The Challenges to the revival and role of Higher Education in Post-Conflict Construction of South Sudan
Dr. Charles Saki Bakheit
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
College of Science
Sultan Qaboos University
Muscat, Oman
1. Introduction
The signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, in Nairobi, between the SPLM/A and the Government of the Sudan, has, for the first time, afforded South Sudan the opportunity to chart the direction of higher education of its people. Given the many competing demands on a government just struggling to set up its institutions and make them functional, the task ahead of the Government of South Sudan (GOSS), in this regard is formidable, but not insurmountable. The situation is exacerbated by how tersely the issue of tertiary education is framed in the CPA. It is fitting therefore that this august conference should place higher education among the urgent issues the new GOSS will have to attend to, in the post conflict construction period.
Any society that wants to make a difference, economically, socially, politically or otherwise, requires a well-trained and educated populace. However well endowed a state or country is with natural resources, without well trained human resources, no significant benefit will flow from all these resources to the people. Hence, any state or community yearning for its future economic and sustainable development, good governance, and the proper management of its democratic institutions, must pay particular attention to and invest substantially in providing a good education for its people. In this respect, one expects no less from the GOSS, in spite of all the competing demands for its attention, to give top priority to education at all levels. Already the GOSS is hard pressed to find adequate trained manpower to man its nascent democratic institutions.
This paper does not intend to address the issues of education at all levels in the south, but rather to focus largely on issues pertaining to higher education, and the enormity of the task ahead in these regard, for the people of South Sudan in the post conflict construction period. It also aims at encouraging discourse and brainstorming among the stakeholders in higher education in South Sudan, and to get them involved in shaping a future educational policy for the south that is both realistic and sustainable, and that should propel the south into the twenty first century. South Sudan has enormous natural resources that are yet to be exploited. However, its most precious resource is, without a shadow of doubt, its still untapped human resources, whose development is the linchpin of that of all the other resources.
Years of marginalization, wars, insecurity and neglect have mitigated the ability of South Sudan to produce the cadre it needs to run a viable state. This paper will attempt to give a brief history of tertiary education, or what little there was of it in the south since the British left the Sudan. It will then discuss the current state of higher education in South Sudan. The GOSS, its development partners in the international community, and the managers of higher educational institutions in the south are going to face a number of challenges during the post conflict period. Several of these challenges are presented and suggestions are made to tackle them. Some of these challenges could actually translate into great opportunities if authorities could craft imaginative and innovative educational policies.
2. Historical Background
The British colonial administration that ruled the Sudan did not advance education in South Sudan beyond the training of clerks, book-keepers, medical assistants and public health officers by the time of independence in 1956. The history of higher education in the South is therefore very short, contemporary, and is synonymous with the history of the University of Juba. I must therefore be forgiven if, in my presentation, I indulge a little bit more on the evolution of the University of Juba and its chequered history.
The legitimate grievance of the South about lack of an institution of higher learning was formally raised by southerners at the Round Table Conference, held in Khartoum, in 1965. Like most other recommendations of that conference, the idea never went beyond the recommendation stage. In 1971, the annual Erkweit Conference of the Sudan Philosophical Society was held in Juba, and it recommended that the University of Khartoum extend its Extra-Mural program to South Sudan. The program duly started in November 1975 [1]. This is significant in that it represented the first time a university was extending its activities and benefits to the south of the country, almost two decades after independence. For a long time, the only avenue for southerners to a higher education was through the small number of southerners that trickled to University of Khartoum and other vocational institutions in the north, from the all boys Rumbek Secondary School, and later Juba Commercial Secondary School. These two were the only secondary schools in the south for a long time.
After the Addis Ababa agreement in 1972, the newly formed Regional Government of Southern Sudan soon found it lacked qualified and experienced civil servants, and had to find ways for training manpower rapidly and locally. In early 1973, the regional government requested the National Council for Research (NCR) to undertake a feasibility study on the establishment of a University in the South. The result was a document that recommended the establishment of a post secondary institution with an emphasis on developing the vast natural resources of South Sudan. Based on the document, the regional government set up the University of Juba project that same year.
In 1976 contacts were made with the Commission of European Community for financial support and assistance, and with the Inter-University Council of Britain as coordinator of a program of study for the new university [1]. The report was completed in 1977, recommending a two stage study program for the university. It was to be a two year diploma, followed by the graduate working for a year or two before returning to complete a degree program in another three years. It is not clear why this two stage study program was recommended, but it could have been to quickly provide the regional government some middle level manpower in the short term. The university was opened in the April of the same year. The following year, however, after protests by students, the diploma part of the program was scrapped.
In 1989, the University was transferred to Khartoum, for security concerns, where it has been to this day. It has had nine different vice chancellors since its inception, none of whom comes from South Sudan. The appointment of exclusively northerners as vice chancellors is not coincidental. It was certainly not for lack of suitable candidates from the south. Bahr el Ghazel and Upper Nile universities, that were established later, have been managed successfully from their modest beginnings to their present status, under very difficult conditions, by southern vice chancellors. Unlike these two universities which are considered as regional, University of Juba has often been referred to as a “national” university, and successive Khartoum regimes have never appointed southerners to head “national” institutions. One other plausible reason could be that, since an appointed vice chancellor was expected to implement the regimes’ political agenda, to their credit none of the southern academics could be relied upon to head this “national” institution and run it according to the dictates of the regimes. The northern Sudanese have therefore controlled and charted the course of the University all along. A good number of academic and administrative positions of authority have been the sole reserve of northern staff of the University. The post of a Deputy Vice Chancellor got created specifically for a southerner, reminiscent of the ceremonial post of second vice-president dedicated for southerners from the time of former military dictator, Jaffer Nimeri. The first southern Sudanese academic to be appointed to the position resigned within a short time, after realizing that the position carried no particular responsibilities. Tingwa [2] gives an excellent account of the history of the University and its management style under various vice chancellors. He aptly describes the latter as a one-man show, manipulative, highly politicized, and heavily biased towards northern staff and students. It is nonetheless fair to say that University of Juba did make significant contribution to the development of the region, producing graduates with highly valued practical skills.
The 1990’s brought about the establishment of new regional universities all over the Sudan, with the universities of Bahr el Ghazal and Upper Nile for the south. And because of the insecurity in the south, they too had to start their existence in the north. Unlike University of Juba, they were not shackled with the burden of carrying out the mission of fostering national unity [1]. Nonetheless, they both suffer from chronic financial problems, lack of qualified staff and basic facilities, scattered and inadequate infrastructure. With some faculties operating in Wau and Malakal and others in Khartoum, and given the poor communication between the two cities and Khartoum, running these universities involves a lot of shuttling between cities by both staff and management, posing tremendous logistic problems.
The 1990’s also witnessed an exodus of southern academic members of staff from the University of Juba, as a result of the oppressive nature of the new regime in Khartoum, and deteriorating conditions of service. Most of them headed to east and southern African countries, where many got teaching jobs at universities while others joined the liberation struggle. With universities operating under restricted academic freedom, and a repressive brand of Islamic laws, the majority of those staff members studying for their PhDs abroad, also chose not to return after completing their studies, further depleting the number of southern Sudanese academics in the country. The regime decided not to send any more staff abroad for training, claiming lack of foreign exchange, although the real reasons were political.
3. The Present Status of Higher Education in the Southern Sudan
Today, the University of Juba motto of “Relevance and Excellence” is being severely tested in Khartoum. It has expanded from its original modest five colleges to thirteen colleges and four centers, in its seventeen years existence in Khartoum [1]. While this expansion is appreciated, it has unfortunately been carried out haphazardly without much study, and with neither provisions for adequate infrastructure, lecturers, nor the financial resources to support it. This huge baggage is one of the major factors that are now hampering the repatriation of the University to Juba. The argument is that the university buildings in Juba can no longer accommodate the many colleges and centers. The truth of the matter is, money is available for the university management to put up substandard buildings in a ragged neighborhood of Khartoum called Kadaru, pay hefty rents for office buildings and staff accommodation in Khartoum, pay fees for the use of facilities of the other universities in the capital for teaching, and spend millions on part-time instructors. Much of this money could instead have been used to upgrade and expand the infrastructure and facilities of the university in Juba, and accelerate its quick repatriation.
Another disincentive working against the return of these universities is that, they have become major employers for northern academics, administrators and technicians. The percentages of northerners working in these universities range from as high as 70% in University of Juba to 40% in the other two. In some colleges the figures are close to 100%, especially among the teaching assistants and the administrative staff [1]. By contrast, in the more than twenty public universities in the north of the country, the numbers of southerners serving either as technicians, administrators, teaching assistants, or academics, are derisory. The students’ body tells the same story. In most of the colleges in the University of Juba, southern students make less than 50% of the students’ body. In short, southerners find themselves a minority in their own universities. Arabic has been quietly sneaked in as the official administrative language, replacing English. The change of regime in 1990 also brought in a change in policy of having Arabic instead of English, as the language of instruction in public universities. This policy change made most southerners teaching in the southern universities redundant overnight, to the extent that some had to go to Jordan for a crash course in Arabic.
Currently, the three universities are facing horrendous difficulties. The staff and students lack basic services, such as office space, lecture rooms, labs, library space, housing, transportation, etc. The colleges and centers are scattered all over Khartoum in rented facilities, most of which are not purposely built for academic activities, making staff-student interaction near impossible. All three universities are bedeviled by financial difficulties. There is insufficient funding for research, sabbaticals, and scholarships for teaching assistants, although from the very beginning these fundamental scholarly activities were already under-funded. The result has been that, appointments and promotions have been based less on academic criteria and more on non-academic attributes such as needs, political patronage and cronyisms. This has led to many under-qualified staff, retired civil servants, and part-time lecturers from other institutions, finding their way onto the payrolls of these universities as instructors.
At this juncture, it is only fitting that tribute be paid to those southern academics who, in spite of being marginalized and against all the odds, did not leave but stuck it out over all these years. They are the unsung heroes of higher education in South Sudan, who, through their tireless sacrifice and daily struggle, have kept vigilant sentry over these institutions.
4. Future Challenges
Southerners have never owned or controlled higher education in the south in any meaningful way. The inevitable question is, now that they have the opportunity, what can they do in the near and long term to meet the challenges of higher education? What are these challenges and what can southern academics, or friends of South Sudan do, particularly those concerned with higher education, to tackle them during the post conflict construction period? In the subsequent paragraphs, a number of these challenges are enumerated and ways are suggested to overcome them. It is hoped that, these suggestions will encourage further debate that will lead to more specific recommendations on higher education emerging from the conference. The list of challenges is by no means exhaustive.
(1) Responsibility for higher education in South Sudan.
It is of paramount importance that the issue be cleared as to who is or are responsible for higher education in the south. This is necessary to allow for providing the authority for planning and policy direction towards the development of higher education in the south. In the CPA, [3] we find the following in the article on power sharing, Part V, Schedule D, under Concurrent Powers, item 3:
“The National Government, and the Government of Southern Sudan and the State governments, shall have legislative and executive competencies on any of the matters listed below during the Interim Period:
3. Tertiary education, education policy and scientific research”.
This gives the government of national unity (GONU), GOSS and the states governments certain unspecified powers on tertiary education in the south during the interim period. However, what is not clear is just what these powers are, and how to share and exercise them by these three levels of the government.
The interim constitution of South Sudan [4] also has this to say about higher education in section 41, item 1:
1) All levels of government in Southern Sudan shall:
(a) promote education at all levels to create the necessary qualified cadres for development;
(b) mobilize public, private and communal resources and capabilities for education and development of scientific research geared towards development;
The document goes on to say in item 2 of the same section, parts (a) and (b), that:
(2) The Government of Southern Sudan shall:
(a) guarantee academic freedom in institutions of higher education and shall protect the freedom of scientific research within the ethical parameters of research and as may be regulated by law; and
(b) endeavour to avail the necessary financial resources to make education affordable at
secondary and higher levels, including technical and vocational training, in order to
bridge the educational gap caused by the collapse of educational services in
Southern Sudan during the years of conflict.
While these statements show the level of commitment of GOSS towards education, and its awareness of the magnitude of the problem, there is a need to clarify, as soon as possible, the responsibilities of the various levels of government, particularly with regard to the three southern universities, so that each knows its responsibilities and plays its role effectively and in harmony with the others, to avoid one level shirking from its responsibility.
(2) Higher Education policy and funding.
Intricately linked to the above are the issues of funding higher education and developing the right policies to suit the situation in South Sudan. They say he who pays the piper calls the tune. It is therefore imperative that South Sudan marshals its own resources to fund its higher education, giving it the authority to device policies that will provide the right sort of cadre to man the engine of development in South Sudan, and prepare its citizens for life-long learning that will lead to a fundamental social and economic transformation. It must work with the state and local authorities to put aside sufficient areas of land in and around Juba, Malakal and Wau, and other southern towns, to cater for these universities, their future expansion, and the future establishment of networks of sub-campuses. The government will also have to device schemes for students to contribute towards their higher education in a way that will not disadvantage those from families with little income or any other underrepresented groups. Schemes such as the provision of students’ loans, state and central government scholarships, gender equity, etc., if carefully crafted, will provide level ground and opportunities to all deserving students to pursue their studies in these universities and other institutions of higher learning yet to be established.
At the moment, the GOSS is under intensive pressure from southerners to return these institutions to their hubs. Many concerned southerners from all walks of life have written many articles in the newspapers, urging for the immediate return of these universities to the south. In 2004, the southern staff of these universities held a workshop in Khartoum [5], and unanimously adopted a resolution for the return of these universities to the south. It is abundantly clear that southerners want their universities back home. The question is just how soon or quickly should such transfers take place.
The most immediate problem is that, these institutions lack the infrastructure in the south to enable them function properly. Transferring them all at once, and without the necessary infrastructure in place, could invite unrest among the students’ bodies and dissatisfaction among the academic staff. The GOSS therefore needs to initiate a phased transfer of the universities in tandem with ongoing constructions and rehabilitation of their infrastructure. This process will have to go hand-in-hand with the provision of needed equipment, an aggressive staff development program, recruitment of competent academic staff, and a thorough review of the study programs. Conditions of service for the academic staff also urgently needs reviewing and made more attractive with ample opportunities for research, so that these institutions serve as a hub not solely for dissemination of knowledge but also for knowledge production. The south has a good number of academics in the Diaspora, most of who are willing to return to work in these universities if conditions of service are improved and opportunities are there for research. If need be, in the short term, expatriate staff with the proper qualifications can be recruited to meet any shortfall.
(3) Loosening the grip of the north on southern higher institutions.
The southern universities in general and University of Juba in particular are at the present time very much under the control of the north. As already mentioned earlier, we have a sizeable number of students from the north in the three universities, and even a bigger percentage of northern academic staff, most of whom would not like to see these universities moved back to the south. This large presence of students, administrative and academic staff from the north has emasculated the abilities of these institutions to serve as a base to promote the cultures of the people of South Sudan, or encourage research in them. The rich cultural diversity of South Sudan has been relegated to the lowest level, in favour of what is considered the national culture, which is in fact northern. The predominantly northern administration plus the huge northern students’ bodies ensure that only the “national” cultures flourish.
Most courses, particularly in the humanities, such as history, sociology, politics, and other culturally based subjects are more likely to tilt towards a northern perspective. Even science-based courses are, to a large extent, designed to address and cope with northern experiences, with most examples drawn from the north. These lop-sided academic programs that lack relevance to southern realities cannot be relied upon to produce the type of graduates needed for the south to achieve sustainable development. A way out of this quandary is to scale down the number of northern students in these universities, and to reduce the number of northern administrators and academics running these institutions. The GOSS should, as a matter of urgency, seek able southern academics and southern university administrators to appoint in key policy and administrative positions in these universities. In addition to a secretariat or council for higher education, it should move quickly to establish an examination council, and a higher education admissions board for the south.
The northern agenda of politicizing the running of the southern universities have been the main source of students’ unrests in these institutions, and many clashes between southern and northern students on campuses. For instance, since University of Juba relocated to the north, it has been closed more than four times because of students’ unrests. A ban on the formation of a students union since 1989 was only lifted this year, in 2006, also only after another costly students’ unrest and interruption of studies. It was only after the intervention of the SPLM secretariat that the problem was eventually resolved. It has been an open secret that the real reason behind the ban on students union was to prevent it being run by students’ groups opposed to the regime. These many closures have at times created back-log of students entering university, resulting in longer periods for students to graduate, and throwing the start and end of semesters into chaos.
(4) To open or not to open more public universities in the south.
The President of the Sudan has been widely reported to want a university established in Torit, in Eastern Equatoria state and another in Rumbek, in Lakes state. The President of the GOSS, has also been reported to have promised to open another university in Northern Bahr el Ghazal state. There will certainly be a need for more public universities in a future South Sudan, and eventually every state will have to have at least one. However, it is public knowledge that the current three southern universities are under-staffed, under-funded and lack adequate infrastructure. Moreover, we do not have enough well-equipped secondary schools in the south to feed the current three universities. In the immediate post conflict era, the priority of GOSS in this education sector must therefore be, first and foremost, to consolidate the present universities by building their infrastructure, investing in their staff development programs, and improving their teaching and research capabilities. Moreover, once the intakes from northern schools are gradually phased out in these universities, there will be more places created for southern secondary school leavers who qualify for higher education.
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To be more specific, the GOSS will require substantial financial resources to provide the badly needed infrastructure for the three universities that would transform them into modern universities, with access to new technologies. For instance, the Bilinyang campus for University of Juba, is a huge project which will require millions of dollars to construct. To the best of my knowledge, neither Bahr el Ghazel University nor Upper Nile University has a decent campus, and each will need a properly and purposefully designed campus. While all these programs are crying for attention and resources, and the capacities of the present universities have still to be fully utilized, for the GOSS to consider establishing yet another public university in the immediate future will constitute a clear case of poor judgment. Putting the economy of scale to their advantage, each of the three universities can easily expand to accommodate between twenty to twenty-five thousand students, with an average annual intake of four to five thousand students.
It is equally important that South Sudan benefits from the global intellectual mainstream. Some of the money earmarked for higher education could be used to fund scholarships for southern Sudanese students to study abroad, especially but not exclusively, programs that may not be available in the three universities. This opportunity could be broadened by exploiting the current goodwill the GOSS enjoys from its development partners, by negotiating for scholarship aid packages for undergraduate and graduate studies in universities of the donor countries. It may be recalled that, during the southern regional government, after the Addis Ababa agreement, the Egyptian government provided scholarships to hundreds of southern students annually, to study in Egyptian universities. Whatever political motives the Egyptians might have had, to launch this program, it did contribute significantly to the human resources development of the south at the time. Today, a number of our southern professionals and political leaders owe their education to that program. A directorate charged with managing such scholarships, will have to be created within the secretariat for higher education, with a clear mandate, and be run in a transparent manner, to ensure fairness, regional and gender equity.
Finally, the GOSS can also compliment its efforts by encouraging the private sector to open educational institutions of higher learning. In this regard, it will need to quickly set up an accreditation body, within the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, to ensure that such private institutions meet specified standards, and have the appropriate resources to deliver quality education and produce graduates with marketable skills at affordable fees.
(5) Reforming University Education in the south
There is no more opportune time than now for the GOSS to undertake a thorough review of the structure, governance and academic programs of the three universities. Enough have already been said in the sequel about the haphazard and unplanned way the academic programs of these universities have evolved over the years, and the archaic style of management still in practice. In their current shape these institutions are inadequately equipped to enable the south move quickly to benefit from the global knowledge-based economy and new technologies.
The review should lead to substantial reform of the system of higher education in the south in general, and the universities in particular. It could kick off by the government establishing clear goals that it considers higher education can realistically achieve in the areas of teaching, research and community service. This means the governance of the universities will have to be re-organized to be able to better manage the resources to attain these goals. For optimal utilization of the resources, each university should discover its areas of strength and excellence, and develop appropriate programs to serve different needs of the community. This would allow the three universities, in the short and medium term, to offer a range of high quality programs spanning diverse areas of specialization, with as little duplication as possible, to provide a wide choice of careers for students.
Research in the sciences is now largely technologically driven, with the use of very expensive and sophisticated equipments that no one single university, particularly in a developing country, can afford to own or even utilize in an optimum manner. Facilities such as mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance, electron and atomic force microscopes, to name a few, now play very crucial roles in scientific research. Most of these cost thousands of dollars to own and run. One way to posses some of these facilities would be for the universities to jointly own them, each kept by the institution that has the critical mass of researchers to utilize it most, while allowing unfettered access to researchers and post graduate students from the other institutions. All such equipments could be pooled and managed as a virtual central analytical and applied research facility.
(6) Reconstruction of primary and secondary education
The formidable task facing the young GOSS in the primary and secondary education sectors cannot be over-emphasized. The challenges have been aptly enumerated in a recent paper by Brown [6]. There is a lack of infrastructure and qualified teachers for both primary and secondary education throughout the south. Most schools, especially in the rural areas, are either temporary structures or they operate under trees. There also exist huge disparities in education provision between various geographical areas, as well as in girls’ education as compared to the boys. According to a recent UNICEF report [7] only about 600,000 children in southern Sudan are enrolled in the primary schools, one fifth of all those eligible. In addition, the GOSS will have to find classrooms to absorb the hundreds of thousands of children of returnees expected to come back from exile in the neighboring countries, most of whom have been following alternative curricula of their host countries. Even in the south, various schools have been using different curricula, particularly of Uganda, Kenya and Khartoum, all of which will have to be phased out and replaced by a South Sudan curriculum. The educational system will also have to cope with the many youths and adults who, because of the war, have missed out completely on education. More secondary schools, post- primary and technical institutions will have to be opened. The youth will have to be encouraged to enroll in vocational institutions that will teach them practical skills. Besides, the south has the highest illiteracy rate in the world, and the GOSS will have to embark on very extensive literacy campaign to reduce illiteracy among the people. At the moment, the GOSS, UNICEF, UNHCR and a number of NGOs are already involved in many of these activities. However, it is important that the GOSS should gradually take over more lead role in these areas.
(7) Convincing International Community to support Higher Education
There is a general reluctance by donors to support higher education in developing countries, in the belief that higher education plays little role in promoting economic growth and poverty reduction [8]. For instance, the Dakar summit on “Education for All” in 2000 emphasized only primary education as a vehicle for broad social welfare, placing tertiary education in an obscure position [9]. Donor institutions have instead placed greater emphasis on primary and secondary education which they consider the more important for economic development. It will not be surprising if the pledges by international development community in Oslo, of some four billion dollars, for post conflict construction in southern Sudan, may not have a component support for higher education. The GOSS may have the revenue from its newly found oil resource, but, given the many competing demands on this source, let alone the controversy surrounding it, this alone will not suffice in funding higher education reconstruction efforts of the government in southern Sudan. The GOSS will have to urge the donor community to include support for higher education in terms of funds, material and transfer of technology in their aid packages.
Recent evidence actually suggests that “higher education is both a result and a determinant of income, and can produce public and private benefits” [10]. According to the findings, higher education can create greater tax revenue, increase savings and investment, and lead to a more entrepreneurial and civic society. It also improves the health of the community, contributes to reduced population growth, and strengthens governance. Besides, graduates are likely to be more aware of and better able to use new technologies, thus promoting faster technological catch-up and improving a country’s ability to maximize its economic output. In his paper on post-conflict reconstruction strategies, Anand [11] proposes three yardsticks on which various strategies can be gauged. These are their impacts on (i) poverty reduction (and achievement of Millennium Development Goals), (ii) effective governance and state reconstruction and (iii) conflict prevention and peace. These are all areas that get maximum impact as a result of careful investment in higher education in a post-conflict era. It is therefore an area that donors can ill afford to neglect.
There are three possible ways that donors can help higher education in south Sudan during the post-conflict construction period. First, donors can assist by direct funding of the infrastructure of the southern universities. The assistance can include direct pledges to build some parts of the university, provide equipment for laboratories, and donate books for the libraries, or provide scholarships for staff development. In the past, the University of Juba had benefited from such assistance with funds from the then European Community earmarked for the construction of the Bilinyang campus. The work on this campus had been started in late 1980s, but had to be abandoned because of insecurity. Ford Foundation and a German organization did fund some programs in one of the colleges of the university. The university was also getting a number of scholarships annually for its staff development program from DAAD, the British Council and AFGRAD. Moreover, the British government used to subsidize the salaries of British nationals teaching in the University. All these programs and many more could be revived and extended to the other sister universities.
Secondly, opportunities should be sought in which some donor-recipient country agreements could include roles for the research-education systems in both recipient and donor countries. According to Hansen [12], if higher educational and research institutions of the governments of both the donor and recipient countries are involved in an aid program, the sustainability of such a program and the much needed social innovation process in the recipient country will be greatly enhanced. Higher institutions from both south Sudan and the donor countries could be involved at an early stage of negotiation of some selected aid programs. Besides such aid programs can benefit greatly from the experiences of the experts of the recipient country.
Thirdly, the GOSS will have to facilitate the efforts of the local universities to establish links with other universities in developed countries. This will provide additional avenues to support and develop their international image as well as to avoid isolation from the international academic community. It will also afford opportunities for the academic staff to carry out collaborative research, and make use of research facilities lacking at home but available in the research institutions in those countries. Such links may include exchange visits of staff and students, and funding of specific programs by the developed country.
Such links need not be confined to developed countries only. Strong links will have to be established between these universities and those in the neighboring countries of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, including southern Africa. The southern universities have a great deal to learn from their sister universities in these countries because of their proximity to south Sudan, their familiarity with our problems, the similarities of the cultures, and the cross-border interactions of the people in the region.
(8) Involving the universities in the post-conflict construction and after
Unlike governments in developed countries, African governments and politicians have a general mistrust of academicians and intellectuals, many a times treating them as yet another party in the opposition instead of partners in development. Nuwagaba [13] argues that, this posture has not only suffocated intellectual growth but has also constrained the role of the intellectuals “in influencing both the political process and economic change” in their countries. It has also been one of the main causes of brain drain from developing countries. The GOSS has a unique opportunity to chart a different path in which the universities become an integral part of the post-conflict construction process. This the government can do in a number of ways.
(a) Firstly, as already mentioned in (6) above, the GOSS can find opportunities in which some donor-recipient country agreements could include roles for universities in both recipient and donor countries. In such cases, the universities will be involved in the negotiations from the very beginning. The benefits of such programs have already been enumerated earlier.
(b) The GOSS should avail every opportunity to make use of the expertise of the academics in its universities by involving them in providing in-depth analysis of important government policies, and not have them treated as opposition of sort. Besides, some of them can be used to serve as members on various public and private sector committees related to their areas of expertise, where their contributions could lead to more informed decision-making. They can also be relied upon to provide consultancy services to the government instead of bringing experts from abroad for short period consultations at high cost to the state.
(c) The GOSS should encourage its employees to be life-long learners, fund the universities to organize seminars, run workshops and offer short courses both for the public and the private sectors. Each of the three universities can set up centers for continuing education that would be in charge of managing these activities.
(d) The role of the southern universities should not be viewed only to produce graduates to meet human resource requirement of the GOSS and the private sector. The GOSS and other international agencies should support the efforts of these universities in knowledge production, by providing the necessary funding and facilities to build research capacity, augment research productivity and to encourage research utility. Needless to say, in the short to medium terms, and in the absence of specialized centers for research in the south at the present time, these universities will be the only institutions capable of engaging in any substantive research activities. Hence it is imperative that the GOSS maintains the universities as the leading research centers in the region. As a matter of policy, much of the research carried could be required to be of certain relevance to the development needs of southern Sudan, as well as to gain better understanding of the social political fabric of its communities and their history.
(e) The administrative structures of the southern universities will have to be revamped, and the current curriculums and degree programs reviewed. In their current shape these universities may not be able to contribute effectively to the post-conflict construction process. The GOSS will have to provide the leadership, moral and material supports needed to transform them into modern universities. Their management will have to be re-structured to incorporate new management style, and their programs revamped to incorporate new technologies that would cope with current development challenges.
In this connection, each university will have to clearly redefine its mission and vision, and come up with realistic strategic and work plans, for both the short and the medium terms, with costs that the GOSS and its development partners in the international community should step forward to meet. Quality higher education comes at a price. Fortunately, the GOSS is just beginning to tap into its oil wealth, and at the same time riding high on the goodwill of the international community, and therefore, it should take full advantage of these opportunities to avail higher education adequate funding.
5. Conclusion
There is no better way for the south to develop its vast natural resources and accelerate its construction from the ravages of 22 years of war and marginalization, than to start by investing substantially and wisely in its human resources development. The challenges the GOSS will face in this regard are formidable but not insurmountable. Firstly, it has to clarify its responsibilities under the new dispensation of the CPA and the interim constitutions. It has to take charge of funding its higher institutions to guarantee its influence on their policies and programs. At present the north plays a huge role in the affairs of these institutions, and this should rolled back. In addition, the GOSS is better off using its resources and attention to consolidate the existing universities and to transform them into modern institutions, and not consider, for the time being, opening new public universities. The private sector could be encouraged to play a role by opening one or two other universities, provided they meet set accreditation standards. Besides, the government is yet to get its programs of primary and secondary education up and running, to feed these universities. The south has one of the highest percentages of illiterate population that requires massive literacy campaign programs. It has virtually no post-secondary colleges, polytechnics and vocational training and specialized institutes. The GOSS has also to work hard to win the support of the international community to assist it in its effort to improve its higher education institutions, and to ensure that these institutions play a proactive role in the reconstruction programs. It is hoped that the GOSS takes its task seriously and with determination to produce the manpower that will drive the engine for its post-conflict construction and future development. Few tasks can rank higher in priority.
6. Postscript
While this paper was under preparation, two events occurred that are directly related to the subject matter of the paper. First, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of the GOSS organized a two day workshop on higher education in Juba, on 17th and 18th of July, 2006, facilitated by an NGO known as Windle Trust International and UNICEF [14]. The workshop, which was attended by a number of southern academics both inside and in the Diaspora, covered a substantial number of the issues raised in this paper, and made some recommendations to the Ministry. For instance, one recommendation is that the repatriation of Juba University should be done in phases, starting this new academic year. The new intake for this academic year should start classes at the University of Juba Atlabara campus. The second event was the pledge by the President of GOSS, in his speech at the opening of the second session of the Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly in Juba, on 9th September, 2006, in which he placed among the topmost priorities of his government, the rehabilitation of 50 Primary schools, 20 Secondary schools, and the three southern Universities, within the next 200 days of his presidency [15]. Although rehabilitation of 50 primary schools in the south is a drop in the bucket, nonetheless, both moves by the GOSS are most encouraging and are strong indications that the authorities in the south are serious about providing, in South Sudan, a strong and firm foundation for education in general and higher education in particular.
The author is a founding staff member of the University of Juba, Juba, South Sudan, and was the Academic Secretary of the University from 1985 to 1990.
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References
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[14] Higher Education Thematic Group Report (2006), Workshop held on 17th and 18th 2006, by Education Development Reconstruction Forum, Ministry of Education Science and Technology, GOSS.
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The writer is a concerned south Sudanese living in Juba, and can be reached by either e-mail atenywek@hotmail.com or by phone, 0955911110.
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