Tomorrow today; 2010 - unesdoc - Unesco

African higher education networking for sustainabilityMore than one hundred academics from universities across theAfrican continent have formed the Mainstreaming Environment andSustainability into African Universities (MESA) network. All RCEsin Africa (currently 12) are linked to the MESA initiative, which isUNEP’s major contribution to the DESD. In fact, the establishmentof RCEs and sub-regional MESA networks has been included as animportant target in MESA Phase 2 (2008-2010) and Phase 3 (2011-2014). Started in 2004 with the goal of enhancing the quality andsignificance of universities in Africa in the context of sustainabledevelopment, MESA strives to make universities more relevant tolocal communities, civil society and business.African universities actively engaged in existing RCEs, as well asthose developing new RCEs, are key members of the MESA network.In its report to the 2009 UNESCO World Conference on ESD, 5 MESAhighlighted impressive results of its activities, including facilitating thedevelopment of more than 65 courses, numerous research programmes,policy work, student actions and engagement with local communities.African RCEs therefore are also contributing to the African UnionAgenda to revitalize higher education in Africa and to ensure thatuniversities are able to work closely with their communities.Cross-regional higher education collaborationImpressive collaborative networks are developing on differentcontinents in parallel with programmes that open opportunities forfurther South-South and North-South collaboration. Discussionson finding synergies among existing networks by mapping theiroutreach, educational and research activities began during the FirstInternational MESA Conference in Nairobi in November 2008.Continuation of this discussion is planned on the occasion of theFifth International Barcelona Conference on Higher Education,organized by GUNI (Global University Network for Innovation),in November 2010.An interesting example of cross-continental partnership is offeredby the Education for Sustainable Development in Africa (ESDA)project of the UNU Institute of Sustainability and Peace (UNU-ISP).ESDA facilitates engagement of Japanese universities with Africanuniversities towards development of Master’s-level programmesoffered jointly by African universities in the areas significant forsustainable development of African countries. There are threeworking groups focusing on:• Integrated environmental, economic and social development inrural Africa, led by the University of Ghana (Ghana) with activepartner cooperation of Kwame Nkrumah University of Scienceand Technology (Ghana), the University of Development Studies(Ghana) and the University of Ibadan (Nigeria) and input fromNagoya University (Japan) and UNU-ISP and UNU Institute forNatural Resources in Africa based in Accra, Ghana• Community-based innovation for sustainable urbandevelopment in Africa, led by Kenyatta University (Kenya) withpartner cooperation of the University of Nairobi (Kenya) andStellenbosch University (South Africa) and support of UNEP,UN-HABITAT, UNESCO/Nairobi, the University of Tokyo(Japan) and UNU-IAS• Management of mining and mineral resources for sustainabledevelopment in Africa, led by the University of Cape Town(South Africa) with partner cooperation of the University ofthe Witwatersrand (South Africa) and the University of Zambia(Zambia).The outputs of ESDA are expected to become UNU’s majorcontributions to TICAD V (Fifth Tokyo InternationalConference on African Development) in 2013 and to theDESD.Creating enabling environments to transformgovernance and managementThe interest in measuring university performance hasdramatically increased in recent years. This is driven bya number of factors, including internal needs to benchmarkuniversity performance, the need to demonstrateeffective use of resources to government funding agencies,and the interest among the public in university rankings.But while there is a clear need for objective performancemeasures, there is much debate concerning what dimensionsof performance to measure, how to measure them,and how this relates to the mission of the university and theconcerns of its various stakeholders. Most seriously, use ofinappropriate measures may have the effect of driving thedevelopment of higher education in undesirable directions.The existing dominant higher education rankingsystems often reward discipline-oriented academicoutput, favour low student/staff ratios, and rely onpeer reviewers from particular regions, 6 disadvantagingnew universities, particularly in developing countries,as well as universities that strive towards more holisticand sustainability-oriented learning and research.This challenge, however, is gradually being recognised,with the emergence of new assessment schemesthat look at the ESD performance of higher educationinstitutions. For example, the Alternative UniversityAppraisal (AUA) project initiated under the auspicesof ProSPER.Net aims at enabling higher educationinstitutions to conduct self-assessment while providingbenchmarking for research conducted in the broadarea of sustainable development. 7The road to sustainabilityHESD pioneers face pressure to find solutions for thepressing problems of today and at the same time to carryout research whose long-term goals are yet to be widelyrecognised. They must balance independence and potentiallyradical innovations in their own structures andactions with resources that are often given on the basisof traditional structures and processes.The majority of higher education institutions withtremendous intellectual and other resources still need toundergo transformation to act as leaders in developingopportunities for the global society. The holistic and crosscuttingnature of the concept of sustainability enablesinstitutions of higher education to formulate their visions,goals and strategies in novel ways that are, at the sametime, culturally relevant and appropriate for the regionswhere they operate. It is our hope that the concertedefforts of DESD stakeholders, including HESD champions,will create the necessary conditions for all universities tobecome true partners on the road to sustainability.Co-author: Yoko Mochizuki[ 137 ]