Let me take this opportunity to welcome you Honorable Minister and your esteemed staff. I am excited of the prospect of a new era, a new dawn and hope most sincerely that you come ready to etch your name in the history of tertiary education in this country. As Minister of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology, Dr. Madigele and your Permanent Secretary (PS) are seized with colossal and monumental structural deficiencies in the country’s public tertiary education system. These call for you to literally hit the ground running for you are inheriting a sector riddled with a morass of deficiencies.
Let me situate the morass for you. Since 2005 Colleges of Education as a part of the sector have been besieged with outrageous government funding cuts and subsequent austerity measures. The argument from government then was that public treasury education was facing immense pressure. This resulted in belt-tightening across ministries and departments. However, there existed a confusing paradox as some ministries and departments continued to spend recklessly and lavishly. A case in point being DIS, BDF, and such profligate projects as poverty eradication, constituency leagues, etc. You don’t have to agree with me on this, just my perspective.
On the other hand, Tertiary Education whose primary focus is developing the national human capital ÔÇô bedrock to development, became collateral damage in the process, speaking to a systemic national morass and skewed planning. Around 2008 Tertiary Education, especially Colleges of Education, suffered even greater austerity measures when Ministry of Education and Skills Development (MoESD) centralized funding of colleges as further belt tightening in response to the global economic meltdown. However, as the country emerged from the crippling economic meltdown after 2010, MoESD continued with such centralization. This led to: systematic budget cuts, cuts in the traditional colleges’ ‘massification’, debilitating austerity measures, poor programme delivery, declining service quality, declining staff morale which in turn has led to the total collapse of Colleges of Education as seen to date.
Dr. Madigele and your PS have to find a fitting remedy and render a prognosis to these deficiencies faster than you can say amen if you are to save the country from total self-destruction. What then do you need to do as a matter of urgency? Honorable Madigele, you need a massive policy change for tertiary education delivery and funding in order to resuscitate the sector. Added to this, Honorable Minister you need to expedite tertiary education, especially Colleges of Education, Institutes of Health Sciences and TVET, autonomy and transformation if these are to have any meaningful value addition to the sector and the national human resource development. Likewise, Honorable Minister you need to rid the sector of the albatross hanging around its neck, namely: the old tradition of massification, and malignant structural leadership that has manifested in an entrenched tradition of conformity and lack of self-invention. It is this general lassitude that has colored the sector’s past and in the process hamstringing its contribution to vibrant national development.
Honorable Minister you need to avail a lasting remedy for this malignant tumor fast before the dream of attaining the 2030 Agenda for Global Sustainable Development and Botswana’s vision 2036 falls flat of on its face.
In addition, a paradigm shift is critical whereupon senior managers in the sector; Directors, Deputy Permanent Secretaries and the Permanent Secretary become change agents committed to planning, guiding and executing the sector’s strategic policy direction. The current culture of bureaucratic posturing and obsession with protocol is counterproductive and Minister you must reign in your lieutenants to ensure they are more accessible and helpful. The sector suffers general lack of personal responsibility by the leadership, trust and loss direction leaving staff feeling ostracized and unappreciated by the system.
The research and technology dimension of the ministry must not be used just as a colorful window dressing buzz word but must address a nascent philosophy of research and technology driven tertiary education for citizen empowerment. In view of this institutional structural support must be in place to enable a vibrant technology infrastructure and a research environment. Above all targeted funding must be availed to institutions to support research. You must eradicate the tradition where universities have acted as ivory towers to enable institutional research exchanges across the sector. This will require the establishment of research centres and fora that are funded by both the private sector and government. Such centres must invariably be led by persons with demonstrable management and research competencies.
Honorable Madigele, you and your PS are faced with the monumental task of transforming tertiary education from: structural inefficiencies, leadership dearth, poor strategic policy direction, lack of political will, bureaucratic stranglehold, poor funding model, waning staff morale, etc, to a vibrant value addition sector to the national development. This might seem insurmountable but it is achievable if your leadership is people centric.
Therefore, I wish you Honorable minister the wisdom of Solomon, honor, humility and an understanding heart in your journey into this treacherous terrain. I humble myself before the Almighty and invoke his guidance and mercy that: Almighty God, grant my minister, if it be thy will, success in the journey he is about to embark on. I ask your blessings and thy wisdom to guide him ever so graciously in attaining solutions to all the present woes that bedevil this sector. I plead devoutly that he may reason with adroit intellect and avoid discordant conduct towards our trade unions and sycophancy, ooh Lord. Let thy power restrain all foolish tongues that give him counsel dear Lord. Arm him to be stoical in his resolve to make Tertiary Education the life line of our democracy, job creation, social regeneration, national pride and quality of life without bending whichever way under pressure, dear Lord.
*David Keagakwa is an academic. He writes in his personal capacity
