Japan will offer crucial support to Africa’s development efforts with the aim of enabling the African continent to nurture cutting-edge science and technology innovations, Japanese and Kenyan officials have said.
Addressing participants at a symposium on
Higher Education in Nairobi recently ahead of the Tokyo International
Conference on African Development (TICAD VI), Japanese ambassador to Kenya, Mr.
Toshitsugu Uesawa, said TICAD VI summit to be held late this month in
the Kenyan capital “will be a spring board” for Africa’s development agenda.
“Our investment is not for the
short-term profit,” the Japanese diplomat told the delegates, among them
academics, business executives and government representatives.
The
ambassador stressed that the investment of Japan in Africa was geared towards
improving the lives of African people.
The Japanese ambassador praised the
cordial relations between Kenya and Japan, which have existed since the East
African nation attained independence in 1963.
“In fact,
Kenya is the biggest beneficiary of Japanese assistance among all sub-Saharan
African countries,” he said.
‘Japan and
Africa’s shared vision’
Dr. Takao
Toda, Director General of Human Development Department at the Japan
International Cooperation Agency (JICA) shared the vision for one of JICA
projects as the “vision for Africa to become the centre of excellence in
science, technology and innovation in the near future.”
He
reiterated the importance of sharing such a vision among the many stakeholders
in higher education sector as well as the importance of “Learning continuity”
from the Early Child Development toward Higher Education and “Mutual Learning
on a Global Scale” for tackling the both global and local problems.
“Japan has
been contributing a lot to Africa’s education,” he said, pointing out that
about 14% of primary school teachers of Science and Mathematics across Africa
have acquired training skills through JICA. More than 24 African countries,
Toda said, have also benefitted from Japanese school management systems, a key
miracle in Japanese economic growth of 1960s and 70s.
Toda said the
African Business Education Initiative for Youth (or ABE Initiative), has
provided 1,000 young Africans with opportunities to study for masters’ degrees
at top universities and do internships at leading Japanese companies.
Prof. Colleta Suda, Kenya’s Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Education,
Science and Technology said Japan was an important partner in “promoting
science, technology and innovations (STIs) in order to respond to the needs of
the industry.”
Collaborations – industry, government, academia linkages
“Higher
education institutions alone cannot develop human resource capacity without the
involvement of industry and government,” she said, adding that there was need
to promote STIs around the region through the full utilization of the local
knowledge, wisdom and resources in Africa.
“In order to
do this, there must be concerted efforts towards strengthening research and
human resource capacity in universities,” Suda said.
Speaking at
the forum, Prof. Mabel Imbuga, Vice Chancellor, Jomo Kenyatta University of
Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), said her university has nurtured a close
history with the people of Japan since 1981 when the institution was
established through funding from the Japanese government.
“The
technical cooperation that continued for over two decades until 2000 has been
instrumental in shaping a clearly unique university,” she said.
Since then,
JKUAT has witnessed remarkable expansion that has seen enrolment swell to
42,000 students pursuing a variety of over 400 academic programmes, and
graduating over 5,000 candidates annually.
Speakers at
the forum said Japan could offer support to Africa based on based on accumulated experiences and
lessons learnt from the benefits of Industry-Government-Academia linkages,
coupled with its research outputs and technology of Japanese higher education
institutions as well as “MONOZUKURI concept,” a philosophy that embodies the
spirit of making excellent products through continuous improvement of systems.
The TICAD VI
pre-event provided an opportunity for key stakeholders from Africa and Japan to
collectively discuss from a global perspective human resources development in
higher education sector, and key ingredients required for strengthening
Industry-Government-Academia linkages, to help Africa nurture cutting-edge
science and technology innovations.
Prof. Motoki Takahashi of Kyoto University urged African
institutions to embrace ‘self-criticism’ in order to push their achievements
even further.
“We should
be critical,” he said, adding that “critical thinking” would enable African
countries spur growth in innovations, therefore empowering millions of lives
across the continent.
He urged
both the government and private sector institutions to forge networks with
universities in order to spur growth in innovations across the continent.
The forum
was organized as a run-up to the main TICAD VI conference that will be held in
Nairobi on 27-28 August 2016, the first time the conference is being held
outside Japan.
Many African
countries have developed policies that aim to further accelerate industrialization
through promotion of science and technology. However, over time, there has been
slow progress in materializing these policies due to lack of human resources
and budgets. In the field of Science, Technology and Innovation, among others,
higher education institutions have an important role to localize the world’s
leading research and technology by linking the local and global societies as a
“knowledge bridge”.
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