Africa
education developments in enlarging the intellectual capital pool for African organisations (Capacity Building, n.d.). These represent tangential efforts by non-State actors to influence skill development. However, as the President of Liberia, Ellen Sirleaf noted, African governments may develop policies quickly to address capacity building, however, implementation, prioritisation, and governance issues pose difficult obstacles (Ratcliffe, 2013). At the micro level, individuals attempting to build their intellectual capacity, face multiple obstacles such as lack of family financial means, lack of educated family members understanding particular needs for success, and limited pathways for access to and progress through higher education. Higher Education Institutions are the actors who connect the human and intellectual capital requirements of organisations to the individuals who seek skill development and the marketplace which “consumes” talent. African Higher Education Institutions currently face many challenges including policy gaps, resource constraints, and brain drain. Each of these challenges underscore the need for reform and changes in public policies, collaboration with the private sector, and attention to the gaps between foundational knowledge gained at the elementary and secondary schools and the curricula for developing human and intellectual capital at the higher education end of the spectrum. Public funding of higher education as a part of the infrastructure crucial to the development of human and intellectual capital has remained uneven and subject to governments’ revenue stream. For example, for two decades, the Botswana government, using its mineral revenue, supported the development of higher education to grow its human and intellectual capital (Mpabanga, 2016). However, as commodity prices declined, the Botswana government along with many others in Africa could not sustain high expenditures on Higher Education (HE) in Ghana freezes on wages, recruitments and percentage allocation of government budget
resources have been used to deal with dwindling resource options. In addition, regulatory liberalisations have been used to allow private operators into the HE sector to reduce the pressure on government spending. There is no evidence of systematic integration of current and future industry skill needs with universities’ curricula design processes for sustainable development of human and intellectual capital. However, there are isolated cases where particular universities have adopted limited integration of some aspects of required industry skills into their programs. Examples can be found at Strathmore University Business program in Kenya; Central University in Ghana and Pan African University in Nigeria. Finally, political issues such as terrorism in Somali and north-western Africa, and Nigeria, war in countries such as South Sudan and Central African Republic, and party in-fighting in places such as South Africa has had debilitating effects on primary and secondary education, destroying bridges to the higher education, and diminishing the higher education capacity to build the human and intellectual capital required by African organisations. The current “Fees Must Fall” protests (News24, 2016) within higher education institutions in South Africa are crippling opportunities for many scholars and do not contribute positively to the developmental landscape in the country and the African continent. We are at present witness to the political and policy impasse in South Africa regarding the “fees-mustfall” conundrum confronting that country. Role of Agencies and Organisations in Building Human Capital While international agencies such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank, just to name two, have been helping to build the higher education infrastructure in Africa (African Development, 2009; Africa, 2015), the African needs for sustainable human and intellectual capital requires localised attention in each country. For example, while some universities have benefited from prestigious
As the President of Liberia, Ellen Sirleaf noted, African governments may develop policies quickly to address capacity building, however, implementation, prioritisation, and governance issues pose difficult obstacles.
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The World Financial Review January - February 2017