3K SAN project methodologies feature at EU-Africa policy summit

Monday 8 August 2011

Dr Kaime spoke at the EU-Africa Development Policy Summit  hosted by Friends of Europe and the Financial Times from 27-28 June 2011 at the Bibliotheque Solvay in Brussels.

He addressed  the topic ‘Helping Africa defeat the social odds’ and he focused on the role of higher education in addressing the developmental problems besetting Africa. He argued that there was a need to reconfigure the way in which African professionals were trained in order to provide them with skills that are ideally suited to solving African problems. 

He noted that many curricula in African universities had not evolved in tune with African realities and as a result, key skills were still missed when students graduated from university. In order to bridge such gaps, the solution often entails sending students abroad for more advanced training. Unfortunately, such a solution only exacerbates the situation as often the skills that are gained are still ill-suited to Africa but very useful for the developed economies where the students have trained. This, coupled with institutional failures to capture talent, has led to brain-drain of African professionals. In order to address this, Dr Kaime argued for grounded approaches to advanced professional training. Relying on the 3K SAN doctoral training framework, he argued for imaginative and hands-on training which will result in the development of skills that are directly useful for solving African issues. In this regard, multi-institutional training and collaborative training as is the case with the 3K SAN project are more likely to result in the development of professional skills that can be institutionally retained. More importantly, the opportunity for African institutions to collaborate in developing training methodologies is a key advantage that other models of professional training cannot offer.