Listening to Geographers from the Global South

Abstract

That is why you find more lecturers doing consultancy work. We are not getting research grants and as a country, we cannot fight hunger or HIV/AIDS if the university cannot conduct any research … we have been very patient … government must invest in education by paying us the money we deserve. (Jessie Kabwila, President of Chancellor College, University of Malawi, Academic Staff Union (quoted in Namangale, 2006, p. 3))

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the publishers of JGHE for meeting the expenses of a half-day workshop at which the authors were able to meet with colleagues teaching geography and earth sciences at Chancellor College, University of Malawi to generate ideas for this editorial.

Notes

¹ As one of several colleges of the University of Malawi, Chancellor College established in 1973 encompasses teaching and research in humanities, education, science and social sciences. The main department of Geography and Earth Sciences is in Chancellor College. Within the rest of Malawi, the smaller and more recently established Mzuzu University also teaches geography to degree level, Domasi College of Education offers geography courses to diploma level and the recently opened Catholic Nguludi University is also establishing a geography department.

² As highlighted in the 2004 special issue of the Journal of Higher Education in Africa, 2(2), and Zeleza & Olukoshi (2004).

³ There are ongoing debates in Malawi concerning the conduct of the national public end of secondary education examination—MSCE (Malawi School Certificate of Education) with regard to examination processes and pass levels (Machado, 2006). Formerly, individuals passing MSCE with appropriate points gained automatic entry to the University of Malawi, but more recently it has become necessary for the university to conduct its own entrance examinations given the poor academic abilities of MSCE holders. While there are parallels here with debates on falling A-level standards in the UK, accusations of fake certificates, cheating, improper conduct and impersonation of candidates during public school examinations do not generally feature in the North, as they often do in Malawi and elsewhere in the South.

⁴ There is an exact 50:50 split by gender for UK geography graduates as shown by the ‘What do graduates do?’ (WDGD) data on the ‘graduate prospects’ website (http://www.prospects.ac.uk), based on the ‘Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education’ data (DLHE) collected by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)—2980 male and 2980 female Geography (as a social science) graduates, combined with Environmental and Physical Geography graduates in the UK in 2005.

⁵ In part, this is merely a reflection of educational characteristics across the Malawian population in which literacy rates and acquisition of educational qualifications are higher among men than women (NSO, 2005). Although the gender gap in education is narrowing in Malawi, school dropout rates remain highest for girls and it still reflects the regional situation across much of Southern and sub-Saharan Africa (Semu & Chande-Binauli, 1997, p. 87).

⁶ Malawi's high and increasing adult mortality rates (NSO, 2002b, p. 119) are underlain by a relatively high (14 per cent) HIV infection rate in the adult population (UNAIDS, 2006).

⁷ This is despite the fact that, given the limitations of their university education, graduates from the University of Malawi have weaker skills compared with their counterparts from more privileged institutions both in the Global North and further south in RSA. Moreover, they remain a tiny elite within Malawi where only 1.8 per cent of adult men and 0.7 per cent of adult women completed university education in 1998 (NSO, 2002a).

⁸ Browsing the pages of the University and College Union website http://www.ucu.org.uk provides plenty of evidence of the troubled times in UK higher education and the associated eroding conditions of employment.

⁹ It should be acknowledged that the British Council has funded very useful staff exchange links between geography departments for some time, and is a good example of what can be achieved. Similarly, the US Fulbright program has a long history of enabling academic staff and students to spend study periods overseas.

¹⁰ Initiatives of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) based in Dakar, Senegal, are notable in this regard especially in respect of its special initiatives aimed to develop individuals' research capacities.

¹¹ The recent suggestions for making AAG membership and benefits more easily available to geography departments and geographers in the poorest regions of the world (Richardson, 2006) are to be welcomed in this respect.