Spotted on the Harvard International Review website:
An article by Johan Mouton: Africa's Science Decline: The Challenge of Building Scientific Institutions in Global Education, Vol. 30 (3) - Fall 2008 Issue
"The central role of the modern research university within the knowledge
economy is now generally appreciated. Although it is recognized that
knowledge is also produced outside the university, there is—if
anything—greater appreciation today of the critical role and function
of the university in the production of scientific knowledge. There is
every indication that the central role of the university in modern day
knowledge economies will only increase as the economy and society
become even more reliant on knowledge.
However, it is not self-evident that this trend necessarily applies to
universities in many poor and developing countries and specifically not
to many sub-Saharan African countries. In many of these countries the
university is often the main, if not only, site of scientific knowledge
production. Unlike many of the developed countries in the North, these
countries do not have an abundance of private research laboratories,
well-resourced by government institutes. Such countries rely heavily on
these universities for producing basic research as well as for being a
reservoir of applied and problem-solving research and the production of
highly skilled knowledge workers. Unfortunately, over the last thirty
years, the research capacity at many of these institutions has been
gradually eroded to the extent that one could not refer to these
universities as vibrant and sustainable scientific institutions. In
fact, one could claim that science in many African countries has, in
the recent past, been systematically de-institutionalized. This
currently has and will continue to have negative effects on scientific
innovation in Africa."