countries—mostly
Africa— private sector and foundation representatives, and U.S. government
officials, USAID hosted a smaller Africa Region Post-Summit Workshop on May 1st
to provide a more focused lens on the challenges and opportunities for the
Continent. I will say more on this
endeavor later in my remarks.
This morning, I would like to
speak briefly about the challenges facing tertiary institutions in Africa;
outline USAID’s efforts to address these issues, including what resources have
been made available to support these efforts; and finally, what we envision for
the future.
Major Challenges Facing Tertiary Institutions in Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
is a continent full of promise and is, in many cases beginning to bear the
fruit of investments made years ago. Economic
growth rates of five to six percent, which exceed population growth in several
countries, are translating into reduced poverty for millions. We are beginning to see HIV rates stabilize
and in a few important cases, decrease.
Although too many children are still out of school and the issue of quality
remains, we know that efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goal of
Universal Primary Education and Education for All targets have resulted in
millions more children gaining access to basic education throughout
Africa. We know the benefits of such
schooling —educated mothers are more likely to have greater incomes, participate
politically, have fewer and healthier children, and to immunize and educate
them. This is a powerful foundation upon
which to build.
What we now have is an
increased demand for higher education due to the larger number of people
completing secondary education, increased youth population in some countries
and the residual effects of improved economies.
Recent studies show that in order to break intergenerational poverty and
to have transformative and sustainable development, higher levels of education
are necessary. However, Africa’s tertiary institutions face tremendous challenges
in providing such education and meeting the increased demand. Challenges include:
·
Insufficient
numbers of appropriately trained faculty using quality pedagogy
·
Inadequately
relevant curriculum, training and degree programs that fail to sufficiently
address student and employer needs
·
Inadequate
working relationships with the private sector and other prospective employers
·
Inadequate mechanisms to ensure access to poor
but capable students and communities beyond urban cores
·
Insufficient
applied and basic research capacity
·
Research agendas inadequately
linked to the stakeholders and needs in various important sectors such as agriculture
and health
·
Funding
constraints
·
Infrastructure and
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) constraints
USAID’s Support for Higher Education
In collaboration with USAID
Missions in Africa, much of USAID’s support to higher education in Africa is provided through the services of the Offices of
Education and Agriculture in the Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture and
Trade (EGAT). However, tertiary education goals are advanced across the
Agency. For example, the Office of
Development Partners includes tertiary education institutions in several Global
Development Alliances in Africa. The Global Health Bureau has supported the
Leadership Initiative for Public Health in East Africa
and a number of other Global Health programs engage tertiary education
institutions as partners, thereby benefitting the institutions in question. In
addition, individual USAID Missions in Africa
invest in local tertiary education as part of their efforts to effectively
implement the Foreign Assistance Framework and achieve specific foreign
assistance goals in the host-country.
USAID’s effort can best be
characterized as a combination of institutional capacity-building, participant
training, and collaborative research, all of which is aimed at helping local
institutions of higher education make greater contributions to social and
economic development and improvements in governance.
In the late 1990s, USAID
began a competitive grants program that emphasized higher education’s
contributions to national development programs through human capacity building
and institutional strengthening. This
program, now called Higher Education for Development (HED), has implemented
more than 300 projects and achieved significant impact in 61 different
countries, many of which are in Africa. Activities have been implemented in a wide
range of technical sectors across the continent. Let me cite a few examples:
·
In 2000 USAID/Rwanda
invested approximately $3.9 million in a HED partnership between the National University
in Rwanda, Michigan State
University, and Texas A&M
University for the Rwanda
Partnership to Enhance Agriculture through Linkages (PEARL). The partnership created a network of coffee
grower cooperatives throughout the country, fostered the development of high
grade coffee beans for the international gourmet coffee market; secured fair
trade certification; and led to the creation of various small and medium sized
enterprises linked to the coffee industry— revitalizing a weakened economy
after the devastating genocide just six years earlier. Today, specialty coffees from Rwanda are sold at Starbucks and Green Mountain,
and other specialty coffee companies are establishing business linkages in the
country.
·
A more recent
example, in Nigeria, Kansas State
University is working with the University of Lagos to bolster their capacity to
provide high-quality, private and public sector-relevant courses for
undergraduate and graduate students in the Faculty of Business Administration
and the Department of Computer Sciences.
This partnership is a component of and complement to a broader Global
Development Alliance supported by USAID/Nigeria. The program evolved out of Nigerian, Microsoft, Cadbury, and Nestlé
interest in building the capacity of local business schools. By working with these schools, USAID is strengthening
struggling MBA programs, realigning
curriculum with private sector needs, and linking graduates with
attractive employment opportunities.
I would like to note that
over the past three years, eleven USAID
Missions in Africa and four USAID/W
offices have invested or expressed interest in the HED
program as a means to increase capacity at tertiary education institutions in Africa. Mission
investors include Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya,
Nigeria, Somalia, South
Africa and Uganda. In addition the Agriculture Office has
invested in the program to conduct work in Angola,
Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique,
South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda
and Zambia.
Global Health invested in the program as well, fostering work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya,
Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. In total, work is being supported in fifteen
countries.
We fully expect this interest
and investment to continue increasing in the years to come.
In addition, since 2003 USAID has supported short and long-term training for
more than 680,000 individuals in Africa. Such training has been provided in-country,
in third-countries, and in the United
States.
In-country training is typically coordinated with local institutional
capacity development which sometimes includes activities that involve local
tertiary education institutions.
This approach reflects and
builds upon the lessons learned from our previous investments under the Africa
Graduate Fellowship (AFGRAD) program and its successor, the Advanced Training for
Leadership and Skills (ATLAS). That program,
with an investment of $182 million over 40 years (1963 – 2003), reached out to
40 countries and trained 3,200 African professionals, many of whom are serving
in key positions in their countries or at various donor and multilateral
agencies. While the program was
successful in many ways, the financial costs and lessons learned led the Agency
to explore more cost-effective alternatives.
As
a result, the broad objectives of the AFGRAD/ATLAS programs – which include the
training of mid and upper level personnel to provide leadership and improve
institutional performance – are currently advanced through a range of technical
sector programs such as HED, Focus on Results: Enhancing Capacity across Sectors
in Transition Countries (FORECAST), and the Board for
International Food and Agriculture Development (BIFAD) Pilot Program, whereby
tertiary institutions serve as providers and recipients of training and human
capacity development programs.
In addition, the Agency
integrates training and human capacity development with related institutional
capacity development programs that address critical development problems in
various technical sectors. This
increases the results and impact of the training and fosters a more
cost-effective use of foreign assistance funding
USAID also supports the Collaborative
Research Support Programs (CRSPs), which have provided more than $29.2 million
to support research capacity-building in Africa over the past decade (1996 –
2007). The purpose of CRSP is to harness
the expertise of U.S.
universities to provide programs that develop research, training and
outreach capacity at tertiary institutions in developing countries and contribute
knowledge, trained personnel and technology to agriculture worldwide in the
fight against hunger and poverty. An illustrative example is the Global
Livestock CRSP which strengthens the ability of institutions and individuals to
manage risk related to livestock production; increase employment and incomes
among livestock producers; and enhance the nutritional status of targeted
populations. This CRSP develops and
disseminates methods to diversify assets and link livestock producers to
markets, rural finance, and public service delivery.
Finally, USAID engages higher
education institutions as partners in a host of technical sector programs. For
example, under President Bush’s Africa Education Initiative (AEI), managed by the
Africa Bureau, Minority Serving Institutions in the U.S.
are working closely with African education institutions, such as Cheikh Anta Diop University
in Senegal and the
Universities of Cape Coast and Education
University (formerly Winneba Teacher’s
College) in Ghana. These partners write, design and publish textbooks
and other learning materials in host countries and train teachers in the use of
these materials. While this effort is
part of a basic education initiative, it adds value to and builds the capacity
of tertiary institutions.
US Institutions include:
University of Texas at San Antonio (TX), Elizabeth City university (NC), South
Carolina State University (SC), Alabama A&M (AL), Mississippi Consortium
for International Development (Mississippi State University, Alcorn University,
Jackson State University and Tougaloo College), and Chicago State University.
US Government Resources
and Activities
With regard to total USG
resources allocated to tertiary education support in Africa,
I will need to limit my comments to USAID expenditures since we do not have
sufficient access to the expenditures of other Agencies.
Between
FY2003 and FY2007, USAID provided
approximately $79 million for capacity building at African colleges and
universities.
However, this figure likely
understates the level of our support since a number of programs that are not
designated higher education efforts per se, nevertheless significantly involve
or directly benefit African higher education institutions.
Future Plans
Despite these investments, we
know there is much more work to be done.
But we cannot do it alone. I
began my testimony by referencing the recently hosted Higher Education Summit
for Global Development and the Post Summit Africa meeting. When Administrator Fore announced her intent
to convene a higher education summit in November 2007 during the National
Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC) meeting,
she spoke about the need to become part of a Global Development Commons: “a
community of continuous and real time exchange, collaboration, partnership and
action involving public and private donors, agencies, NGOs, businesses, the
higher education community, host governments and civil society—at the
intersection where all of our interests overlap”.
The seeds of Administrator
Fore’s vision have been planted. We
realize that if we are to make significant contributions to strengthening
higher educations systems and institutions in Africa,
we must work with a diverse group of partners to broaden our collaboration and
partnerships, expand emerging strategies and innovative programs, and solidify
new and enduring higher education relationships for international
development. This was the intent of the Summit and I am happy to
report that we have begun this journey.
For example, the
Administrator announced that USAID
will partner with the Gates Foundation and NASULGC to support the Africa –U.S. Higher Education Initiative. The Agency also signed an MOU with the
National Science Foundation aimed at improving research and research capacity
in Africa.
Finally, the Administrator announced the development of a new Agency
policy on Human and Institutional Capacity Development
that will have an important impact on Agency support for tertiary education in Africa and elsewhere.
Thank you for this
opportunity to testify before the Subcommittee today. I am happy to answer your questions.