By Hannah Altmann, Haneen Abdel Maksoud and Passant El Gayar
Cairo,
Egypt – Professor N’Dri Assié-Lumumba of the African and Diaspora education at Cornell University in New York, held a lecture
titled “Higher Education And African Development Since The 1960s: Global-Local
Dynamics” on Sunday, April 27th in Mansour Hall at The American University in Cairo (AUC).
The lecture focused on the development of higher education since the 1960s in Africa.
The lecture focused on the development of higher education since the 1960s in Africa.
“Education
is a universal need,” states Assié-Lumumba, as
she starts off the lecture and continues to say, “it has a particular connection
with human advancement and social progress.”
When
speaking of education, we have to look at the historical context. As the
African-American historian, John Henrik Clarke had once said “the role of
history is to tell a people what they have been and where they have been, what they
are and where they are.”
After
the creation of UNESCO in 1948, education was considered a human right; it gave
the right for everybody to receive education and gave the states the
responsibility to provide a framework for education (Assié-Lumumba). Prior to the creation of
UNESCO, parts of Africa were still under colonial rule. Some countries didn’t
receive education by their colonizers and those who did, by law had a limited
amount of years of education they couldn’t exceed. However, Africans were eager
to have access to education. The United Nations (UN) came to have similar views
as them and the 1960’s was declared year of educational of development. Nevertheless,
some African countries were still under colonial influence after their
independence.
The lecturer continued to say that contrary
to the UN’s belief, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) decided
that higher education was not necessary in Africa, after the 1970s oil crisis. It was consuming too much money, and was not operating, as it should, according
to the standards of the IMF and the World Bank. Therefore they refused to
further invest in higher education in Africa and shifted their attention to
basic education.
The
eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aim to improve Africa by 2015. These
goals include eradicating poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary
education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, improve maternal
health, combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability
and develop a global partnership for development. Assié-Lumumba
points out that: ” if you want to succeed, you can’t miss out on any of these
eight points” because as the Human Capital Theory suggests, there is a linear
and positive correlation between education and development. An attendee of the lecture by the name of Ahmed Alaa said that "I found the lecture interesting because it made me understand why Africa is so behind in terms of education and development."
