Originally Posted by samira

DYNAMICS OF KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER: We are stagnating!


Our grandparents left home to gain tertiary education in the West. ALL came back to prop up our then very GREEN institutions. Our parents, after them, followed a similar route when the demand for places in these new elite tertiary institutions overwhelmed the supply. Most, if not all, came back home to fill in key positions in the newly independent African states. The pattern was established: Africa cast, with hope, its potential onto the world and received, 100 fold, the realization of that potential. Knowledge transfer was inwards!

Then it got to our generation and we managed to start the reverse of that transfer. Most left after having acquired sufficient education to start paying back into the society. Highly trained physicians and technocrats took all this knowledge and never looked back. Few of us who joined in this migration still had a lot of learning to do, but even we never looked back. The knowledge transfer had been reversed.

Today, no African who leaves home, voluntarily or otherwise, expects to return to serve. No. All Africans of my generation and after only aim to return to retire and enjoy their WEALTH. I met a young man yesterday (early hours of this morning) who told me that he makes about 4 trips back home every year. "Really?" I asked. "That is unique. I am glad you are helping out this much." "No", came back the retort. "I am trying to see how much money I can make at home. I buy from here and sell back there!"

Not what I can do for Ghana, but what I can make out of Ghana!

A few years ago a young man from the USA went back home to set up a "University". A two site University. Two houses in Labone got converted into campuses. On paper, this institution looked like just what we needed. It had accreditation from all the relevant institutions in the West. It offered two main programmes. Charged $5, 000 (US) for a year's study. Started with a student body of about 25. The first graduates of this institution are about to fly the coop. Where are they headed? YES . . . . YES !!!!!!!!!!

Earlier this year I submitted a proposal to set up Summer Schools in Ghana to the powers that be. Non-profit making initiative. All I needed was to be allowed to use the dormant lecture halls and laboratories for a period of at most 2½ months. My sponsors are prepared to spruce up these halls and labs with the state of the art technology. Utility costs and all the other costs will be met by US. All I want to be allowed to do is to make a symbolic gesture towards reversing the direction of knowledge transfer. From this gesture, I hope, would be established a pattern for future knowledge transfers.

Come and look at the OPPOSITION I am meeting! They are thinking of EVERY reason why what I am planning to do shouldn't happen.

"But what about those taking their remedial lessons over the summer?"

What about them?

"Wouldn't they be discouraged when they see you and your lot offering these high standards of teaching and learning for FREE?"

Why should they? Free means FREE for ALL!!!

And the saga goes on till TODAY!

They will allow the little Capitalist boy who wants to make his education empire from two houses in Labone, to circumvent every possible procedure in order to call two plots of land a University, but they can't allow a bunch of progressives and their friends to exercise their goodwill FREE of charge!

Go to China. Whereas once the Chinese were prepared to send their young and brightest to institutions in the West for education, very few Chinese students from the TOP institutions, today, leave home to top up their knowledge. No need for that. The Chinese retain their best and only send off their weakest. Gradually, even this latter number is dwindling because the Chinese have realised that it makes more sense to bring those very Western Educational institutions HOME, instead. How many Western Universities do you not know of with campuses in China, Malaysia, Honk Kong, Thailand, Indonesia etc . . . . . . ?

The challenge for us in this generation and those that follow is to reverse the Knowledge transfer by sharing best practice with those back home. The time for looking after your mortgages is long gone. In these troubled times if you haven't made your millions, YET, forget about it. Get to the next challenge. And that is to empower our youth and the generations hereafter to pull AFRICA out of this RUT!

My solution is through Knowledge and Expertise transfer via schemes like GOSS 2006

- author unknown.