Entrepreneurial HE alliance aims to create millions of jobs

Barely two years after it was formed, the Alliance for Entrepreneurial Universities in Africa (AEUA) has gained 41 formal members with a combined student population of about 1.1 million and 35,000 lecturers, drawn mainly from institutions in Eastern and Southern Africa.

The alliance, set up with the support of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), has ambitious goals. According to Antonio Pedro, the deputy executive secretary for programme support at the ECA, the alliance, which has already stimulated universities and their students to establish start-ups, hopes to create 100 million jobs, and generate US$200 billion in revenue by 2033.

So far, the alliance has attracted members from universities in South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, Malawi and Zimbabwe in Southern Africa; from institutions in Kenya, Ethiopia, Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda in East Africa, Ghana in West Africa as well as Libya and Egypt in North Africa.

Member universities vary in age, with the oldest being the University of South Africa, or UNISA, founded in 1873, and the youngest, Kenya’s Turkana University College founded in 2017, said Dr Victor Konde, the scientific affairs officer at ECA, who is overseeing AEUA’s operations in the interim.

They also vary in terms of size, the smallest having 1,300 students and the largest about 300,000 students, with Kenya leading in terms of membership, with 11 universities having enrolled, followed by South Africa with nine, Ethiopia four, and Ghana with three universities, he added.

Driving the alliance’s agenda

While there are many universities that are yet to sign up to become members, many are participating and driving the agenda of the AEUA forward, “sometimes even more than some that have signed up”, Konde noted.

“For instance, the first version of the website and the first three newsletters were prepared by non-formal members. Similarly, over half of all the trainers and students that took part in the just-completed Sixth African Regional Science Technology and Innovation Forum boot camp, came from countries where we do not have formal members – such as Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Senegal, Cameroon, Congo and Mauritius,” he said.

“From the alliance’s perspective, we would love for all of them to sign up but, from a development perspective, we do not mind as long as they are committed to drive entrepreneurship in academia,” he told University World News.

Despite its being in its formative years, interest in the alliance has grown, both in number and influence, as evidenced by the participation of university leaders, including vice-chancellors, who are increasingly participating in its activities.

This, he said, was important, if entrepreneurship were to cut across all the core activities of a university, including teaching, research and innovation.

In addition, a number of potential partners had also been attracted to AEUA’s mission, including large global establishments such as Google, which will be deploying about 650 experts in its employment to support university-initiated start-ups, said Konde.

This was besides the goodwill that the nascent body was receiving from within and outside the African continent, he further revealed.

“Members of the African diaspora are looking at the alliance as a broad platform for connecting and contributing to the continent as mentors, coaches, professors, funders, researchers,” he explained.

“These include colleagues from Purdue University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, well-wishers and supporters from the Netherlands, and allies such as the British Council,” he added.

Growing the alliance

Hosted by the ECA in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the alliance is currently supported by a technical team comprising individuals from Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda, the official disclosed.

The alliance had established the first “formal quasi-secretariat” at the end of April and it was optimistic that the staff will “help track entrepreneurship activities” at partner universities across Africa.

For now, the main focus was to grow its membership to achieve a scale that will bring the “desired impact in Africa”, followed by a drive to attract more private-sector partners to work with universities in knowledge generation, research and technology commercialisation, and in bringing in business talent needed to support universities in their entrepreneurial ambitions.

The third step will focus on strengthening support and inspiring youth to develop innovative businesses that can serve as an inspiration to others, Konde explained.

Currently he observed, the entrepreneurship landscape in universities is a “bit fragmented, poorly supported and not yet fully built into academia”.

“A survey of universities showed entrepreneurship may be better developed and supported in South Africa, Kenya and Ghana and still emerging Ethiopia, for instance. However, they all score poorly [in the] provisioning of incentives for entrepreneurial activities, and in monitoring and reporting of entrepreneurship outcomes,” he explained.

He added: “Put differently, staff are not employed or promoted for their entrepreneurial competencies, or for time invested in supporting students and researchers to take knowledge to market. That said, Africa is not alone. Structures that support teaching and research are much more developed, while those that support innovation and entrepreneurship are very thin,” the official added.

While support from governments is not well defined, full support from them would facilitate growth of entrepreneurship in universities, and there is a need to involve the private sector and industry to create innovative approaches to support various initiatives.

Developing new models

The limited funding for research and development, which is supposed to be the source of new scientific breakthroughs and investment in research and development remains very low [in Africa] – around 0.5% of GDP on average, he said.

“Support is also needed in enabling and encouraging all universities to ensure all students and researchers are exposed to entrepreneurship, and to empower them to easily protect, own and commercialise publicly funded research,” he observed.

On the other hand, universities need to work with industry so that industry could use the institutions as one of their sources for products and services.

“Everyone in the university should have the same chance to succeed at entrepreneurship – whether studying the arts, science or engineering. Reviews of the curriculum by academia are crucial to embed entrepreneurship in the institutions,” he said.

Perennial funding challenges ought not to discourage universities, he noted, observing that challenges motivated US universities such as Stanford to pursue innovation and entrepreneurship because they did not have enough funds.

What universities need is more freedom and time to explore and come up with models that work, and it is here that the alliance will come in, helping them exchange ideas, models and practices and in overcoming challenges.

In addition, members of AEUA are so diverse and can work and support each other, he said, noting that some of the most entrepreneurial universities in Africa are private, while most of the research is done in public universities.

In 2023, the continental problem-solving and innovation platform, Origin, was launched in Niamey, Niger, and the first Origin Research and Innovation Hub for East Africa was established at Dedan Kimathi University of Technology in Kenya.

The hub has so far registered hundreds of problem-solvers, has its own physical space, staff and partners from both private and public sectors, the official explained.

Africa, said Pedro, must invest in human capital development, and in R&D, and in learning how to produce, sell and use emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and genomics that are transforming every aspect of life.

This news report was updated on 10 May.