African universities are struggling to emerge from a decade of crisis characterized by rapid growth, unsustainable financial arrangements, heavy staff losses, frequent labor unrest and campus closures, institutional deterioration, waning relevance, and declining educational quality. In numerous countries, university graduates are less capable and less qualified today than they were 10 years ago, and university research output has almost ceased. As a result, many African universities produce neither the skilled human resources nor the new knowledge necessary to guide national development in the years ahead. At risk is nothing less than the region's future capacity to manage its own affairs at an acceptable standard.

Responding to this challenge, 40 bilateral, multilateral, and private donor agencies from Europe and North America have launched a bold experiment in interagency coordination. To increase the effectiveness of their assistance to the education sector in sub-Saharan Africa, they have formed a loose consortium intended to facilitate information exchange, glean guidance from the lessons of their collective aid experience, and improve the impact of their development funding through more informed and coordinated action. This consortium, known as the Association for the Development of African Education (DAE), has evolved into a significant forum for dialogue between donor agency representatives and African education leadership on the priorities and modalities for human resource development on the continent.

The work of the DAE is carried out in a dozen working groups formed around key educational themes. Each working group is managed separately by a lead donor agency that serves as coordinator and convener of the group. The DAE is supported by a small secretariat that issues a periodic newsletter, maintains a database on some 1,100 donor projects supporting African education, and organizes the annual meetings. This secretariat initially operated out of the World Bank, but has now been established as a more autonomous and donor-accountable office under the auspices of the International Institute for Educational Planning in Paris.

Among the working groups, the Working Group on Higher Education (WGHE) has attracted increasing attention and participation as a result of its constructive focus on complex tertiary education issues that concern donors, governments, and university leaders alike. This interest reflects growing recognition that African universities contribute significantly to education sector development and national capacity building on the continent. Universities set the standard for primary and secondary education, training teachers, administrators, researchers, and policymakers in the education field. Universities are also the principal source of the skilled leadership and technical expertise needed to guide national development. University-trained human resources, together with the research and policy analyses they produce, constitute fundamental inputs for national capacity building.

WGHE has established itself as a forum for the exchange of information, experience, and ideas among donor agency staff and higher education leadership in Africa. A growing number of agencies--now some 15--have been regularly represented at WGHE meetings. Half a dozen agencies have contributed studies for discussion or helped to finance analyses commissioned by WGHE. To date, 18 different reports have been published and distributed. In the process, WGHE has become a recognized advocacy resource on African higher education.

WGHE, which is coordinated by a World Bank staff member, has held nine meetings to date, all in Africa. The Association of African Universities (AAU) has regularly participated, together with a significant number of invited African university leaders and experts. These meetings, initially cohosted by locally based donor agencies, have later been organized in collaboration with specific universities. Since 1993, the AAU has held consultative meetings with donors in conjunction with WGHE meetings. In this way, the WGHE is developing into an important regular forum for cooperation in African higher education.

Over the longer term, it is anticipated that these efforts will contribute to greater quality and relevance of university education and research in many African higher education systems. Three intermediate steps are necessary to produce these results. First and foremost, progressive gains in the stability and sustainability of higher education financing throughout the region must be pursued. At the same time, greater effectiveness in the management of human and financial resources within African universities is needed in order to maximize the benefits from these scarce inputs. Finally, greater consistency and long-term vision in donor and governmental support programs for African universities will be required for the institutional transformations and developments necessary to keep African centers of higher learning on a par with their sister institutions on other continents.