Governments and universities in Africa must do more and join forces to create conducive academic and professional environments with conditions of service that will enable university professors to do their work and enhance their contributions to knowledge production.
Some of the challenges university professors in Africa face and suggestions for interventions were suggested at the UNESCO World Higher Education Conference (WHEC2022) themed ‘Reinventing Higher Education for a Sustainable Future’ and hosted in Barcelona, Spain from 18 to 20 May.
Professor Olusola Oyewole, the secretary general of the Association of African Universities, told University World News that university professors in Africa operate in challenging circumstances.
“Many of them are encumbered by little teaching resources to support the research work of their graduate students.
“[They] are frustrated because they are not being adequately remunerated, they carry out research in difficult situations of under-funding and a lack of research infrastructure, and they work with poor students who also find it difficult to pay their school fees,” said Oyewole.
Professor José Frantz, the deputy vice-chancellor for research and innovation at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, told University World News she agreed with the picture painted by Oyewole.
“Burnout is a real phenomenon for African professors and should not be underestimated, as they are continuously operating in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment,” she said.
Expanding further, Professor Stephen Kiama, the vice-chancellor of the University of Nairobi in Kenya, told University World News that, as university enrolments continue to increase due to the high demand for higher education, most university professors in Africa “find themselves at the crossroads of providing time for research and teaching large undergraduate classes with limited resources”.
“This is quite exhausting for many, which leads to burnout,” said Kiama.
According to him, academics, therefore, prefer to do research rather than teaching and marking undergraduate scripts.
They need supportive research ecosystems for scholarships and for mentorship of PhD and postdoctoral students, he added.
“Because relatively, African professors are not adequately remunerated for the important role they play in societal transformation, they always face the temptation to engage in consultancies where they receive wages and little honour for their sweat, as the results are owned by those who pay,” said Kiama.
“There is a need for governments to ring-fence their jewels: their professors,” Kiama concluded.
Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu from Bayero University Kano in Nigeria also agreed that professors in Africa were facing many pressures.
“African professors operate within their traditional, conventional and often conservative environments. Low salaries, coupled with depressed economies, high levels of corruption and societal obligation are enough pressures on anyone,” Adamu added.
For example, in Nigeria, the public campus universities have been closed since February 2022 due to a work stoppage by the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities, or ASUU, which has been advocating for improved funding of the higher education system.
One of the grievances is the low salaries they earn. A top Nigerian professor at the top of the salary scale earns about US$1,000 per month, according to Adamu.
On average, there are more than 500 students per class because there are insufficient facilities to absorb the current 2.1 million students in Nigerian universities and, in this context, the government has frozen the employment of new academic staff, according to Adamu.
“More government goodwill is needed to make university education affordable to Nigerian students, and enable professors to work more efficiently,” said Adamu.
“African professors’ lives are controlled by forces more than just the ‘publish or perish’ mantra.
“Factors such as numerous family obligations distract from the level of concentration on their research,” he added.
In addition, African professors who really excel at their vocations are often given political appointments as thought leaders and drivers of social development – a situation that severely limits their further research activities, according to Adamu.
Limited international publications
Adamu is also concerned about the publishing industry and how that affects the work done by professors.
According to him, the opportunities to publish internationally are limited as the academic publishing industry appears to have adopted a “micro aggressive” or “cabalistic stance” when it comes to considering research from African professors where preference seems to be given to non-African professors, or condescendingly to “collaborations” with a non-African professor in a research that is rooted in Africa.
“Editors of book collections to be published by major publishers or journal editors often take a stand that African researchers, hampered by a lack of sufficient funding, are incapable of producing world-class research and, therefore, need to be ‘hand-held’ through various stages of writing and presentation of their work,” Adamu said.
“Of course, corrections, copy-editing, and so on, are quite welcome and part of the academic flow. However, some take it to levels of intimidation, which is off-putting,” he said.
“Publishing without being condescending would be a big boost to African professors’ morale and ability to juggle social pressures and research activities. In any part of the world, publishing is the oxygen that keeps professors alive,” Adamu said.
Collaborative model
Frantz said there was a need to assist professors on the continent to find a balance by creating enabling environments.
Continuous competition rather than collaboration contributed to burnout and exhaustion in academia, she said.
“This may sound like a cliché that ‘sharing is caring’, but I believe that, if we operate in the true spirit of collaboration and sharing of knowledge, we will find that we do not always have to reinvent the wheel to solve some of the challenges we face but [that we] can build on the best practice of others,” Frantz added.
“African universities should seriously look at the meaning of creating an enabling environment for academics and support staff,” she pointed out.
In a context of collaboration rather than competition, which will require a shift in mindset, Frantz said that an interdisciplinary approach to drive [collaborative] teaching, research and engagement could potentially help to lighten the burden of academics.
Focusing on interventions, Oyewole said that African countries should ensure that their professors were well remunerated.
“African professors will need to engage with their national governments and help to create a conducive environment that will help African professors to contribute to the development of their nations,” Oyewole added.
“Indeed, academics should be the conscience and powerhouse of their countries, and governments should create the necessary environment to support the growth of knowledge for development,” he said.
