African university students are becoming increasingly frustrated with the state of their deteriorating learning institutions. In countries like Senegal, Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania, thousands of bodies cram into lecture auditoriums built for a few hundred; dormitories intended for two are now crowded with six students sleeping on foam mattresses; and students conduct science experiments using broken beakers.
Forty years ago, African universities were esteemed institutions, considered equivalent to their European counterparts, and developing a generation of intellectuals, revolutionaries, writers, doctors, engineers and statesmen who helped build their newly liberated nations. The same universities are now in a state of collapse, as national and international development policies that once prioritized higher learning and enabled a majority of young Africans to attend school have abandoned them and left their campuses severely underfunded.
Africa actually has the world’s highest rate of high school attendance. In 1984, Senegal saw half its children go to primary school. Twenty years later, more than 90 percent do. This is the direct result of international development policies, which once had organizations pouring in money to ensure basic literacy skills to fight poverty. The result is a generation of educated youth who desires continuing onto post-secondary education only to be disappointed by universities who cannot handle the massive influx of students and by a workforce in which only a third find adequate jobs. Those who can, are leaving Africa in search of a better life.
The International Organization for Migration estimates that Africa is losing 20 000 educated professionals every year. Those who can’t leave are getting restless. Some elite schools in Nigeria have been taken over by gangs paid by politicians to assist in manipulating election results. In the Ivory Coast, student union leaders played an important role in inciting the xenophobia that led to civil war. A Senegal university has been the site of violent strikes by students refusing to attend class in attempts to improve their living conditions and increase the amount of money they are given to live on.
African leaders are obliged to take note of this important constituency. “They fear us because we are the young, and the future belongs to us,” said Babacar Sohkna, a student union leader, as quoted by the New York Times, “but where is our future? We are just waiting here for poverty.”
