This book, Revitalizing Higher Education in Africa, begins with a cry for help!
God, we have a problem. Our brain power is not producing what we need. No matter how much we learn, our communities are underdeveloped. We DO little with what we LEARN. We do not BECOME what we KNOW.
The more we learn, the more we consume goods and services; and the less we produce. We become a burden on our communities. We can not feed our hungry mouths. We cannot house our families. We cannot shelter our homeless. We cannot engineer nor finance the roads we need.
Ask about the food we eat....We have Agricultural Colleges and Universities with agricultural departments full of students and professors who know the art and science of farming; but the food we eat is supplied by "illiterate" farmers from our villages and hamlets. Our kitchen ingredients are supplied from the market, where subsistent farmers break their backs with stone-age hoes and carry their produce on their heads. We value processed canned food over organic. Today, we are not different in values from our fore-fathers who traded men and women for canned fish and tobacco in the early centuries. We trade our peoples' plight for cars, shoes and shimmering glass edifices.
The clothes we wear...We wear three-piece suit from the East and the West in our searing tropical 100+ temperatures. We are well dressed when we appear in shoes, and bracelets from developed nations. We are educated to tea and tie.
The medicines we use...Our pharmacists and physicians value or prescribe more of the Western medications and hardly look at the roots, barks and leaves of our medicinal plants in our God-endowed forests. "That is the domain of traditional healers" some say.
The books we read...We swallow whatever the West writes, if and when we read at all. That is "academic.". For the most part, what we read is irrelevant to our context. But we have no other. Our college corridors are full of "illiterate" teachers. Teachers, who don't read, research nor write. We are examined week after week on contents that hardly contain what we need to be effective in our homes and offices. We must chew, spew and pass the examination! We must comply, or we will not have the paper (diploma, certificates, etc.,) for better pay.
This is the dilemma of the African education! This book discusses how we can do better as learners and teachers in a continent crying for change.
This book is a must read for all studying and/or teaching in Africa!