Inadequate funding of higher education causes brain drain in Africa

Maxwell Mkwezalamba, director for Economic Affairs, AU Commission, on Monday said that inadequate funding of higher education in Africa was one of the reasons responsible for brain drain in the continent.
Dr Mkwezalamba said in Addis Ababa that the issue was responsible for the continent’s failure to retain high calibre academic staff and also responsible for declining teaching and research capacity.
“Inadequate funding is also responsible for deteriorating physical facilities in African universities including libraries, overcrowded lecture rooms, and dilapidated buildings,” he said.
Mkwezalemba said Africa has the lowest enrolment rate when compared with other continents of the world.
“Africa’s average gross enrolment ratio for higher education in 2005 was between two to six percent when compared with 57 percent for Central and Eastern Europe, 26 percent for Central Asia, 30 percent Latin America and the Caribbean.
“South and West Asia was 10 percent and 70 percent for North America and Western Europe,” Mkwezalemba said.
Mkwezalemba said the continent has failed to sustain growth of enrolment and improve quality of higher education which led to the decline in knowledge generation and transfer.
He said in order to revitalise higher education, there was a need to ensure that African universities are adequately resourced, both in terms of financial and human capital.
“African universities need to have adequate, reliable and sustainable funding especially for improved teaching, research, administration and upgrading and maintenance of infrastructure,” he said.
Mkwezalemba said there was a need for the introduction of higher education levy on industries operating in Africa, review of tuition fees, political will by governments and university authorities to enhance revenue generation capacity in universities.
Mkwezalemba said university funding could be improved through harnessing and pooling resources at the regional and continental levels to fund research which has regional or continental dimension and through exchange of Academic staff between African universities.
He said there was also the need to ensure that resources provided for the universities were efficiently and effectively utilised.