The African Universities Leaders Forum was convened by the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa last week in Accra, Ghana. Participants concluded that there is a major shortage of African lecturers at Universities across Africa. The Chronicle of Higher Education, which reported on the meeting, paints a dismal picture for the future of university teaching in Africa, with faculty there either approaching retirement age or else young, inexperienced and in many cases sadly under qualified.

This leaves a large hole that doesn’t look promising for the future of higher education in Africa.

“Ghana alone requires over 1,000 new lecturers,” Clifford N.B. Tagoe, vice chancellor of the University of Ghana and a co-chair of the University Leaders’ Forum, told the paper. “We’re able to recruit 20 or 30 in a particular year, but that same number retires in that year.”

The shortage has led to other problems. Brain Drain being chief among them. The most talented students end up leaving to study in other countries and seldom return. If they do return, they either join the private sector or are faced with teaching overfilled classrooms within a delapitated infrartructure.

The Chronicle report highlights the case of Susan Balaba Tumwebaze, a lecturer at Makerere University, in Uganda. Tumwebaze’s PhD is in quantitative methods in forest science and management, and she studied at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse. But now she’s back in Uganda, she’s expected to teach statistics to all comers at the university.

It’s time that governments get involved and work on a recruitment and retention plan that is functional across Africa. I was very impressed with the priorities set forth by the steering committee. Seemingly, all that remains is implementation and the old adage applies. Easier said than done. However, since the US elected a Kenyan-American president, I have become more of an optomist:).

Anything is possible. The need to be creative and find solutions that work locally is at the forefront of weather this problem can be addressed by African varsities across the continent.

For more information on the conference go to http://www.foundation-partnership.org