Prof. Adei: Education sector in Africa has no goal

The Former Rector at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Prof. Stephen Adei has said, the absence of African universities on the world’s top 200 universities’ list, is due to lack of long-term effective education policies in African states and the continent as a whole.

The League table was made up of mainly UK and US universities in the first 100 top universities.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology is number one, Harvard University is second, and Stanford University third.

The famous Cambridge University in UK placed 19th, Yale University placed 38th, and Oxford University was 41st.
But Prof. Adeisaid the African continent does not have a specific goal for its education sector and this has led to the slow pace of education on the continent.

Prof Adei noted that African universities do not make enough use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) so they are not competitive on the international stage.

He explains that the low quality of teachers and recycling of notes for students is one of the few factors that hinder African universities from being competitive.

‘There are 4.5 million students in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. In terms of higher education league tables, these students are more or less invisible and cannot compete due to the lack of educational policy ’, the former Rector of GIMPA stated.

Thandika Mkandawire, Professor of African Development at the London School of Economics told the BBC that African universities are still trying to recover from a loss of funding that began in the 1980s, when resources were switched to primary education.

And while other parts of the world invested in higher education, African universities missed out on an entire cycle of growth, he added.

"Once you destroy a university, it's very difficult to rebuild," he said.
Meanwhile, on the top 100 African universities list, South Africa dominated the first 10 top universities as the University of Cape Town placed first and University of Cairo 10th.

Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology place was 18th on the list, which makes it first in West Africa, followed closely by University of Ilorin, Dakar University place third and the University of Ghana placed 4th in the sub-regional grading.

Story: Samuel Mantey/ Adom news