Africa University, Mutare

Visited Africa University today.  We were originally only going to check out public universities, but this one crossed our radars during a visit to Mr. Kala in Harare, so we thought it was worth a look. 

The Africa University is a private university with a pan-African mission.  Students come from all over the continent and staff from all over the world.  The university was a dream of a former leader of the Methodist church in Zimbabwe.  It’s only 20 years old and is still supported by Methodist churches worldwide, though American churches seem to be the most active and generous in donating.  Despite the generous contributions, students still pay about $2000 per term to study at the university. 

We learned that there are several required courses for students including Communication Skills 1 and 2, a foreign language (Portuguese, French, or English as a second language) and Christian Ethics.  Although some students seem to complain (as all students do) about required courses, we met several students who were quite happy about the courses and the valuable skills they teach.  We met with the convenor of the Comm Skills programme and the deans of Humanities and Social Sciences and Agriculture (they’re opening up an agricultural engineering department in the future and this is the only engineering department offered at the University, so Leen wanted to check it out). 

After an exciting morning of learning and speaking to people, we went for lunch at the university cafeteria.  We got our food and went to the hall to find a seat and were welcomed by a nice man to sit with him.  From his hearty welcome, I gathered that he was American (that accent is pretty hard to miss).  We exchanged greetings and I asked where he was from and about that time he said ‘South Carolina’.  I thought he was joking and had heard me say my home state first or something because it is not often that you meet South Carolinians abroad (sadly people from my home state seem to travel less frequently than other Americans).  Turns out he is a biology teacher from Wofford and is spending his sabbatical teaching at Africa University.  He son was also with him and had recently finished studying at the Citadel.  Quite a nice encounter.  We chatted about his experiences at the university and difficulty with things like a work permit for Zimbabwe… the country’s political situation makes it difficult for most people to get work permits to be here.  He also gave us a book that he read about the recent history of Zimbabwe that I’m about halfway through now and definitely recommend – it’s called ‘House of Stone’ by Christina Lamb.  Very interesting narrative of 2 people with very different backgrounds being seriously affected by the political and economic changes in the country over the past 40 years.

All in all, we were impressed with Africa University.  It brings together people from the entire continent to build education capacity across Africa.  The student community is quite diverse and also very welcoming – something we were quite struck by.  There are some issues with under-usage of facilities, such as the engineering building that is not being used because the lack of accreditation of an engineering programme and our friend from SC told us about the lack of textbooks for classes and things like that, but students do seem to be learning and the school is still young yet.