Here's a summary of what we discussed:
A Focus on Funding for Academic Chairs
- Neil Turok's proposal to have rich nations fund and fully support academic chairs at African universities is an interesting and high potential way to rethink development; of note is his proposal's eye toward stopping the brain drain (his strategy being successfully implemented in Brazil and Canada)
- while Turok emphasizes the need for science and technology education, we questioned what that science and technology education would look like to most benefit African people
- we agreed that there is a need for a macroeconomic view of individual community/region's needs and strengths in setting economic as well as education priorities, as well as an on-the-ground understanding of what communities want
- other practical considerations: there is a need to promote partnerships that are able to support capacity building (regulations, infrastructure, prioritizing), incubate business ideas (patent development, funding and growth, VC partnership) as well as other entrepreneurship functions (marketing, packaging)
- leadership at this level in academic and entrepreneurial levels can be key to setting the regulations and expectations
Trades, Nonformal and Primary Education
- however, this focus on academic chairs needs to be balanced with the promotion, development and possibly formalization of trades education, as academics can be overemphasized and trades denigrated in many African societies
- at a general level, the need to promote 'professionalism' (timeliness, standards in product development, etc.) are important in workforce and management
- governments need to continue supporting primary education, health care and nutrition but this is not the most strategically effective place for North-South business and university partnerships to work
Some of the key challenges:
poor governance
corruption
lack of physical and procedural infrastructure
lack of funding
Some potential ways to overcome these challenges:
strategic partnerships
forming networks among the leadership (i.e. all the research chairs meet to discuss problems, solutions)
- we agreed that there is a need for a macroeconomic view of individual community/region's needs and strengths in setting economic as well as education priorities, as well as an on-the-ground understanding of what communities want
- other practical considerations: there is a need to promote partnerships that are able to support capacity building (regulations, infrastructure, prioritizing), incubate business ideas (patent development, funding and growth, VC partnership) as well as other entrepreneurship functions (marketing, packaging)
- leadership at this level in academic and entrepreneurial levels can be key to setting the regulations and expectations
Trades, Nonformal and Primary Education
- however, this focus on academic chairs needs to be balanced with the promotion, development and possibly formalization of trades education, as academics can be overemphasized and trades denigrated in many African societies
- at a general level, the need to promote 'professionalism' (timeliness, standards in product development, etc.) are important in workforce and management
- governments need to continue supporting primary education, health care and nutrition but this is not the most strategically effective place for North-South business and university partnerships to work
Some of the key challenges:
poor governance
corruption
lack of physical and procedural infrastructure
lack of funding
Some potential ways to overcome these challenges:
strategic partnerships
forming networks among the leadership (i.e. all the research chairs meet to discuss problems, solutions)
No comments:
Post a Comment