While Africans were among the early creators of human civilization, the modern African university owes nothing to African genius. It is clearly the creation of the colonial state.
In today's world, Africa lags far behind in development, regardless of the indices we use. Writer and broadcaster Ali Mazrui has likened Africa to the garden of Eden in decline, a place that once had everything but now has lost everything, a king yesterday but a pauper today.
But in numbers alone, African universities have increased tenfold and produced thousands of graduates. But numbers, while important, are not the game here. African universities as they are today betray little of the vibrant traditions that once animated the continent. Despite poverty and backwardness, these traditions still animate rural Africa. Take the case of the Acholi people of Northern Uganda.
The rise of the African novel in Ibadan and the rise of modern African art in Zaria, both events that took place in the middle of the last century, happened because the colonial students who shaped the moments found a way to reconnect with their African past and from there drew strength.
Today's African university, whether Senegalese or Malian, has routes not in Africa's rich traditions, but in Africa's direct colonial past. Here's the problem. Because the colonial past is the past of despair. It represented a period when Africa had lost the initiative and was clueless.
Unlike ancient Timbuktu or medieval European universities, the colonial university was not an organic institution. It didn't come from the country. It could not provide a basis for the flourishing of culture and learning. It was limited in scope and size. It admitted few students, offered few carefully selected courses taught by colonial professors. The colonial students were cultural refugees, cut off from the treasury of their heritage.
There was little distinction between the colonial professor and the colonial administrator. Both were steeped in colonial culture. In colonial times you were not allowed to live in Africa as a white person, except as a colonizer. Colonialism, as Karen Blixen's life in colonial Kenya demonstrated, was a collective thing. It was a lived experience that drew all the individuals from the metropolitan countries living in the colonies.
However, the colonial university was a complicated thing. There was little doubt about its mission, which was the reproduction of the colonial state and the promotion of colonial culture. There is a tendency in Africa to equate colonial culture with European culture. But the colonial culture was and is not European at all. Europe already had democracy in a few places. In Africa, the European colonies were heavy-handed dictatorships, the type you see in many African countries today.
The colonial university grew out of the milieu of the debilitating condition caused by colonialism. The colonial university could never have been a marketplace of ideas in the sense that Oxford, Cambridge and the Sorbonne were and still are. But within its framework, the colonial university functioned admirably. The impeccable facade bestowed the grace of a metropolitan campus, exuding serenity, politeness and wholeness. Within its four walls, the contradictions that were imperialism seemed far away.
On the eve of independence, the post-colonial state inherited the colonial university, not understanding its complexity. The inheritance was his most precious possession. So acute had been the hunger for knowledge and learning and so limited the possibilities. Chinua Achebe has commented that the colonial university was the only good thing colonialism did in Nigeria.
In the immediate post-colony, the new president became the new chancellor of what had overnight become the national university, but it was national in name only. Nothing pleased the president more than when he appeared in full academic regalia and presided over the convocation ceremonies. Considered a symbol of prestige, the colonial university in its post-colonial phase slipped in appearance and further away from content. During colonialism proper, the institution knew exactly its purpose, understood its mission and acted accordingly. Now the new managers of the place did not understand the dynamics at work, but pretended that everything was fine.
By the powers conferred upon me, I confer upon all whose names have been read the degree of Bachelor of Science. By the powers conferred upon me, I confer upon all those whose names have been read the degree of Bachelor of Arts. That became the litany of the postcolonial institution. That's what it was all about in the end. And so the regime of brands was entrenched.
The ceremonies took place in a post-colonial culture steeped in the music and culture of modern pop. Modern pop was suddenly the new force in the country.
Over time, the neo-colonial state proceeded to multiply its most precious asset. So acute was the hunger for knowledge. There was a need for learned men and women in all kinds of fields. There was a need for all kinds of technical skills. In the post-colonial state, everything was scarce.
The state sincerely desired progress and desired development and prosperity for the people. But at the old colonial university things went on as usual. The old colonial professors kept doing the same things they used to do.
Even as it routinely graduated students, the post-colony university faced an identity crisis. What did it mean to be a university? What does it mean to be African? On the post-colonial campus, the crisis was deep, but these questions were not asked. For a society emerging from colonialism and seeking its own routes and place in the modern world, the program of learning and research at the post-colonial university was laughable. In the late 1960s, it took a battle of determined young teachers led by the then young Ngugi wa Thiongo at the postcolonial university in Nairobi to get African and non-European literature on the curricula.
Five decades after independence, the old question now takes on an urgent tone. How have African universities fared since independence? What's happening over there? Is it true what Olugesun Obasanjo once said according to a Nigerian daily, that the professors were only interested in drinks and pretty girls?
In the mid-1970s, at the Organization of African Unity Summit in Addis, a famous African statesman declared that Africa had come of age. But all over Africa, as he spoke, it was the time of the coup. He had earned his way to Summit himself through the gun.
How could Africa grow up without its universities? Was that Japan's example? Is it the example of the new China we saw at the Beijing Olympics? Where would Europe be without its universities? In Russia and Poland, the intellectual tradition was well established.
About the state of the post-colonial university, there is a little-known novel called Marks on the Run. It was published in 2002 at Ahmadu Bello University (where I taught). Written by an assistant professor of Ahmadu Bello, the book provides a rare insight into what is happening in African universities. It is of course a Nigerian book, but one can assume that it broadly reflects the African reality.
While the author is far from a great man of letters and in many ways lacks the gift of a writer, Marks on the Run still manages to introduce one to the world of the postcolonial university in a way that gives the experience akin to that of an observer on site.
The old colonial campus is no more. No tears. In its place stands a huge building, hastily put together. Hundreds and thousands of students attend, but many have no idea why they are there. The old colonial professor is gone; no one talks about spears, bows and arrows there anymore!
But there are teachers and professors on campus who know next to nothing about their field, who represent no knowledge at all, who are devoid of any cultural trappings. To be sure, there are exceptions. The living conditions for students are appalling. Rental properties in the city are worse. Really how anyone could study and learn under those conditions is beyond imagination.
The old colonial mission of "for the glory of the empire" that guided learning and curricula in the past is gone. But nothing has replaced it. In the vacuum, the regime of figures and numbers and the final certificate are central. It is wielded by the combined dictatorship of teachers and professors who invoke the African thing about respect for elders out of context. "Where are your manners?" is a constant refrain on campus.
The university has become big business. Fake businessmen roam the corridors chasing fake contracts to supply fake equipment and obsolete reagents. A growing number of teachers find a place here to record time and quickly make dough. For the majority of students, the university has become a place where they easily get grades and unearned degrees, a far cry from the rigor and discipline of the colonial university. "Where's the Good Time Gone?"
Not long ago, a professor from Ahmadu Bello University said to me. No one graduates here. We crush them. He pointed to a group of his own graduate students hanging out in the shade in the midday heat. Among them were some of his younger colleagues who were doing their PhDs. Now, sprinting in Nigerian terminology is giving away for free.
In the novel, learning and intellectual things take a back seat; money and sex are going to replace ideas as the real mode of academic exchange. In real life, you see this stamped on the face of the post-colonial campus through the focus on material possessions and the general lack of reference to academic work.
But don't despair, all is not lost on the post-colonial campus. There is a group of gifted professors there and plenty of talented and determined students - young people enamored with the idea of a modern and prosperous Africa. On the post-colonial campus, a battle rages between the good, the bad, and the ugly. Marks on the Run by Audee T. Giwa is a front-line account.
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