LSE-Africa Summit: Personal Reflections

Last weekend I moved down to London to join over 100 enthusiastic participants drawn from different walks of life across the world. The purpose was to attend a tailored event - the LSE-Africa Summit. With a provocatively selected theme, "African Minds Transforming Futures: Building Resilient Education Systems" the summit was an important retreat for me. It served two purposes: first, it was a social retreat to escape the Oxford bubble, and second, it was truly an intellectual one as it would allow me to critically engage with the sea of speakers untangling Africa's myriad educational challenges, and prospects. Both purposes were achieved beyond expectations.

The Summit kicked off with a rousing introduction by Prof. Tim Allen, inaugural Director of the Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa, and Professor of Development Anthropology at the School. In his opening remarks, Prof. Allen started in the usual academic communique where he introduced paradoxes. According to him, LSE has long been associated with Africa, acknowledging the School's notable contributions to the continent where it trained a countless number of African leaders including this one, and this one. However, the renowned academic decried the lack of representation of Africa despite this apparent link, a matter he attributed to the marginality of Africa in other domains. Through his Center and the School at large, Prof. Allen revealed a growing trend where 'Africa should be approached from a business lens just like the rest of the world.' An anthropologist by training, Prof. Allen also made references to his past anthropological interactions with Africa, including fieldwork in Sudan where he would spend some good time with my native Nuer people. I had no idea about this fact before the Summit but the Africa in Me provided the opportunity.

Preceding the professor's introductory remarks was Nigeria's Godwin Obaseki, Governor of Edo State. In his Keynote, H.E. Obaseki greeted the attentive Sheikh Zayed Theatre with a maddening yet familiar PowerPoint slide at least within the African circle. Titled 'The Paradox of Progress' Gov. Obaseki made the case about a youthful continent that falls short of exploiting its future potential.

Through a local case in his state, dubbed EdoBEST, the good Governor joins a growing number of African policymakers who walk the talk. He leverages the power of technology to educate the next generation of Africans who, as he put it, would be ready to compete for places at MIT, LSE, and Harvard. I would have loved to hear him mention at least a local African institution, Ibandan, Nairobi or Accra but he had a point - we are a global village, ahaha.

In a panel titled 'Education in Africa: Opportunities and Challenges' the Summit ventured into the nitty-gritty of Africa's burgeoning educational sector. In response to Prof. Tim Allen's rousing moderation, Prof. Emnet Tadesse of the Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies at the University of Johannesburg invoked the intellectually provocative yet seemingly impractical idea of the 'African University.' With it, he stressed the urgency to reclaim the African University as first advanced in the 70s by pan-African scholars. Yet Prof. Emnet was quite aware of the challenges ahead, noting Africa's disappointing mispriorities in higher education. The African society, noted Prof. Emnet is disconnected from the university education. That is, the higher you go, the farther you get from society.

During the Q&A, I put the question to Prof. Emnet, inquiring for more elaboration about the 'African University' as so-called. I sought basic details about what it would entail, who would fund it, and where would the curriculum come from. He loved the question as demonstrated by his immediate reach to his notebook, and acknowledged the critical value of the question when it was his turn to answer. Articulate, and highly driven, Prof. Emnet embodied the crop of critical African scholars who burn the midnight oil to place Africa at the centre of knowledge production. However, as he would later reveal to me during an informal drink reception at Hotel Amano, current projects that would give the 'African University' project some flesh are externally funded, just like the African Union itself.

My favourite session yet was 'Analysing Diaspora Impacts: Brain Drain or Brain Gain' a panel that aligned with most youth. Panelists, including the respected Gibril Faal, OBE shared insights on this decades-old question: what is Africa's relation with its diaspora population? With varying results, panellists drew from their own personal and professional journeys. According to Mr. Faal, a cautious approach towards a flexible return initiative was imperative. Other panelists had mixed opinions but it was entirely an eye-opener. My favourite line during this conversation was the so-called brain circulation, neither a drain nor a gain but a brain in a constant state of flux - trading between Lagos, and London, and forth. Africa, it appeared from the panel, might just have to adapt to this phenomenon.