Global Policy Forum

By Aghali Abdelkader

Student strikes, courses and scholarships cancelled, buildings in disrepair. Since 1990 African campuses have been in crisis as the state, their main source of funding, has found itself up against democratic opposition. Obsessed by the "good governance" ordered by international financial institutions, the new leaders have ignored higher education as unproductive.

The universities have played a major part in democratisation and in them the desire for change lives on. The desire for renewal that emerged in the early 1990s was so strong that schoolchildren and students joined the political quest for power without always thinking what that involved (1). For the most part dominated by the need for material improvement to their living conditions, their demands became political.

In February 1990 a peaceful demonstration in Niamey (Niger) against adjustment measures in the education sector was harshly suppressed, and three students lost their lives. The demonstrators then called for the resignation of head of state Ali Saibou. Marches and strikes followed, resulting in Niger's first "white year" (when the universities were closed down) and the national sovereign conference. In like vein in Ivory Coast, the democratic claims voiced in politics by the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) in 1992 were echoed by prolonged unrest in the country's universities and schools. Paradoxically, this politicisation of the education system in the quest for a democratic takeover of power shattered the peace of the universities and brought with it a general disaffection with education.

The crisis in higher education was then aggravated by policies aimed at economic recovery and restoring the authority of the state. Everywhere in Africa all aspects of university education are paid for by the state: administration, construction of lecture rooms and auditoria, recruitment of teaching staff, laboratory equipment, libraries, student accommodation and catering, scholarships, etc. This means that universities share the same fate as the state. For ten years now, the crisis of authority, legitimacy and identity affecting the latter has resulted in a lack of commitment, especially financial commitment, to the universities.

Generally dictated by lenders as part of structural adjustment plans, economic reforms seek to reduce the public sector payroll and state spending, cut the number and amount of scholarships, etc. Such measures also involve price increases. The need to reinvent the state after the breeze of democratisation means confining expenditure to activities likely to generate income. Everything is now for profit, and some sectors, like universities, are not a priority for public investment.

In their concern to bring economic recovery to the democratic state, the authorities are unconvinced of the effectiveness of university education. They are probably also suspicious of it. What Senegalese political scientist Sémou Pathé Gueye calls "blind practicism" in fact distrusts those who finish their studies with only a general education. Universities seem to have no benefits at all. In its blind passion for economic development, the state, the main provider of jobs, has nothing to offer university graduates. Its preference is for people coming out of vocational schools.

To give meaning to their lives on campus and in the lecture room, students are becoming more militant. In Niger, ill-timed strikes by students in 1995, 1996, 2000 and 2001 and by lecturers in 1998 made relations between university and government even worse. They were already difficult enough because the state accused the university of harbouring forces hostile to those in power. In their eyes "the universities often become hotbeds of discontent. The authorities find it increasingly difficult to control campuses unwisely created in the 1960s. Large concentrations of students inevitably encourage agitation" (2).

Torn between political parties bent on the conquest of power, students are often noisy in demonstrating their political convictions. The ensuing confrontations between student groups generally result in university campuses and refectories being closed and students being sent home. In Burkina Faso, the Ouagadougou and Bobo Dioulasso campuses were closed in May 2000 after student demonstrations were put down violently; they were demanding justice for murdered journalist Norbert Zongo.

The situation of the universities is deteriorating everywhere. Courses were cancelled in 1990, 1993, 1995 and 2000 in Niger and in 2000 in Ivory Coast. Infrastructures are deteriorating, the best brains are leaving, standards are falling and degrees are losing their value. As a result of having their courses cancelled or having to repeat a year, students are often 30 before they graduate. In January this year students at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, went on strike for several weeks; among other things, they wanted reinstatement for colleagues who had been thrown out after repeating the same year's courses several times (3).

Students who can afford to are migrating to the most peaceful universities in the region. Many, feeling totally lost, emigrate or turn to crime. Female students drift into prostitution while others turn to drink. The most courageous try to continue their studies in neighbouring countries like Ivory Coast, if possible in specialist colleges.

The position of lecturers in some countries, like Ivory Coast, Senegal or Burkina Faso, is relatively acceptable, but their circumstances in Niger are deplorable. This makes them open to all kinds of offers and expedients; university lecturers take on other jobs - as late-night taxi-drivers, government advisers or supply teachers in schools.

One thing is clear from the crisis that has afflicted the education system for ten years now: there is a link between the deconstruction of the African authoritarian state and the crisis of knowledge in general. It has followed an implacable logic that has spared no sector of the state. And structural adjustment policies are making the situation worse by cutting the public funding available.

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