UDSM Vice Chancellor Prof Rwekaza Mukandala installs Prof Penina Mlama as Mwalimu Nyerere Professorial Chair in Pan-African Studies at Sixth Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival yesterday.
African countries still face extreme poverty challenges because of failure to utilise their graduates, despite having a number of well acclaimed universities.
Addressing University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) students yesterday, during the 6th Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival, the Director and Chief Executive Officer of Kenya School of Law, Patrick Lumumba said, although African universities produce qualified graduates, they are however denied the chances to practise in their respective fields of specialisation.
The Kenyan professor told his audience that because the graduates are denied the chance to take up their areas of specialisation, they are forced to seek greener pastures in western countries.
He went on to explain that, if the graduates were enabled to take up their areas of specialties, then African countries would employ their own nationals in top positions and benefit from their expertise.
“It is very disturbing to find that many of the projects carried out in most African countries are done by foreign nationals whilst African universities have produced competent and fit graduates with the same qualifications,” the professor lamented.
He cited infrastructure development as a key example of the unbalanced
employment saying many of these projects are tendered to foreign contractors, yet the continent has a lot of fresh engineering graduates who can perform as good if not better than the foreigners.
The health sector is another area that the professor gave as an example saying despite having numerous experts on the continent, Africans still rush to foreign countries for treatment.
“Africa must reflect on its own past,” Prof Lumumba urged, calling on leaders to recognise its human resource capabilities rather than enslaving them through foreign aid and staff.
“By hiring and tendering projects to its own, then Africa will create employment for its experts and graduates,” stressed the professor.
Lumumba cautioned African leaders not to forget their key responsibility, ‘working to develop their countries for the benefit of their people.’
Prof Lumumba made it clear that Africa cannot blame any other for its slow economic development despite its numerous mineral resources because its leaders have failed to empower its experts and instead maintained the status quo (foreign aid dependency), reinforcing inferiority complex among their people.
“We should take the legacy of founding fathers like the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere who was ready to sacrifice himself for the betterment of not only Tanzania but the whole continent,” he noted.
According to him, should Africa’s great leaders and founders see what is happening now in the continent that they worked and fought for unselfishly and tirelessly they would be gravely disappointed.
Prof Penina Mlama of UDSM gave the inaugural Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Professorial Chair in Pan African Studies lecture and seconded Lumumba’s views and called on African leaders to emulate the late Mwalimu Nyerere’s legacy of a united Africa benefiting from its own resources.
“It is gratifying to hear increasing calls for the African continent to recognize Mwalimu Nyerere’s exceptional contribution to the liberation movements in Africa,” she noted. “Yet by comparison one wonders, have we and our graduates lost the desire to serve our societies?” she quizzed.
Mlama underscored that what is expected from the universities is both objectivity in the search for truth and commitment to the societies they serve.
At the event, Kenyan Prof Lumumba was ascribed the Distinguished Mwalimu Nyerere Lecturer 2014 and delivered a lecture on “Liberating the Mind for Africa’s Transformation” a review as to how Africans can change the continent on their own.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
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