Makerere University’s position on a hilltop commanding a panoramic view of Kampala, is fitting for a place some call the ‘Harvard of Africa’. By many measures, it is the continent’s best college outside South Africa. But it was closed for two months from November by Uganda’s autocratic president Yoweri Museveni, after a strike by lecturers over unpaid bonuses sparked student protests.
Makerere has more than doubled its enrolment to nearly 40,000 in the past two decades. As government scholarships, most of them allocated by merit rather than need, have become scarcer, and strike-happy lecturers are demanding ever-higher wages (even though academics at public universities are some of Uganda’s best-paid workers), the university has tried to close the funding gap by admitting more fee-payers. But in real terms, it spends almost a quarter less now than in 2007, even though the number of students has risen by 12 percent over the same period.
Similar pressures are felt across sub-Saharan Africa, especially in the poorer countries. (South Africa’s university system is more advanced but faces other difficulties, including demands by militant students that fees be abolished altogether.) A World Bank study of 23 poorer African states found that enrolments at public and private universities had quadrupled between 1991-2006, while public spending on them rose by just 73 percent.
In the countries where higher education was liberalised after the cold war, private universities and colleges, often religious, have sprung up. Between 1990 and 2007 their number soared from 24 to more than 460 (the number of public universities meanwhile doubled to 200). But they often find themselves tied up in red tape. Gossy Ukanwoke tried to establish Nigeria’s first online university in 2012, but was forced by the government to acquire a campus. Beni American University has 450 executive-education students on-site, and has taught 8,200 online in the past two years. But it has struggled to attract investment to finish the facilities it needs before it can teach undergraduates.
As in India, many of these new institutions churn out cheaply taught graduates. But some others are giving the better public institutions a run for their money. Kenya’s Daystar University is renowned for its communications courses (it also offers what it claims to be “the world’s first smartphone-based degree programme for teachers”). Strathmore, another private Nairobi university, focuses on specific areas, including intellectual-property law, disaster management and how to start a business.
This has prompted some public institutions to up their game. Internships are now mandatory at Uganda’s public universities. The University of Nairobi’s Fab Lab, part of a global initiative that provides access to machinery and online courses in how to use it, has spawned a number of startups.
Africa needs more well-educated young people. But many of its young graduates have gained little more from their time at university than raised expectations. Swelling classes and stale courses mean they are generally ill-prepared for the few graduate jobs on offer. Young sub-Saharan Africans with degrees are three times as likely to be unemployed as their primary-school-educated peers, who are mostly absorbed by the informal sector.