Achieving Excellence in Science and Technology Higher Education

Africa's education system needs to concentrate much on science education that will help contribute to the economic and healthy growth of the population, according to the American Embassy in Zambia education advisor, Andrew Anderson.

Anderson said that the African education system must be centered on science and technology education if the continent's economies are to improve. The US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said in a message to mark the start of the commemoration of the US seventh annual International Education Week in November, that science and technology has brought about positive change to people's lives in many countries around the world including the US.

Hence, Spellings said there is a need for the African education system to be tailored on science and technology.

A Matter of Policy
However, the shortage of science and technology teachers and teaching aids in many African countries creates imbalances in the education system compared to developed countries.

In Zambia and Tanzania, for example, as in many other African countries, there are always shortages of science teachers in a number of learning institutions whether public or private. Several scientists attribute the shortage of science and technology teachers to the lack of policymakers' will to invest much in the science education sector. Not because African countries have no money to do so but because most of the financial resources are directed towards political activities rather than science development.

Lack of political will usually brings about bad working conditions and unreasonable remunerations which force science teachers to migrate to developed countries. There, their services are more recognized, respected, and given better conditions of service.

The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), a body through which the Zambian government directs policy on the development and application of science and technology, agrees that policymakers play a critical role in deciding how science and technology develop and what role they play in the development process.

"Zambia's current investment in science and technology is only 0.2 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is too little to assist science and technology institutions," said Dr. Dennis Wanchinga, NSTC's executive secretary. For any meaningful development in science and technology to take place in Zambia, said Wanchinga, the Zambian government needs to allocate at least two percent of its GDP.
Indeed, the political and economic strength of any country is measured by the education of its citizens, especially in the scientific field. Science and technology has indisputably leveled the playing field and flattened the world, showing the value of mathematics and science as subjects in high demand across the globe.
No doubt, science and technology knows no boundaries, and more than ever before, success in any country in the world depends on what you know scientifically and not where you live.

However, some marks of positive steps toward the development of science and technology are being seen in many African countries. The Zambian government has agreed to increase its budgetary allocation to the NSTC through the Ministry of Science and Technology, as a first step for developing science and technology in the country.

The Minister of Science and Technology Brian Chituwo said on December 13 that more money would be allocated by the government to the Ministry of Science and Technology as a way of enhancing science and technology development.

Interestingly, Chituwo said most of the money would go towards the Technical Education Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training Authority (TEVETA), a body that regulates science and technology training in the country in order to enhance science development through education.

Drain of Teacher Brain
Aware of the fact that in many African countries the caliber of science and technology teachers has always been questionable, Chituwo said that by January 2007, TEVETA would introduce a new approach dubbed Training Quality Assurance through the application of "Output-Based Training Quality Assessment".

"This development is positive as it would see training providers assessed more on the quality of their ability to produce predetermined learning outcomes in contrast with their ability to provide learning inputs," said Chituwo.

The loss of highly qualified professionals to the developed world has assumed such serious proportions that it has elicited unprecedented national, regional, and continental efforts to address it, but seemingly to little or no avail. Every year hundreds of science teachers, lecturers, and scientists leave Africa to developed countries in search of better remunerations and improved conditions of service leaving behind a very big gap to fill.

Addressing the brain drain problem by retaining qualified professionals, however, is too costly as the trend can only be solved by allocating more funds.

The education sectors need to buy more teaching aids, increase teachers' salaries, and improve their conditions of service. They need funding which many African governments do not seem to posses.

The University of Zambia's Vice Chancellor, Professor Robert Serpell revealed to IslamOnline.net that many scientists are leaving the continent in search of greener pasture because many African governments are unwilling to improve the conditions of service. Zambia has lost more than 200 scientist during the last 18 years, according to Serpell.

"African governments should provide incentives for scientists to remain in the country because once they leave, it is difficult to retain them," said Serpell.

It is for this and many other reasons that the Network of African Science Academies (NASAC) held a Focal Point Meeting on science education in Nairobi, Kenya, from 11 to 12 December, to develop proposals on teaching of science and technology.

NASAC is a non-governmental organization that draws its membership from science academies in Africa. The objective of NASAC is to act as an independent African forum that brings together academies of science in the continent to discuss the scientific aspects of problems of common concern and to support member academies.

Among the issues discussed at the meeting in Kenya was how teaching science and technology at the national level could become the first step towards developing a regional approach to the problem.

Zambia's Minister of Science and Technology Brian Chituwo said he is working on putting up measures that will stop the brain drain in the country by improving teachers' and lecturers' conditions of service. He said that strengthening of science and technology education system is not debatable but a must for any country in Africa.

Money Gain
Although researchers have tried to calculate the financial cost of brain drain in terms of the value of human capital, so far no amount has been given regionally or continentally. The number of qualified personnel leaving the continent has not been quantified either. The estimates from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) put the number of professionals leaving the continent since 1990 at 20,000 annually.

Currently, the Zambian government has introduced remuneration for doctors which it dubbed "special rural hospital allowances", aimed at attracting doctors to work in rural areas. The idea behind the initiative is to provide high salaries to attract back those who had left the country or to stop those who haven't left.

The government boasts that through this initiative, it has managed to regain a considerable number of scientists and doctors who had left the country.

The money used for this initiative, however, came from the government of the Netherlands because Zambia claims it has no money to sustain the initiative.
All the same, with or without money from donors, many countries in Africa have to do enough to attract qualified science teachers, lecturers, scientists, and health care personnel who are on higher demand internationally because of the high standard of training they receive at higher learning institutions outside Africa.

Giving lucrative incentives to returnees, however, can served to undermine those who stayed at home. Since those who had left got accustomed to significantly better salaries and living standards the government is forced to provide them with significantly better packages than those who stayed behind. Those who had not left, therefore, feel that their loyalty is not being rewarded; it seems to make more sense to leave the country than to be loyal. Hence, the cycle of dissatisfaction and brain drain continues uninterrupted.

Clearly, there are obvious difficulties with implementing extensive retention programs for keeping qualified professionals in Africa for the foreseeable future.

Even during the past few years, Africa's leaders had continued to downplay the impact of brain drain on the continent. Now the matter is no secret, and the impact of this open wound continues to be felt across the continent. If anything, the recent admissions by Africa's leadership only comes to underscore the magnitude of the problem and why addressing it has become so crucial to the continent's development socially, economically, and even politically