The 4th Annual Global Meeting of the Forum for Innovation in African Universities (FIAU) brought together influential businesspeople, intellectuals and politicians to address the critical challenges facing African higher education. The theme, “Pathways to Building Resilient African Higher Education for Economic Development” underscored the importance and urgency of creating sustainable, impactful educational systems in Africa.
The Meeting was guided by four sub-themes: financing and resourcing; skills development and acquisition; infrastructure and technology adoption; and curriculum and policy advocacy. Plenary session FIAU founders and conveners, Paschal Anosike and Klaus Schneider opened the meeting with a call to action. In their remarks, they stressed the need for and importance of African universities embedding themselves in the social and economic fabrics of their societies through high-quality learning and teaching, innovative research and partnerships.
This will ensure that universities can help to build the relevant skills in different sectors where such skills are needed, develop and nurture new entrepreneurs, connect experience to opportunity, and improve individual productivity and growth. They urged higher education providers to use innovative research to initiate a policy shiV and decision-making towards targeting investments to truly address both the historical and evolving needs of the sector.
