International Higher Education, Fall 2001

The Knowledge Context in African Universities: The Neglected Link

Damtew Teferra
Damtew Teferra is codirector and lead researcher of the African Higher Education Project at the Center for International Higher Education, Boston College. Address: 207 Campion Hall, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA. E-mail:<teferra@bc.edu>.

Scholarly knowledge is conveyed in a variety of ways—including journals, conferences, the Internet, on-line databases, and CD-ROM. Scholarly journals remain the most important channels of communication in the knowledge distribution network. Even in this high-tech era, they continue to be vital and most reliable avenues of knowledge delivery.

In a recent survey-based study by this author, 80 percent of the nearly 100 respondents reported having access to international journals. But close to 40 percent of the responses were qualified as "limited," "incomplete," "partial," "very few," "very old," and "unreliable access." The inadequate access to current scientific knowledge remains one of the widely reported challenges to the development of science and technology in Africa. In the study, many respondents also described this problem as their major hurdle. We recognize that the extent of the problem varies across countries, institutions, departments, disciplines, and time periods.

Importing Knowledge
Numerous regional and international attempts are currently under way to address the problem. Beginning January 2002, the poorest African countries, along with those in Asia and Latin America, whose per capita income is under U.S.$1,000, will receive free Internet access to nearly 1,000 scholarly journals. This three-year initiative between six major publishing companies and the World Health Organization is expected to benefit much of Africa.

A joint cooperative initiative between four North European and 10 East African universities is another such example that will use the Internet to provide full text articles. (For more on this, see the winter 2001 issue of this newsletter.)

The The Swedish Agency for Research and Cooperation (SAREC) has been consistently supportive of efforts to increase African universities' access to journals. Addis Ababa and Zambia Universities have received more than 130 and 240 journals, respectively, through SAREC support.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has also been instrumental in furthering the acquisition of journals and CD-ROM support for numerous African universities. The University of Nigeria Library is reported to have virtually no subscriptions except those 80 journals acquired through the AAAS.

The African Virtual University (AVU), a World Bank initiative, has a major journal distribution component. Kenyatta University (Kenya), one of the institutions where the AVU first started, is currently able to access more than 1,700 journals, and this number is expected to grow to over 2,400 journals .

Cornell University also has a scheme to provide digital journals cheaply to developing countries. Universities and other research institutions in more than 100 developing countries are expected to benefit.

Exporting Knowledge
On the "exportation" end of the spectrum, a number of initiatives are under way to popularize and disseminate African published materials especially in Europe and North America and also in the region. The African Journals Distribution Program and the African Periodicals Exchange (now merged to form the African Journals Support and Development Center), African Journals Online, the African Books Collective, and the African Publishers Network are part of the drive to improve access, visibility, and distribution of African knowledge and scholarship regionally and internationally.

The Significance of the Campaigns
The aforementioned initiatives have been instrumental largely in the "import" and "export" markets of knowledge products beyond and across the continent. While, the "importation process" has eased the severity of the lack of access to scientific and other scholarly knowledge and information in several universities, the "exportation process" played a role in popularizing and increasing the visibility of African-generated knowledge and scholarship. These initiatives have been vital in transacting scientific, technological, and other knowledge and information. All these have been good and worthy efforts.

The Neglected Link
Much of the emphasis currently focuses on the access and delivery of finished products manufactured both externally and, to a lesser extent, internally. Few regional and international schemes are directed at building a local infrastructure to promote the packaging and development of locally generated knowledge. The complex and difficult task of processing knowledge in African universities and institutions has not yet attracted many support schemes.

SAREC, supported by the Swedish International Development Authority, has been one of the few organizations to support local infrastructures. SAREC has long supported (since 1984) schemes to develop locally based scholarly publications in Ethiopia. The support has benefited more than 16 professional publications, most of them university based. Until recently, the International Development Research Centre was also supporting editing and publishing schemes to promote scientific communication in Africa.

While improving access—to international knowledge systems with the concomitant countereffort to popularize regional products—is being stressed, serious endeavors to vitalize the local infrastructure in processing knowledge generated in African universities and research institutions remain largely nonexistent.

While it is crucial to ensure access to international knowledge networks, Africa should also build its own knowledge manufacturing industry and its capacity to popularize its own handiwork. This has to be approached within the context of sustainability, capacity building, and self-sufficiency. Universities and research institutions must encourage their staff to communicate their work in public fora such as conferences, journals, databases, books, and other published resources. African universities should take the lead in providing technical, logistical, financial, and moral support—not only to create knowledge products, but also process, package, and develop them. The support of donors is vital here.

At the national level, universities should devote serious attention to their editorial offices and their presses, for these are key to the process of knowledge creation and dissemination. Editors usually work alone, often without secretarial or administrative support in an environment less than appreciative of their work. Editors should be given more recognition; editorial offices should be revitalized in terms of human, material, and financial resources and their status upgraded. The quality and abundance of local knowledge production, organization, and dissemination to a large extent rely on the state of these manufacturing entities.

Regionally, African universities should cooperate to strengthen major publications and launch major database initiatives in all streams and disciplines for local, regional, and international consumption. The work of the Association of African Universities to develop a Database of African Theses and Dissertation is one major example. African universities and institutions in collaboration with each other and also those overseas should make a conscious and committed effort to take up such initiatives in earnest. The initiative to collect, document, package, and disseminate African-generated knowledge, information, and data—both published and unpublished—must be given full, sustained, and strong support.

Summary
To reiterate, the initiatives to promote access and delivery must also consciously target the development of the infrastructure and the enhancement of the processes that make possible the production and dissemination of knowledge in African universities. Access, delivery, and development ought to be conceptualized as operating in one paradigmatic continuum. Given the state of most African countries, many journals and university presses have either been terminated or function at their lowest capacity. The current initiatives under way to revitalize African universities should extend to invigorating the processing and development of the neglected link of the knowledge industry in the universities of the region.