REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE FIRST WORKSHOP OF THE IRISH-AFRICAN PARTNERSHIP
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE FIRST WORKSHOP OF IRISH-AFRICAN PARTNERSHIP FOR RESEARCH CAPACITY-BUILDING
Good morning everyone, and thank you for your warm welcome. Let me extend a very warm welcome to Ireland - céad míle fáilte - to those of you who are visiting us from abroad, and in particular to those who have travelled from Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique. This is a unique and exciting international collaboration involving all of the universities on this island - North and South - and four African Universities, Makerere University, the University of Dar-Es-Salaam, the University of Malawi and Eduardo Mondlane University. This harnessing of the contemporary, intellectual engines of a developed country that was not so long ago a developing country along with the intellectual engines of developing countries is a remarkably vivid reflection of the faith that we share in the central role played by education and research in profoundly and radically changing the destinies of individuals and societies.
The history of Ireland’s engagement with the countries of Africa has evolved from a longstanding engagement that was, by and large, church-led, to a considerably wider relationship involving along with the Churches, many world-class non-governmental organisations, and Irish Aid, the Government of Ireland’s programme of assistance to developing countries.
Aid-giving is today considerably more structured and focussed than in the past and indeed has metamorphosed into a much more sophisticated model of development cooperation. The work of this Irish-Africa Partnership is part of the changing face of development cooperation and, while no one factor will on its own build a new future for the diverse peoples of Africa’s many countries, one thing we know is utterly essential to that future and that is education.
The Irish experience is very telling for it was not until the advent of free second-level education south of the border in the late 1960s and the subsequent harnessing of the brain-power of a majority as opposed to an elite minority of our people that we experienced the surging economic and cultural traction that gave us the Celtic Tiger phenomenon. Take-up of third-level education was crucial to that just as take-up of fourth-level will be crucial to sustaining our success. Suddenly, thanks to this new highly educated generation, answers were constructed to the many seemingly intractable problems Ireland had faced for generations: high levels of unemployment and of emigration; poor infrastructure; and low levels of investment. A confident, problem-solving generation had arrived on the scene.
Africa’s future also lies in the brainpower of her own people, harnessed and harvested through education and applied to solving the many difficult but not insuperable problems it faces. But getting the necessary momentum into the education sector sufficient to create a significant uplift is far from easy given the major resource problems faced right across the educational spectrum. The universities share those problems of chronic under-funding, poor infrastructure, poorly-equipped libraries and laboratories, large class sizes and an inexorable brain drain of the best academic and administrative staff. Research has been a major casualty of all this attrition and yet there are remarkable stories of transcendence and success through collaboration in the African university sector -enough to generate hope that the unequal distribution of knowledge wealth can be remedied. Keynote speaker Professor Akilagpa Sawyerr, Secretary General of the Association of African Universities has said
‘The strength of Africa’s universities is a key condition for its development, and their weakness is an index of, as well as a contributor to, its poverty.’
So how to strengthen the African university sector, not for its own sake but as a basic building block in strengthening Africa and creating an African–led sustainable future? In the short to medium term the poverty reduction strategies adopted by African nations have much to gain from being guided and informed by first-class scholarly research and so a priority is the training of researchers in appropriate fields.
Through the Irish-African Partnership for Research Capacity Building, Irish academics have resolved to work with their African colleagues to develop a new generation of highly competent researchers in areas closely linked to the reduction of poverty. The test of a good idea whose time has come is the extent to which it draws the support it needs to move from the drawing board to actuality. This idea has formidable champions in the participating universities, in Irish Aid and the Higher Education Authority. In particular I thank Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski for making available the facilities of this wonderful university and for giving the Partnership office space to organise its activities; Professor Jane Grimson of Trinity College and Professor Ronnie Munck of DCU for providing the academic leadership for this exciting initiative; and the Centre for Cross Border Studies for providing its administrative leadership.
Over the next four days of deliberations here, ideas will flow, friendships will form, networks will develop and the seeds of a very different future for Africa’s nations will be sown. We wish for them what we wish for ourselves and for our children - a chance to grow up healthy, in a safe, just and peaceful environment, a chance through education to reach their fullest potential, a chance to see what kind of world they can create when their brainpower is harnessed to solve their problems and to reveal the fruits of their individual and collective genius. What you do here and what you grow from this sharing, this collaboration, will change the trajectory of lives and the story of Africa. I wish you every success in those crucial deliberations and I hope you leave here energised by the strengthening of the vision that brought you here and by the roadmap to its realisation that you will construct between yourselves here in Dublin.