5 steps towards Integrating the African Continent

Integration and African Renaissance

I have had the privilege of living and working in three different regions of our beautiful African continent – Southern, Eastern and Western Africa. I have also had the privilege to travel to many amazing African countries (including North and Central Africa) during the course of my work in African Higher Education.

The African Union Commission in its ambitious Agenda 2063 Vision for the continent articulated 7 key aspirations for the continent. Aspiration 2 is about an integrated African continent. Explicitly Aspiration 2 says: “An integrated continent, politically united and based on the ideals of Pan Africanism and the vision of Africa’s Renaissance”. One dictionary defines “integrating” as “combining or coordinating separate elements so as to provide a harmonious, interrelated whole”.

Africa is divided into 8 main regional economic regions. Some of these overlap. You can learn more about these 8 African Regional Economic Communities .

Integrating such a diverse continent is not an easy task. In his study on the benefits of regional economic integration for developing countries in Africa Ombeni N. Mwasha concluded that: "By moving towards the economic integration via the East African Community, these countries have benefited in several ways including: increased trade, attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI), increased bargaining power, strengthened security and conflict resolution in the region, free movement of people which has eased cross border trade and management of the joint projects together".

Based on my reflections the following are FIVE STEPS that could be taken to begin to integrate the African Continent

1. Student Mobility: universities from Southern, Eastern, Western, Central and North Africa should agree to engage in student mobility exchanges – involving maybe 25 universities, with 5 from each economic region. One hundred students from each university would travel for a semester exchange program in an economic region outside of where they are originally from – 2,500 students would be involved per year. In 5 years we would have 12,500 young Africans with the experience of learning and living in a different African region. It is important that this movement happens irrespective of whether any harmonisation of degree programs has happened or not. I believe that the movement will create demand for policies and regulations to be put in place.
2. Academic Staff Exchanges: this would take the same format as above. The difference would be that the movement would aim to fill capacity gaps in the destination universities. However movement must be towards a region where the academic faculty member is not from and his/her skills are required in the receiving university.
3. Joint Cultural, Music and Art Festivals: our beautiful continent has a lot to offer the rest of the world – top on this list is our music, culture and art. In every African country that I have been I have learned that the drum is central to all our music and cultural practices. There are already several national and regional music, cultural and art festivals that are being done. What we need to promote is inter-regional music, cultural and arts festivals as our unique way of promoting continental integration.
4. Language Summer Schools: much as we value integration – there is great value in us learning each other’s languages. Language summer schools would help us to communicate better and understand each other better. Language schools would also help us to value our diversity whilst pushing the integration agenda. These schools could bring instructors to a regional venue to deliver one month language literacy courses focussed on maybe Kiswahili, Yoruba, Igbo, Ewe, Amharic, Shona, Creole, Zulu, etc.
5. Technological Platforms: We need to promote our Africa-grown technological solutions and collaborative platforms. The young people are innovating every day and coming up with great platforms that could be used to connect, network, learn, collaborate and integrate the continent. Some of these include Ignite The Youth Africa; Kumba Africa; Kasoma Africa ; Tech World Magazine and Security Magazine - among several others.

The steps that I have proposed would also promote Inter-Africa Tourism and various economic activities. Most important of all is that we must begin – there will be challenges but we would learn from those challenges and perfect the art of collaborating as we integrate our rich and diverse continent.

Thank you for reading my article. Please share your ideas about how we can make integration a reality in Africa. Do you have other Africa-wide technology-based platforms that could be used to promote Africa’s integration agenda?

8 key messages that I shared with students during a Career’s Day Event

Today I was invited to speak at the 17^th annual Career’s Day organized by the SOS-Hermann Gmeiner International College (SOS-HGIC) based in Tema, Accra, Ghana (http://www.soshgic.edu.gh/)

The theme of this year’s event was “Exploring Public Sector and Non-Profit Careers: Viable Choices for Fulfillment and Impact”. When I received the invitation I did not hesitate because I take a special interest in coaching and mentoring young people.  

The event was very well organized and focused. It began with a key note address in a big hall where all the students gathered. It then followed up with parallel sessions held in different rooms. I spoke to two different groups during two sessions of 30 minutes each.

My key messages to the students were:

1. Volunteerism: it is important for young people to volunteer their time. This is an excellent way of contributing to society, learning skills and being connected.
2. Being Open: sometimes our plans do not proceed as we expect. It is important to be flexible when it comes to available opportunities.
3. Soft Skills are as equally important as technical skills: skills required for success include communication, writing, technology literacy, ability to work with diverse teams, entrepreneurship and problem solving.
4. Technology literacy: Technology is impacting all aspects of our lives. Learning how to write code must be  like learning how to read and write
5. Self-Branding: young people can take advantage of social media to brand themselves. Social media etiquette is important. For example if one has a skill or knows something – they could record a video or article and share it for others to learn from. Being consistent and professional on social media platforms is part of self-branding.
6. Life-long Learning: In order to succeed it is important to keep learning. There are numerous opportunities to learn online and upgrade one’s skills.
7. Limited jobs for the youth: The number of jobless youth has reached frightening levels globally. It is important to think out of the box. How can youth create their own jobs? How can they identify opportunities? How can they build unique skills that are in demand?
8. Trending professions on the continent: include the creative industries, food technologists, 3D designers, data centre workers and care, education and health workers – this is according to the analysis done by the World Economic Forum in partnership with LinkedIn (http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_EGW_FOJ_Africa.pdf). They predicted that in the longer term, there will be “strong job growth potential in hard and soft infrastructure, green jobs, ICT sector and through new work formats”.

Some of the questions that the students asked me included:

1. Which universities in Africa offer the best Computer Science programs?
2. How have you coped as a woman in technology?
3. What languages did you use to code computer programs back in the 90’s and 2000’s?
4. It is difficult to get organizations to buy into technological solutions and to dedicate resources for Information Technology – what strategies have you used to convince them?
5. How do I get to understand what my passion is?

What I learned from the visit to the school

1. SOS-Hermann Gmeiner International College (SOS-HGIC) is a very well-organized and well-kept school. The environment speaks volumes concerning the type of leadership, vision and culture.
2. Because of the excellent learning environment, curriculum and style of teaching, the students attending this school are very privileged to be at that school.
3. There is a need for many of us to volunteer by contributing to the education and exposure of our youth by participating in career days.

Thank you for reading my article. I will be happy to get your comments – especially your own experiences related to mentoring and coaching young people.