The Future of Africa lies in Great Higher Education.

While the World Bank and the multilateral institutions had insisted that what Africa needed most was basic education, it is now emerging that a great higher education, rather than basic education, can lead to tremendous economic achievements for a country. Are we educating African youngsters with the right higher education. That which will help them become future entrepreneurs in their own right, and become job creators, rather than job seekers.  Our universities must then become change agents, and ensure that the education they give African youngsters is top notch and innovative. Imagine if we had just twenty universities that could draw students from all over Africa and the rest of the world. The talk about joblessness would not even be there. According to the kauffman foundation, the value of companies created or co-created by the
world reknown MIT alumni is a trillion dollars. Imagine just one university creating an economy that would roughly equal Africa's GDP. While African universities are great in teaching, more needs to be done in the area of research, to ensure that more innovative products are churned out of our universities. According to the Webometrics ranking of universities, few African universities make it to the top globally.


In a 2013 survey by PWC, a well respected audit firm, CEOs of top businesses in Africa cited the lack of talent as the most portent threat to their businesses. By having world class universities, we would be creating a self sustaining cycle. These universities will be able to attract the best and brightest students and faculty from across the world, which will in turn attract more funding from the corporate world as the students would shine later on in life and project the name of the university globally. The increased funding would lead to more innovative research, which will help African societies solve their most pertinent problems. Currently, there is a high level of brain drain from Africa as the fierce war for talent takes effect. If Africa had more world class universities, brain drain would be a thing of the past, as the African professionals would have preferred to work in their home countries.