Africa has had a mixed growth patterns and so has its growth trajectory in education. In the early post-independence period, education played a key role in economic growth and stability of African economies. In the 1950-1960s, several African economies were better performing compared to the Asian tigers. Political and other development glitches set-in that derailed the continent’s progress and similarly affected various facets on education including higher education’s institutional capacity to respond to development priorities and needs at country and regional level. The political and development glitches affected the build-up of relevant critical capacities at universities in the region; in particular, in countries that were in the conflict and post-conflict recovery phase; this ultimately has continued to punctuate the continent’s institutional capacities and region’s higher education growth.
For some time, the Rockefeller Foundation had been active in supporting development interventions across sub-Saharan Africa. Ten Universities in five countries (Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda and Zimbabwe) approached the Rockefeller Foundation with the need to basically undertake a reconstruction of its staff capacities as mechanism to stabilize higher education and produce graduates that are in better position to respond to development priorities at community level. This led to the founding of the Forum for Agricultural Resource Husbandry (FORUM) programme (1992-2003) that supported the training of up to 250 master’s graduates from the five countries. These graduates became key stabilisers to universities teaching capacities, produced technologies, innovations and management practices that formed a key component of the university-technology transfer at the time. Further, these masters’ fellows formed the fulcrum for rebuilding the National Agricultural Research Systems and today, these fellows are senior managers, administrators, programme leaders and professors in universities, research institutes and National Programmes.
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