The Role of Higher Education in Capacity Building in Developing
Countries
May 3-4, Helsinki
Workshop 2
Local needs meeting interests in the field of research and educational
cooperation
A Finnish View
Seppo Hölttä
Professor of HE Administration and Finance
Higher Education Group
School of Mangement, University of Tampere
Seppo.holtta@uta.fi
Changes in the Role of Universities and
HE in the Development of Africa
Universities are separated from society
• It has been true, but …
• Universities are looking for new social roles
– Third task
– Organisational, management and leadership
development
– Diversification of funding base
• Challenge – role of universities in global market
economy
– Africa is the continent of the future
– Importance of public private partnership
HE sectors are elite sectors favouring
elite classes in societies
• It has been true, but …
• mass HE emerging
• Policy shift – national policies and supra-national
policies, e.g. ARUSHA convention
• Expansion of public sectors and the emergence of
private sectors
• Emerging policy – role of HE in poverty reduction
• Universities do have capacities to reduce poverty
The rate of return to the investment in HE
is lower than that of investments in basic
and vocational education
• This is true, but …
• The increase of incomes due to education is a limited
measure for assessing the contribution of HE in
development
• The indirect impacts may even exceed the direct
impacts (measured by rate of return)
– Other segments of public sectors like lower levels of
education, health care, environment, …
– Industrial development (in knowledge based production)
Domination of teaching function and poor
state of research in African universities
• This is true, but …
– It is understandable because of the expansion of
HE and continuous funding crises
– The importance of research is well understood
and policies have been developed
– National and supra-national efforts have been
created to establish centres of excellence – e.g.
Pan African University
– Growing pool of research expertise in African
universities
Universities are Lacking Capacity for
Change
• It is true, universities are still suffering from
the colonial models of HE, but …
– Importance of capacity building is well understood
by African universities, governments and supranational organisations
• Academic capacity – research and curriculum
development
• Management and leadership capacity e.g. Pan African
Institute for University Governance
Challenges for the Cooperation
between African and Finnish
Universities
• From individual based research cooperation
towards …
– Institutionalised research programmes
– Importance of the African relevance of Research
• From unorganised student mobility towards …
– Joint academic programmes
– Programme based mobility of students and teachers
– Double and joint degrees
– Using EU funding instruments (Erasmus Mundus)
and combining national funding programmes
globally (China and India)
• Understanding the capacity of PhD cooperation in the
development of universities
– Training the new generation of experts with global views to
Africa
– Supporting the career developments of these experts
– Using the expertise of African PhD graduates in Finnish
based collaboration programmes
• From Finnish priorities to African priorities
– Field and country priorities now but support of national
policies
– Integration to African based policies and programmes, e.g.
PAU, AAU, IPAGU
• From bilateral cooperation to multilateral cooperation
– Among African countries
– European cooperation (EU and national funding
instruments)
– Cooperation with growing economies (China and India)
• From Finnish ownership of the programmes to shared
and African ownership
– E.g. African curricula and African accreditation of
programmes
– Support to African policy programmes
• From pure academic cooperation to Institutional
Partnership and Institutional Capacity Building
– Joint programmes
– Professional training
– Management and leadership capacity to support changes
of African universities
• Management and leadersrhip training
– Support to the integration of universities to societies
– Cooperation of universities with industries (African and
Finnish)
• From the traditional development cooperation model
towards the contexts of the global market economy