Overseas Training and National Development Objectives in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This article focuses on the impact of overseas training on national development objectives in sub-Saharan Africa. That old topic is resurfacing as international assistance agencies once again consider support of higher education as a fundamental, long-range strategy for accelerating growth and improving social equity within low-income countries of the region. During the past 2 decades, economic development has been slow in most of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Sluggish agricultural performance, combined with rapid rates of population growth and a balanceof-payments crisis, have led to pessimistic projections of African development in the 1980s, particularly in the face of continuing global recession. Recent diagnostic reports of Africa's special economic problems by the World Bank and other international agencies point to serious shortcomings in existing policies, particularly those affecting agriculture, and to widespread weaknesses in planning, decision making, and managerial capacities with resulting overextension of the public sector. Underlying these limitations is a still acute scarcity of highly qualified, indigenous professionals with the skills that are critical to devising and carrying out effective strategies for national development. Foreign study is, of course, but one option for meeting Africa's needs for higher education, and it is the option which received the most severe criticism by the international community during the 1970s when priorities shifted from providing postsecondary education to meeting the basic educational needs of the poor. Under colonial rule and in the years immediately following independence, when local provision of higher education was negligible or nonexistent, foreign study was considered the fastest route to expanding the number of Africans with qualifications that would enable them to replace expatriate manpower in the public and private sectors of the economy. Moreover, development pundits believed that returns to investment in overseas training would inevitably trickle down to benefit all levels of society and all sectors of the economy. The guiding principle behind the provision of overseas scholarships was the proper allocation of disciplines and subject matter to fit occupational slots in the developing economy. As national objectives concerning economic growth became coupled with the equitable distribution of benefits and broad-based participation