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Stakeholders at the African Higher Education Conference in Dakar have called for increased investment in the sector, focusing on the funding requirement for the continent in the 21st century.

Experts say research showed that 25 percent of the world’s workforce would live in Africa by 2050.

Yet the percentage of national budgets allotted to higher education in Africa stands at seven percent compared to 76 percent in the rest of the world, making funding of the sector a priority issue in the next 10 years.

“Africa is spending a billion dollars on African higher education. We need to be spending $50 billion to close the gap,” said Dr. Patrick Awuah, Founder of Ashesi University of Ghana, who has personally helped to raise more the $12 million for African higher education.

According to statement to the GNA, Nigeria spends N160 billion in higher education while Senegal which has on average a 32 percent unemployment rate among its youth, invests approximately 3.7 percent of its consolidated national budget on higher education.

The World Bank stated that funding of the sector should be linked to relevance as the private sector aligns financing to key economic sectors such as mining. These economic sectors are also the primary employers of graduates from higher education institutions.

“We do not train people to stay at home. We train people to go to work and to be productive,” said Mr Amadou Ba, Minister of Economy and Finance in Senegal.

 Financing is among the top five higher education priorities identified by the African Union which include: relevant curricula, increased PhD numbers; increased access to higher education, harmonization and financing.

“Revitalisation is not easy because it questions established and traditional practices but there is need for the fundamental issues to be addressed,” said Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Chairperson of the African Union Commission.

The summit, which was officially opened by President Macky Sall of Senegal, is the brainchild of TrustAfrica working with 12 organising partners.

According to Prof Amadou Diaw, Chairman of the ISM Group, a leading management training institute in Senegal, “In the 20 years that ISM has been operating we have not received a single cent from the private sector or a single philanthropist. It is the parents of our students that are financing higher education by paying fees.”

Mr Ba, addressing the conference through a representative, challenged the assumption that funding should come solely from the private sector stating that private sector funding comes with constraints of debt and other factors.

“We must not be totally dependent on government for funding, we need to be innovative. For instance, we need to look at getting patents for research products and generating funds that way. It is just a matter of thinking differently.”

Carnegie Corporation of New York, one of the 12 summit organizing partners, challenged African philanthropists to rise to the challenge and drive a continental agenda towards development similar to the role played by American’s wealthy in ensuring progress.

“We need to throw the challenge back to Africa’s philanthropists because when you look at the progress made in America, it has largely been on account of the contribution of philanthropy,” said Judge AnnClaire Williams, a Carnegie Corporation board member.

 Dr. Nkem Khumba, lecturer at the Centre of African Studies at the Michigan University asked, “Is Africa ready to bring back its diaspora to lead the education industry and contribute to development?” on efforts to harness the expertise of African in the diaspora.

Prof Paul Zeleza, Vice President of Academic Affair at Quinnipiac University confirmed that in the USA alone, there are 25,000 African diaspora working in American universities, many of whom are ready and willing to assist.

“We need to find ways to fund higher education training programmes that will contribute to innovation and that way be relevant to the transformation of Africa,” said Mr M. António Leão Correia E Silva, Cape Verde Minister of Higher Education, Sciences and Innovation.

It said University programmes that enable learning in practice at Stanford and MIT were used as comparative case studies of learning programmes radically different to programmes in African universities. Inspiration was drawn from the case of South Korea, which is now a leading case for innovation was in a sorry state 50 years ago.

However, said Khumba: “MIT and Stanford may be inspirational but must not be considered in isolation of their budgets? Having sufficient resources available makes the difference between giving faculties the ability to innovate or constrain them.”