British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

International Development Select Committee Inquiry: DFID’s Programme in Nigeria

Submission by the Association of Commonwealth Universities and the British Academy

Executive Summary

1. This submission argues that higher education (HE) and research are essential to Nigeria’s national and federal development. DFID’s own briefing paper firmly acknowledges the importance of robust HE systems in Africa.[1] HE trains the highly skilled workers which modern knowledge-based economies depend on, and which the institutions of government, law and the public sector require if they are to run effectively and efficiently. Research enables new technologies to be developed, or existing technologies to be adapted, helping to drive and to sustain growth while universities also act as hubs connecting the latest knowledge and expertise to the people and communities who need them most, from making the latest scientific advances in health or agriculture available, to developing bespoke solutions to local problems. Across a range of disciplines research generates the knowledge and solutions in to support effective governance and policy-making.

2. As Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria will undoubtedly depend heavily on its HE and research system to tackle its many developmental challenges, while UK development work also stands to benefit from a well supported and responsive Nigerian research sector.[2]

3. Both the British Academy and The Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) are active in promoting and supporting research in African universities, and in supporting research collaboration between the UK and Africa. The ACU works extensively with its 95 African Commonwealth members (including 32 in Nigeria), while the Academy operates a number of funding schemes which assist African scholars to undertake research in the UK, and enable collaborative research between African and UK scholars. 

4. The two organisations have collaborated extensively in the past two years as part of an exercise designed to identify workable solutions to some of the challenges facing African researchers, and the potential role of the UK academic and funding community in addressing these. With more universities than any other African country, Nigeria has been a particular focus of this work. The results of this initiative are presented in the enclosed publication, The Nairobi Report: Frameworks for Africa-UK Collaboration in the Social Sciences and Humanities.

5. The state of HE in Nigeria has seriously deteriorated over the past twenty years. With its own substantial reserves Nigeria should be in a position to make significant investments in the public university system from its own resources. Indeed the government has recently committed to channelling more funding to research and plans to spend some $223 million on refurbishing six federal universities. However, considerable investment will still be needed to revitalise struggling institutions and there is therefore an important role for the international donor community to play in encouraging and supporting the federal and state governments as they seek to find ways to achieve this. 

6. With modern HE and research systems now depending more and more on international collaboration, donors such as DFID can help by supporting Nigerian universities to enhance their participation in international networks, ensuring that their research is of high quality and while addressing local needs is still connected to global scientific debates. Given DFID’s substantial commitments to development research over the coming years, we believe that this is an agenda with which DFID could productively deepen its engagement in Nigeria. Structures and networks to support international and regional research links already exist in some areas, including in Nigeria the recently established West African Research Management Association. Such interventions often have a disproportionately catalytic effect by helping universities to access internationally available resources, and thereby ensuring long term stability.

DFID and higher education

7. We fully support DFID’s important educational work in Nigeria, on primary and girls’ education in particular, but believe that the Committee should also take into account the relevance of HE and research, and DFID’s potential contributions to these, when considering the various issues which are framed in this inquiry.  DFID has already acknowledged the importance of HE in a number of ways.  Its 2006 paper, The importance of secondary, vocational and higher education to development, argues that ‘investment is also needed in secondary, tertiary and vocational education, lifelong learning and skills, in order to increase the ability of governments and the private sector, to deliver basic services, and to promote sustainable growth’. A briefing paper on HE commissioned from the ACU outlines some of the specific challenges facing the sector.[3]

8. Existing DFID support for HE is currently delivered through a number of routes, including support to Nigeria. DFID research funding programme, which it has committed to doubling to £220 million by 2010, supports a portfolio of research programmes across the world, including some of the major collaborative research initiatives such as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), with IITA research stations in Nigeria, as well its own research programme consortia. With the research budget now formally untied, active measures which would assist universities in developing countries to access the funding opportunities that this offers would be particularly welcome. 

9. In addition to its research funding DFID also funds the Development Partnerships in Higher Education (DelPHE) scheme and the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, both of which seek to strengthen HE capacity.[4] Nigeria is one of the principal countries to benefit from the Research into Use programme, funded by DFID, which aims to better understand how knowledge contributes to innovation, and to scale up the results of existing research. £3.5 million has also been provided to the Association of African Universities to create effective sub-regional HE networks on the continent, with Nigeria’s Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta one of the first grant recipients.

Nigerian higher education

10. Higher education and research are critical features of any national development strategy, and as Africa’s most populous country this is undoubtedly the case in Nigeria. Through teaching and research, universities develop the people and the knowledge needed to tackle the many complex and inter-related problems which underpin all aspects of development. This includes the social and cultural as much as it does the technical and scientific, areas of particular salience in Nigeria’s federal system. Nigeria’s 27 Federal, 31 State and 34 private universities offer considerable potential, and already contribute much valuable research and produce many very able graduates.[5] The challenge is for the country to more effectively harness this research and graduate talent in support of national development.

11. While HE enrolments have risen in recent years (from 6 to 10 per cent between 1999 and 2005), there are still too few places to meet demand; the Nigerian media reports that four million qualified candidates have failed to secure admission to Nigeria's universities in the last five years. [6] A long-term decline in the level of public funding for Nigerian universities has led to deteriorating infrastructure, and poor terms and conditions for many staff and there is currently a shortfall of some 8,000 academics. News reports suggest that 45% of the country’s professors are due to be retired shortly unless the retirement age is raised to 70.[7] Obafemi Awolowo has already lost 76 to retirement in the last five years, while the University of Ibadan expects to lose a third of its 300 professors.

12. Nigeria is positioning itself to lead the continent’s revitalisation of HE, with ambitions to develop world class universities and hosting and co-funding the new African University of Science and Technology, a pan-African research institute located in Abuja and envisaged as one of a series of new continental centres of excellence. But while ambitious new flagship institutions will make an important contribution to research, large scale infrastructural support is urgently needed to revitalise the existing public university system, including institutions which were once world class in their own right. With its substantial reserves Nigeria will need to make significant investments from its own resources, and a recent commitment by the president to spend $223 million on refurbishing six federal universities is to be welcomed.

13. Nevertheless, donors can still play an important role by encourage this investment to be made, and by assisting in discrete areas. The problems that researchers address, and the knowledge they produce, move increasingly beyond national boundaries. Improving research capacity and practice therefore requires universities to collaborate internationally. This is particularly true of Nigeria where the level of existing participation in international research is much lower. Nigeria has itself recognised the need to build strong international links and the role for donors may therefore depend as much on creating and enabling good connections to international research networks, and encouraging the sharing of knowledge and experience, as it does on funding for research projects.

14. The ACU and British Academy project, working with a group of some African academics and university managers, and which resulted in the enclosed Nairobi Report, has identified the following areas as being critical to the revitalisation of university research in Africa more broadly. The experiences of the Nigeria colleagues involved in this project, and of UK academics working in Nigeria, indicate that these are equally salient within the Nigerian context.

Improving the structures, systems and governance of higher education

15. It is clear from the discussions represented by our report and from the work of other organisations that while poor funding for higher education present not inconsiderable problems, many of the barriers to research are actually organisational and managerial. This is certainly true in Nigeria’s huge and varied HE system. New money for research will only be provided where funders are confident that institutions have the ability to manage it effectively and to deliver good research, and this will depend on the systems and processes in place within institutions, and on the relationships between key staff.

16. Clear research agendas and postgraduate training plans at also lacking national level which means researchers lack coherent frameworks within which to work. A directive supported by the Nigerian government in 2008 that all lecturers needed to hold a PhD by 2009 or lose their jobs was neither practical nor helpful, impossible targets, and were every under-qualified lecturer to embark on a PhD programme existing teaching would only suffer further. A common complaint within HE is the loss of academics to consultancy work, but for many it offers a vital source of additional income to supplement poor salaries. Consultancy need not only be negative either, since it also provides new research opportunities, and a chance to undertake funded work which may, if approached systematically, contribute constructively to institutional research programmes.

Forging stronger research collaboration within Africa

17. Strengthening research in Nigeria requires academics to be better connected to their colleagues within the country, and at a regional level, as well as to the rest of the world. Improving academic networks within Nigeria must be a priority if the potential of the national HE system is to be realised, while intra-African collaboration must also be encouraged and supported within research funding programmes if a genuinely African research base is to develop. Selectivity is also important, and with very few institutions having the capacity to support a full programme of research in all fields it is clear that inter-university collaboration will be needed to develop sound research and teaching programmes which span all disciplines.

18. In recent years considerable emphasis has been placed on a ‘centres of excellence’ approach to revitalising HE in Africa, the African University of Science and Technology being one of the first of these to be built. We nevertheless feel that if the system as a whole is to be strengthened the focus should be on communities of research excellence between existing institutions. By building collaborative programmes in specific disciplines or subject areas, and by making use of institutional hubs as appropriate, research training and mentoring schemes could be delivered, and shared research programmes established, which aim for economies of scale, and leverage wider expertise.

Investing in individuals – the early research career

19. Ultimately it is individual scholars who will revitalise research and investing in them, and ensuring that they are well supported will be critical to any revitalisation. Importantly, this means that funding for research and funding for research training cannot be separated. DFID already provides support in both areas, through its scholarship funding through the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC), and through its research programme consortia and other research funding strands. The CSC, whose secretariat is hosted by the ACU, has already sought to improve these links by inviting DFID funded research programmes to nominate for doctoral awards, but further ways of strengthening the links between these funding streams, currently managed by separate divisions within DFID, would be valuable, and would help to maximise existing support to Nigerian HE. 

20. The need for many more PhD-trained academics is huge in Nigeria and postgraduate training must be dramatically increased to meet this need. Achieving this at the scale required, and to make best use of the money available, will require new methods of delivery and new types of PhD. While we believe that much of this training must take place within Nigeria, split-site and distance learning approaches which provide for partnerships between African and UK institutions will undoubtedly be valuable. Greater attention also needs to be directed to supporting the postdoctoral careers of emerging researchers, to ensure that the benefits of PhD programmes and of scholarships are properly realised. A proper and practical career structure for junior researchers is needed which offers a clear vision of progression from PhD study and which provides sufficient time and support to ensure publishable work is produced, and robust projects worthy of external funding can be developed, and strong grant applications submitted as a result. Bringing these considerations more firmly into DFID’s existing research and scholarship support to Nigerian HE would increase the likely impact of its funding.

Concluding comments

21. Improving the capacity of Nigeria to undertake high quality research, and thereby its ability to produce answers to its own problems is undoubtedly critical. The university sector is critical to delivering this, and if good research is to be achieved in an increasingly interlinked world, greater international collaboration will be vital. DFID and the UK research community can make a significant contribution to Nigerian research and as has been acknowledge already do in a number of ways. Supporting Nigerian HE, and improving the way in which UK support is delivered and directed, is firmly in the UK interest and should be an important part of DFID’s overall programme in Nigeria.

22. The issues highlighted above are by no means the only challenges facing HE and research in Nigerian universities. They do, however, raise a number of important questions which are relevant to further discussions about the ways in which research and collaboration can best be supported. A more detailed discussion is provided in our enclosed report.  The Association of Commonwealth Universities and The British Academy would be happy to provide further comment on these issues to the Committee. Our report can also be accessed online at www.britac.ac.uk/policy/nairobi/index.cfm

The Association of Commonwealth Universities

The British Academy

12 May 2009

[1] Higher Education, DFID Briefing Paper, October 2008 www.dfid.gov.uk/Documents/publications/briefing-higher-educ-5.pdf

[2] The importance of higher education was emphasized by the Commission for Africa’s 2005 report, in addition to earlier – and subsequent – reports by the World Bank and UNESCO. The most recent of these is the Bank’s 2008 report ‘Accelerating catch-up: tertiary education for growth in Sub-Saharan Africa’.

[3] www.dfid.gov.uk/Documents/publications/post-primary.pdf and www.dfid.gov.uk/Documents/publications/briefing-higher-educ-5.pdf

[4] www.britishcouncil.org/delphe.htm, www.cscuk.org.uk

[5] Information on Nigeria’s universities is collected at the National Universities Commission website: www.nuc.edu.ng

[6] Enrollment figures from UNESCO Global Education Digest 2008 www.uis.unesco.org.

[7] Media reports collected by University World News www.universityworldnews.com