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- 10/21/08: Remarks by Henrietta Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance at the White House Development Summit
- 10/08/08: Remarks by Henrietta Fore, USAID Administrator and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance at The President's Freedom Agenda
- 10/01/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at the Ceremony Marking the Full Operational Capacity of Africa Command (AFRICOM)
- 09/25/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at 2008 Millennium Development Goal Malaria Summit, New York - "U.S. Leadership in the Fight Against Malaria"
- 09/22/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at the White House Symposium on Advancing Global Literacy - "U.S. Commitment to Advancing Global Literacy"
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Testimony of Franklin Moore
Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Africa
Higher Education in Africa
Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health
Committee on Foreign Affairs
U.S. House of Representatives
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.
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