Guardian

The 13th General Conference of the Association of African Universities (AAU), ended in Libreville, Gabon at the weekend, with the appointment of Prof. Olusola Oyewole as its President for the next four years. Oyewole, who also clocked 365 days in office as Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Abeokuta (FUAAB), Ogun State on May 24, spoke to ROTIMI LAWRENCE OYEKANMI on his vision for the association and other issues. Excerpts:

HOW prepared are you for your new assignment as President of the Association of African Universities?

For the very first time, the Association of African Universities has a President that has had the opportunity of working with AAU as a staff and is also working with many Universities in Africa. While at the AAU, I worked with several Universities in Africa. I have worked with donor agencies and other bodies associated with the African Union and therefore, the operations of the AAU are not strange to me.

So, the AAU now has a President that has been a staff and who is also currently a Vice-Chancellor, which allows for greater wealth of experience. Between 2007 and 2009, I was the Coordinator of the World Bank Project on Quality Assurance for African Universities and in that capacity, I was responsible for promoting and ensuring the quality of educational delivery in many Universities in Africa through the AAU.

During that period, I worked with regulatory agencies in different countries in South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria and Ghana, just to mention a few. Apart from that, I was also the Project Coordinator of a Project supported by the United Kingdom (UK) government, a USAID Project titled: “Mobilising Regional Capacity for Development.” We call it MITI in the Mobilizing regional capacity initiative, and the purpose of that project, of which I was the coordinator, was to help Universities collaborate with one another and engage in research that will contribute to the development of their various countries and regions. It allowed Universities to bring their research proposals and ensure that they collaborate with other researchers outside their own country and region.

The former AAU Acting President, Professor George Magoha, did say that the membership of the AAU is not evenly spread across Africa. What plans do you have to improve on this?

It is interesting to note that the conference we just had in Gabon had 44 per cent of those who were present there from the Francophone speaking countries. It is a big shift from the former trend of attendance. Forty per cent Francophone and the rest were Anglophone. We also had the Arab and then the Portuguese-speaking communities of the continent. I think the Francophone and then the English speaking, that is the Anglophone, were just above 50 per cent and for the very first time too, we have a French-speaking Secretary-General in the Association. With this, we hope that we would be able to reach out to our Francophone countries and Universities, for them to be involved. It is an association of all the Universities in Africa, including those in North Africa, so our intention is not just to reach out to those in the Francophone countries but also to reach out to those in the northern part of the continent.

One of the main issues discussed at the conference was the general graduate unemployment situation. Discussions were deep and recommendations were made. In what ways will the AAU help its members translate those recommendations into reality?

One of the challenges Universities in Africa have, is to ensure that they improve the contents of their curriculum, to make them relevant to Africa. We have challenged our Universities to ensure that graduates of African Universities possess some skills and competencies that would make them become employable, and also enable them to create jobs. And we feel that with this emphasis, we would be able to improve the employability of our graduates.

We have also emphasised the need to increase funding of higher education institutions and funding for providing modern facilities that would improve the quality of teaching in our various Universities.

It has often been argued that despite the existence many universities and academics in Africa, the continent is still facing awesome challenges. In what ways can academics transform the African continent?

It is high time academics and indeed Universities got to their governments in the sense that there has been a wide gap between the governments and the Universities. It is high time we encouraged Universities to develop closer collaboration with the government and also to prove to the government that they are relevant to our development.

We feel also that Universities should engage in research that would address issues or that would provide solutions to the challenges facing our governments and our communities. Through that, we feel that Universities and academics can help to transform our respective countries.

It’s been one year, precisely on May 24, since you assumed duty as the Vice-Chancellor of FUNAAB. How would you assess the state of the University you met and what has happened in the last 365 days?

I would say that we have been able to continue with the trend of having a stable University calendar. For example, in another three, four or five weeks, we would be concluding the 2012/2013 Session. And we have also been able to promote the visibility of our University through the various activities and the new programmes which we have brought into play.

For example, we have started the Commencement Lecture of our University; we have resuscitated the Yam Roasting Festival, and we have improved our local and international collaborations. One of the things I came up with is to make this University a world-class University. We have been promoting world-class activities. We have had increased participation of other Universities in our programmes, international collaboration. Overall, I think that with reference to our original mandate of Teaching, Research and Community engagement, our University has ensured that within the last one year, we have improved the quality of our teaching.

Indeed, that may account for the reason why more people are interested in coming to FUNAAB more than ever before.

Relevance of the curricula in African universities to the needs of the private and public sectors was also discussed at length at the conference. How will the AAU transform this concept to produce the expected results on the continent?

We are encouraging Universities now to work in close collaboration with industries. We feel that Universities should not just develop their curriculum alone, there should be closer collaboration with industries, so that industries would be able to tell Universities what they really need in terms of quality of graduates.

We are also encouraging them to involve people outside the universities in rendering some teaching services with the Universities... that there is a lot that these students can learn from those practicing in the industries. With close collaboration between the Universities and the private sector; we will help the Universities produce graduates that would meet the needs of the industry.

Some weeks ago, I made a statement with reference to FUNAAB graduates in particular, that by the time they complete their programmes in our University, they will not just leave this place with their certificates, we will ensure they possess some skills that will set them apart.

Do you think the AAU would continue to be relevant?

Yes. AAU is the face of higher education on the continent and the biggest voice of higher education on the Continent. AAU will continue to be relevant in that, we are an arm of the African Union. We serve as arm of African Union on the issues relating to higher education on the continent. We will continue to be relevant; we will continue with our programmes; leadership capacity building projects that we feel will continue to help in the development of our Universities.

One of the other things that the AAU does is to ensure that we help Universities in addressing issues that have become challenges to Universities within the continent. Issues like quality, issues like ICT, internationalization, issues like mobility of staff and students with the continent, scholarship, funding. These are the type of issues that will bring Universities together to discuss as we take a common approach to solving these challenges.

We will continue to dialogue with governments in Africa on how to improve the qualities of Universities in their countries and dialogue with governments on how to solve challenges facing higher education on the continent. For example, centrally, we have challenges about access. The number of students that have access to higher education is much higher than the current provisions. We will continue to dialogue with governments on funding of higher educational institutions. We feel that we will continue to be the voice of our Universities in the continent, in our collaboration and partnership with other universities outside the continent.

These are the things the AAU will be doing. We will work closely with the African Union on issues of making education relevant to our Continent. And lastly, we will promote closer collaboration and partnerships among Universities in Africa. One of the things that I promised to do in the next four years is to ensure that the Association of African Universities has a befitting permanent headquarters in Accra, Ghana, and we are already on.

There is this impression that Universities in Nigeria are increasingly being localized. Most of the Universities have Vice Chancellors from the same geographical areas and FUNAAB is not an exception. Do you think this is healthy?

Really, I will not say that the intention is to appoint a Vice Chancellor from the locality, but it is to ensure that we have people who have the competence to drive the vision of the University. In as much as we are looking for people that will drive the vision of the University, whether they come from the locality or from outside the country, it does not really matter. What is important is that we have people who will provide the appropriate leadership to ensure that the University meets the vision of such a University.

In other words, it does not really matter where the Vice Chancellor comes from?

It does not matter and our own University cannot be said to be localised per say. Though, the immediate past Vice Chancellor was also from Ogun State, the Vice Chancellor before him happened to come from another state and the one before him as well. So, FUNAAB cannot be said to be one of those Universities that have localised VCs. I, for example, did not come in as a localised person, because I have had opportunity to work outside this country.