The African Renaissance: Engaging communities to strengthen agricultural tertiary Education
Abstract
203 words
Poverty remains a central character to the Sub-Saharan African
landscape. Despite the allocation of close to US$50 per person
on the African continent from various donors in 2008, much
remains unchanged. The United States alone quadrupled her
aid budget to Africa from US$1.4 billion in 2001 to over 5.6
billion in 2006. Yet African countries are far from reaching
targets agreed to at the Millennium summit held in New York in
September of 2000. Strong arguments can be made that many
African countries are worse off than at the time of their
independence. Based on the hypothesis that a key missing
ingredient to reducing poverty on the continent is the lack of
human capital to drive and sustainably support agricultural and
other development processes, this paper describes a pilot
initiative by African universities in Eastern and Southern Africa,
with support of external partners, to improve teaching, learning
and research in the region. This is being done through increased
engagement with communities, in a bid to improve the relevance
and contribution of universities to development impact. The
paper highlights the importance of linkages with partners,
experiential learning and involvement in action research as a
strategy towards improving the role of universities in supporting
development.
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