Over the weekend, I returned from Botswana, where I attended the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) Annual General Meeting with UL’s Dean of the College of Agriculture and Forestry, Prof. Leroy Cegbe. This year’s theme at the conference was “Positioning Africa’s Universities and the Higher Education Sector to Effectively Impact Development Processes on the Continent.” Subthemes included African youth, climate change, and technological innovation in agriculture. During my weeklong stay, I had many meetings and conversations that reinforced and illuminated this theme, inspiring me to apply the lessons at the University of Liberia.
RUFORUM was a powerful convening of Vice Chancellors and Presidents from universities all over Africa, as well as their Agriculture deans, professors, researchers, and students. On the ride over from the airport, I met Dr. Mamour Choul Turuk, Vice Chancellor of the Upper Nile University (UNU) in Juba, South Sudan, and three of his deputies. The Republic of South Sudan is famously one of Africa’s newest nations, a landlocked country that nevertheless lies along the path of one of the world’s most legendary rivers. UNU’s inspiring motto is “Excellence, Knowledge, Peace, and Development.” UNU is a university that doesn’t focus on everything but instead has chosen to focus on a few key fields of study that will advance national development. Agricultural innovation is one of them. My conversations left me very curious and wishing to visit, as I contemplated similarities and differences between Liberia and South Sudan regarding the context and challenges of higher education and university management.
At my lunch table the next day, I met Professor Ketlhatlogile Mosepele, Vice Chancellor of the Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (BUAN), one of the co-sponsors of the RUFORUM meeting. BUAN is a university where two UL agriculture instructors, Garmonyou A. Sam and Melissa S. Smith, are pursuing PhDs in agriculture. Vice Chancellor Mosepele is a specialist in fisheries and wildlife management. From the conference podium, he challenged African universities to persuade the Continent’s plentiful youth to engage with agriculture, abandon the view that agriculture is just for old and poor people, and embrace tech-informed, climate-adaptive agriculture and the underrealized African agricultural value chain to advance their own economic prosperity as well as that of their nations. “Our youth are the architects of Africa’s future,” he aptly reminded us. I thought about Liberia’s youth – in fact, the youth studying at UL – who might not yet find agriculture to be their calling, but who might if they saw exciting prospects for intellectual stimulation, technological innovation, creative expression, and lucrative careers at the end. I found myself pondering: How can agriculture education at UL rise to this bold level?
A few days later, I met the dynamic Dr. Puleng LenkaBula, Vice Chancellor of the University of South Africa (UNISA), and its first woman to hold the role. UNISA is a university with approximately 400,000 students (!) across two main campuses, six regional campuses, numerous service centers across the country, and several international satellite hubs. It is the largest open distance learning university in Africa and the longest-standing one in the world. Dr. LenkaBula and I compared notes about being women heads of universities, about methods for undertaking rapid technological transformation at large, complex institutions, and about the power of inter-institutional university partnerships to advance economic and social development across the African continent. We discussed a UL-UNISA partnership that had been started but never brought to fruition and committed to seeing to realization.
Mid-week, I took a side trip to the University of Botswana to pay a courtesy call to Dr. David Norris, UB’s Vice Chancellor, who visited me at UL earlier this year. Dr. Norris told the inspiring story of how, when Botswana decided it needed a university but didn’t have the funds, every household in Botswana was asked to donate a cow or a bag of sorghum. With the proceeds from these nationwide donations, the university was founded, only to be blessed later when diamonds were discovered in Botswana. Diamond wealth lifted the entire nation’s economic fortunes swiftly. Once a Least Developed Nation, today, Botswana is classified as an Upper Middle Income Country, in part because of how it used its diamond wealth to advance development. Dr. Norris noted, however, that the diamond wealth era has passed its peak and Botswana is now pivoting to investment in its youth and in high-tech industries to maintain its upward economic trajectory. Because of the wise early investments in higher education that Botswana made when fortunes were high, it is now positioned to leverage higher education gains in the general population to take advantage of opportunities in the digital, tech, and climate-smart sectors and keep the nation on a path of prosperity despite new challenges.
Ten TA’s and instructors from UL’s Mathematics Department are pursuing advanced degrees at UB under the World Bank-funded HISWA program. I was privileged to meet with them as well as two of their UB Statistics professors during the UB visit. The students remarked that their experience at UB had left indelible impressions about academic excellence and scholarly integrity that they will carry back to UL when they return as instructors and assistant professors. Their comments reminded my why it is important for students and faculty travel and, especially, spend time at other universities.
While at UB, I also toured the Botswana UniPod, a sister to the Liberia UniPod at UL. UniPods are UNDP-funded innovation hubs designed to spark ideas, foster tinkering and prototyping, and spur entrepreneurship, start-ups, and product launches. Prof. Richie Moalosi, an industrial design expert, shared the six start-ups that the Botswana UniPod has launched in the year since it was founded, including one “unicorn” that is now doing business in both South African and Europe. Like the Liberia UniPod at UL, the Botswana UniPod was filled with high-tech equipment and dedicated spaces for creative activity that can be used by university students and innovators from the wider community alike. Prof. Maolosi expressed interest in visiting the Liberia UniPod, so I extended an invitation. UL and UB may look forward to one more area of collaboration in the year ahead!
In sum, my trip to Botswana was transformative. I came away with insights and inspiration that will influence my thinking and benefit UL for a long time to come. I certainly hope that more Liberians, including students, faculty, and staff at UL, get a chance to visit Botswana.
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Tagged: Botswana, Liberia, Southern Africa, West Africa
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