The African University Of The Twenty-First Century
Correspondent | Monday December 7, 2015 16:13
The quiet revolution now going on in the cities of Africa in fact shows that the private sector is steadily taking over as major creator of wealth and of socio-economic opportunities.
Most importantly, the new trend is not simply the concern of big business or the organised private sector.
Small, medium, micro and mini businesses are growing not simply in number but also in terms of economic impact.
They in fact represent the greatest avenues for the creative application of human talents in the immediate future.
This quiet revolution brings to that important distinction: the labour market concept prevailed at a time when it was customary to be hired into paid employment, a time during which the worker had to follow the drudgery of routine tasks with expectations of a life-time employee engagement. Those were the days of the labour or job market
Today’s graduates are not going into that world of school-to-guaranteed-jobs. They will be going into a more challenging world in which there may be no jobs but in which there is so much work to do, particularly in the African context. It is this challenging scenario that is ruled by the ‘world of work’.
Its major characteristic is that you do not have to be hired in the conventional way for you to become socio-economically productive, for you to achieve self-actualisation through a correct deployment of your creative genius.
Unemployment-Unemployability
Dilemma
Unemployment (especially among the Youth) is probably the most ‘globalised’ of present-day challenges.
The youth unemployment challenge is particularly intense in the developed world. In Spain, a majority of youth (51.4%) was unemployed as of the third quarter of 2011, and the figure was nearly as high in Greece (46.6%).
The youth unemployment rate in Portugal was 30.7%, and in the UK 22%. (“The Jobless Young: Left Behind,” The Economist, September 10, 2011).
In the developing world, high youth unemployment represents lost potential for national economic transformation, and high numbers of economically frustrated youth may contribute to social instability. Developing regions with markedly high youth unemployment rates include North Africa (26.6%), the Middle East (24.0%), and Southeast Europe/Former CIS states (22.6%). (ILO 2011)
The dilemma here is one in which UNEMPLOYMENT co-exists with UNEMPLOYABILITY. The latter term is a combination of unsuitability for employment inability to secure employment inability to keep a job (inability to remain employed) inability to initiate and sustain socio-economically productive ventures
Here then is a double-edged global challenge; very little job provision in the midst of an unsuitable and ill-prepared corps of job-seeking persons
Universities Facing Internal
And Internal Competition
The current situation is further characterized by internal geo-political balance in the establishment of universities (Senegal, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, etc.)
The increasing number of specialised universities (universities of Agriculture and of Technology in Nigeria, medical sciences in Tanzania, science and technology all over the region steady increases in the number privately owned universities the emergence of distance and open learning universities off-shore campuses of foreign institutions clandestine universities
Rivalry and high power competition is raging among all these categories of universities for students, teachers, academic system managers and particularly funding.
Each university is struggling to maintain its public image place through a wide range of innovations, like tailor-made programmes to suit the needs of specific groups, vocationalisation, shortening the duration of courses and all forms of self-survival propaganda.Continues next week
*The author is Emeritus Professor, Institute of Education, University of Ibadan-Nigeria, he was speaking at a Public Lecture organised by the ABM University College, Gaborone
Pai Obanya