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Which way to go? African universities ask...

DE Dusty ElbowA1
From Uganda
http://www.monitor.co.ug/news/news112412.php

quote:
[SIZE="5"]˜African universities in dilemma'[/SIZE]
JOHN MUTO-ONO P'LAJUR
GULU

THE Executive Director of Afrika Study Centre based in Mbale, Prof. Dani Wadada Nabudere, has said African Universities are at cross roads.
He said university authorities are not decided whether to go for modern globalisation or be relevant to the rural communities.
He was recently delivering a a public lecture at Gulu University.

"Universities are at cross roads. Either they serve the interests of rural communities or they go with globalisation for rural transformation," he said.

His presentation was titled "The future of African Universities: a case study of Gulu University as a university for rural transformation."
The lecture took place at the University's main campus.
The renown scholar observed that modernity is destroying itself from inside thereby putting the elite at a loss.

Deputy Vice Chancellor Mary Okwakol said Gulu University wants to produce job creators instead of job seekers.
"We do not intend to produce chains in the link to dependency," she said.

The Vice Chancellor, Dr Jack Nyeko Pen Mogi, decried the brain drain out of Africa for greener pastures abroad yet other nationals from Asia consider Africa as a green pasture where they can make money.
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James Wesley ChesterJames Wesley ChesterA1
The answer is the same for the nations of Africa as for every other nation. Educate your children to benefit your society.

Deputy Vice Chancellor Mary Okwakol said Gulu University wants to produce job creators instead of job seekers.

What reasonable argement can be offered against that?

The Vice Chancellor similarly offers valid observations. Others come to prosper in the fields your children abandoned.

'...brain drain out of Africa for greener pastures abroad yet other nationals from Asia consider Africa as a green pasture where they can make money.'

PEACE

Jim Chester
DE Dusty ElbowA1
Great analogy. But what Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Dubious were leaders with supporters from all walks of life, and in this case there is no leaders from the top embracing African universities ideals and no support from the masses because of misplaced attention, so African universities are in a deadlock and perhaps we may be seeing the beginning of something great if they are willing to do what I see we need to do as a race. Otherwise they may altogther disappear and continue making outside Africa wealthier.
DE Dusty ElbowA1
quote:
SOUTH AFRICA: Black youth still struggle for economic equality

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]


© IRIN

Unemployment among graduates is rising, and educated black youth are worst affected by this trend

JOHANNESBURG, 31 Oct 2005 (IRIN) - A large proportion of young black South Africans perceive the goal of economic liberation as being just as elusive under democratic rule as it was during apartheid, according to recent reports.

Science and Technology Minister Mosibudi Mangena noted recently that "despite their low representivity levels, the largest group of unemployed science graduates remain [black] African".

He commented that "compared with zero percent unemployment [of science graduates] among [mixed-race] coloureds, Indians and whites, unemployed African science graduates in manufacturing, engineering and development is nearly four percent".

The unemployment rate of black graduates in health sciences and social services was 11.5 percent and 2.2 percent in agriculture and nature conservation.

A Human Sciences Research Council report, 'Status of Young People in South Africa in 2005 - Where we're at and where we're going', found that an estimated 826,000 school-leavers arrived in the job-market each year, either having completed Grade 12 (matric) or dropping out of education.

Of new entrants to the labour market who succeeded in getting a job, 29 percent were African, 50 percent coloured, 70 percent Indian and 75 percent white, said the report commissioned by the government's Umsobomvu Youth Fund.

The study also found that the "highest rate of growth in unemployment since 1995 (not the absolute numbers) has been among people with matriculation and tertiary education", but stressed that "educated young Africans are worst affected by this trend ... [unemployment] is increasing at a faster rate among black than white graduates".

LIMITED ASPIRATIONS

Dr Rob Pattman, a senior sociology lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, told IRIN that the difficulties facing black graduates could be traced to a "two-tier system" that has become entrenched in South Africa's public education system.

Grinding poverty had also severely limited the aspirations of young black men, who were expected to be breadwinners and contribute to the family finances as soon as they could.

Pattman was commenting after conducting research into the aspirations of children in black township schools and those formerly reserved for white children or those of Indian extraction.

"The difference between the black township school where we were doing interviews and the formerly white and Indian schools was fairly huge. The black schools were under-resourced, and much like a prison camp in terms of space. Also, people's living conditions were very different [in the township compared to better-off suburbia], [so] the very low aspirations of the young people we spoke to were really almost a realistic assessment of their situation," he observed.

The boys in black township schools were much less ambitious than their white or Indian counterparts and spoke of wanting to be truck drivers or earning a living from other non-professional employment.

He recalled that very few of the students surveyed expressed the hope that they would be able to complete a tertiary education and, if they did, these were heavily qualified by statements that university would be out of their reach financially.

"Whereas at the white and Indian schools, pupils very much expected to go on to higher education, [but] white boys spoke about feeling like victims of affirmative action," Pattman said.

"It's a very powerful indictment, actually, about post-apartheid South Africa, certainly in terms of education. Where assimilation is taking place is at formerly white schools, and a bit at formerly Indian schools. The black parents who are relatively affluent are sending their kids to those schools because they are better resourced; the black township schools are becoming entrenched in poverty - it's very much a two-tier system that is being constructed," he noted.

According to Pattman, black children in townships were still "very much at the bottom of the heap. Black township schools are not formerly black - they still are black schools, and are very much impoverished; they're racialised, and poverty has been racialised as well".

[ENDS]
umbrarchistumbrarchistA1
Can modernity be made a form of slavery, even for White people.

Look at the planes from World War II. The British Spitfire could do 455 mph. The American P-51 Mustang could do 450 mph. My favorite, the P-38 Lightning could do 414 mph. The Germans called it the "fork tailed devil." All of those planes were designed without electronic computers 25 years before the moon landing.

It is now 36 years after the moon landing. We have computers coming out of our ears. Most people don't know it but these machines are now more powerful than mainframes from the 1980s.

The automobile industry keeps changing the design of cars that roll along the ground at less than 130 mph. That is what cars did before WWII. How much does it cost to retool a factory just to make cars that look different? That makes the cars more expensive. To acconplish what? Roll along the ground at less than 130 mph.

We are pouring money down a rathole to imitate White people being stupid. I have a Linux book that talks about planned obsolescence of computer software. American economists don't talk about planned obsolescence of cars, except Galbraith back in 1959.

There is probably no escape from globalization but there is most likely a good way and a bad way to do it. Don't expect palefaces to tell you the good way if they figure it out.

I have been suggesting Black people standardized on Linux for about four years now.

umbrarchist
DE Dusty ElbowA1
You do linux, running a fedora core 2 at home here. What system you run or do you build a distro yourself? If black people should get into linux do you recommend any sites. The only problem I have with linux is that they are still trying to get old manufacturers of old hardwares like scanners and such to let them on their driver specs because alot of our people still cling onto the old for some reason. I believe poor marketing. So they cant do linux and windows would be the best way to go. Have you compiled and install updated kernels?

For software I check this site alot.

http://www.freshmeat.net
DE Dusty ElbowA1
quote:
Originally posted by James Wesley Chester:
umbrarchist and Dusty Elbow:

Can you computer-types help me get my avatar to 'wave', as in 'gif'?

Just a little bit would be nice.

PEACE

Jim Chester


Not too much of a product promoter but I will drop you some hints.

http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorial/Waving-Flag-Effect/9635

http://www.e-miestas.com/eng/content.php?article.10

http://www.graphicmentor.com/tutorials/flagwave/index.php

If your on linux and able to do some image work, then GIMP is the defacto equivalent of A-D-O-B-O-D-O P-I-C-T-U-R-E S-T-O-R-E
DE Dusty ElbowA1
Unemployment will force more youths to flee Africa

01 Dec 2005 16:37:45 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Nick Tattersall

DAKAR, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Dakar's university may provide an education envied around West Africa but many of its students have only one dream -- to leave Africa, even if it means hiding in boats, truck containers or the undercarriage of an aircraft.

Almost three quarters of West Africa's population are under 30 and unemployment rates in some countries are as high as 80 percent. In the overcrowded corridors of Senegal's top university, students say that leaves them with only one option.

"Here all the students dream of leaving. We don't know what there is over there, in Europe or the United States, but there are no jobs here," said Matar Fall, 22, on his way across the sandy campus to a geography lecture.

The United Nations said on Thursday youth joblessness in the region, which has seen some of modern Africa's most brutal wars, was a threat to the stability of even those countries that have so far escaped all-out conflict.

Events last month in Morocco, where troops deployed to stop hundreds of African youths storming Spanish enclaves, would "pale into insignificance compared to what we could witness in 20 years time", the U.N. Office for West Africa said in a study.

"It's a tragedy that many of the region's young people seem to have, almost as their highest aspiration, the idea of stowing away inside an aircraft's undercarriage or a truck container in order to take themselves away from Africa," said Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. special envoy for the region.

"Current levels of unemployment among young men and women in West Africa are a ticking time bomb for the region and also beyond ... it risks destroying the political and social structures even of countries that are at present stable."

GUNS FOR HIRE

Current demographic trends in West Africa are among the highest in recorded history anywhere in the world, with an estimated 430 million people expected to live in the region by 2020, an increase of over 100 million in just 15 years.

Millions already live in overcrowded shanty-towns and slums with the numbers of unemployed young men rising year by year, fuelling crime and providing the least stable countries with cheap recruits for militia groups and rebel factions.

"Cross-border recruitment of young people for armed conflict is all too common in the arc of territory extending from Guinea-Bissau to Ivory Coast," the study said.

Ould-Abdallah said Ivory Coast, split into a government south and rebel north since 2002, was a major concern with former combatants from neighbouring Liberia, many of whom fought as child soldiers, being recruited to fight again there.

Faced with no job prospects and a desire to rise in the estimation of their peers, some young men were willing to take up arms in exchange for small amounts of money, clothes and the promise of "wives".

Diplomats in Liberia and Sierra Leone, both of which are recovering from years of civil war fought by young bands of drugged up fighters, have warned that youth unemployment is the greatest threat to fragile efforts to consolidate peace.

But it was not just countries at war or recovering from conflicts that were at threat, the United Nations said.

There was also the prospect of social instability and a huge outflow of skilled workers from countries considered relatively successful, such as Senegal. Some 3 million Senegalese nationals currently work abroad, most of them as illegal immigrants, the government says.

Dakar's university, where the annual fee is 5,000 CFA ($8.99), is so overcrowded that eager students are forced to take notes on stairwells and corridors outside packed lecture halls. But few see their skills remaining in Africa for long.

"It's very disappointing after years of studying, after the hopes you have and your family has, not to find a job," said Soumah Karim, 20, a first-year law student from Guinea.
DE Dusty ElbowA1
Africa 'needs continental university'
Johannesburg, South Africa

02 Dec 2005 13:14
The creation of a continental university as a centre of innovation and academic excellence was recommended by the Pan African Parliament (PAP) on Friday, the final day of its fourth ordinary session in Midrand.

"We need to have Africans educated and trained in science and technology and information technology," MP Miria Matembe told reporters at the conclusion of the session.

"Human-resource development is important for Africa. Other countries are advancing because of technological advances. We, too, can do our own research, innovation and technological invention."

The practical workings of such an institution have yet to be figured out, Matembe said.

A documented resolution adopted by the PAP states the university would seek to make available a "unified science platform" and serve as a centre of expertise for the African Union.

It would aim to halt the African brain drain, coordinate research and boost African solidarity.

The university would empower African leaders, thereby strengthening the AU in the run-up to the envisaged creation of a "United States of Africa", the document states.

Another mission is to "develop programmes likely to make African identity concepts a reality and guarantee the acceleration of the necessary integration to bring about a unified Africa with a single image". -- Sapa
DE Dusty ElbowA1
Southern Africa adopts a regional approach to science
*
*Judith Kapijimpanga, Zambia's science minister
Michael Malakata
12 December 2005
Source: SciDev.Net

The 14 countries that make up the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have agreed to co-ordinate their science policies and work together to develop the region's science and technology infrastructure.

In particular, the countries "” which include Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana "” will harmonise some of the rules governing how scientific research is carried out, especially customs regulations on the movement of researchers and scientific equipment.

They have also agreed that although primary and secondary education will remain a national responsibility, higher education should be coordinated at regional level and that the creation of regional training centres should be made a priority.

These decisions were taken when ministers of science and technology in the SADC region met in Mozambique on 1 December.

The meeting was a follow-up to the continent-wide meeting that took place in Dakar, Senegal, in September, when African countries demonstrated their commitment to integrate science and technology into development (see http://www.scidev.net/ms/senegal).

The Mozambique meeting was intended to secure the commitment of African leaders to develop science and technology in the region, despite the failure of previous such attempts, such as the Lagos plan of action of 1979.

Zambia's minister of science and technology, Judith Kapijimpanga, told SciDev.Net the ministers had been keen to find ways to facilitate the mobility of qualified scientific staff and their equipment from one SADC country to another.

"This means also that there must be coordination between the customs authorities of the different SADC countries," she said.

Kapijimpanga added that the fact that ministers were working to coordinate customs authorities clearly indicated a serious commitment to developing science and technology in the region.

She also said that once a detailed study of each country's science policy had been completed, the ministers planned to find ways to modify these policies to bring them more in line with one another.

A regional law to harmonise the regulations covering science is expected to be enforced towards the end of next year. Kapijimpanga said enforcement would come from each country's customs authorities.

In particular, the law hopes to eliminate the current requirements on scientists to seek new work permits and pay taxes on their equipment.

Meanwhile, in a further indication of the region's growing commitment to boost its scientific and technical capacities, the executive secretary of SADC, Tomaz Augusto Salomão, has said that countries in the region need to increase the productivity of their people through better education, promoting science and technology, and developing new skills.
"Infrastructure development is key to regional integration," said Salomão, who was appointed to his post three months ago. "But the development of the region's human resources is cardinal to the region's development."
DE Dusty ElbowA1
South African government and business cant make up their minds to help all the youths who go through the system supposedly designed to build the country. Focus on science and engineering then when you finish up the watermark is shifted higher to play a game more commonly called 'TRIAGE'.

quote:


'Not enough' jobs for Cape matriculants
By Candes Keating

There are only 45 000 jobs available for the almost 60 000 Western Cape matriculants, and the best employment prospect for them is to create their own jobs. This is the word from economists, career counsellors and recruitment professionals.

Economic growth is expected to level off next year and the number of jobs being created will be reduced by thousands.

Only 300 000 jobs will be created countrywide next year, said Cape Chamber of Commerce spokesperson Jeannie Talgard, and "out of this total, only 45 000 jobs are available in the Western Cape".

'There is also an extreme shortage of artisans'
This is a bleak picture for the 59 832 Western Cape matric pupils who wrote this year's final exam.

It was almost impossible to secure employment with only a matric certificate and no skills, said Talgard.


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Those seeking jobs should consider careers in growing sectors such as engineering, health, engineering and construction.

"There is also an extreme shortage of artisans, such as plumbers and bricklayers," she said. Those seeking opportunities in these fields should do so through learnerships and in-house training.

A recent study by trade union Solidarity also strongly urged matriculants to become entrepreneurs.

'There is also big scope for women in event management and public relations'
"The bottom line for young people is to realise that they have to create their own future. The new economy demands of young people to hone their skills continuously and to recognise new challenges," said economist Lullu Krugel, who compiled the report with Theuns Steenkamp of Solidarity.

Krugel said matriculants should consider turning hobbies into small businesses. "Most successful businesses have their origins in something small, like a hobby," she said.

Anyone planning to study further should do their homework well before choosing a career. Currently, 76 percent of unemployed South Africans are young people, which confirms the importance of making the correct choice, said Krugel.

Of these, 61 percent have been unemployed for more than a year and 32 percent for more than three years.

The demand would be strong for people with technical skills, professionals such as engineers, accountants and nurses, and people with formal computer training.

There may also be opportunities in the classroom, with the report predicting shortages of teachers within the next three years.

Professor Chris Friedrich, head of the University of the Western Cape's entrepreneurship unit, suggested matriculants signed up for short entrepreneurial courses before starting their own businesses.

"Many opportunities exist in South Africa for entrepreneurs. You have to be innovative, persistent and proactive if you want to be successful in your business," he said.

The marketing sector also offered many possibilities, said career counsellor Julia Falken.

"There is also big scope for women in event management and public relations," she said. However, for those who cannot afford a university education, Falken suggested trades ranging from carpentry to motor-mechanics.

Kelly recruitment agency managing director Tracey Czakan said sales representatives topped a recent salary survey of office job categories, having the highest annual increases.

"Sales representatives are needed across a wide range of disciplines, from IT to banking," she said.

"Qualified bookkeepers and credit controllers also start with very attractive salaries."

Czakan suggested that matriculants who had subjects such as maths and accountancy should pursue careers in the banking sector.

The human resources sector also offered well-paid opportunities, including a career as an executive secretary. But if you were unable to pursue a tertiary education, "do it for yourself", Czakan said.

"South Africa is abundant with opportunities for entrepreneurs and we need our small business sector to grow. The best time to start your own business is when you are young, with very few family and financial commitments."

# candesk@incape.co.za

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