CHICAGO
African nations are looking to
colleges and universities in the United States
to help solve the continent’s problems of
poverty, insecurity and a lack of government
accountability, a member of the Ugandan
Parliament said here recently.
“We want to take technology at any
level,” said Manuel Pinto, who is also a
member of the New York-based
Parliamentarians for Global Action.
Elaborating on his wish list, Pinto added:
“We want programs such as life skills, simple
math, communication skills,
supervising work, record keeping and
transactions, and simple agriculture projects
to produce high-yield crops. We want these
to link up with African colleges and
universities in partnerships to provide
vocational and industrial training.”
According to Pinto, the partnerships are
necessary to ensure that African nations
benefit through associations with American
campuses.
“Often researchers come to Africa to do
work that benefits them and not us and many
times they don’t even publish what they
find,” he explained.
Pinto’s invitation to American universities
came during a conference at the University of
Illinois at Chicago (UIC). The conference was
called to begin a process through which
universities and colleges can assist in
economic and human development around the
world.
About seventy government officials,
academicians, union leaders and students from
the United States, Africa and Europe attended
the conference, titled Human Development
and Economic Growth.
The 1996 Human Development Report
prepared by the United Nations Development
Program (UNDP), the world’s anti-poverty
agency, was the centerpiece of the two-day
conference that was held earlier this month. It
was the first time the annual report, initially
published in 1990, had been presented at a
campus in the United States.
The conference was sponsored by the
PEOPLE Program (Public Elected Officials
and Others Providing Leadership and
Exchange) in Chicago and UIC’s Institute of
Government and Public Affairs, the Institute
for Research on Race and Comparative Public
Policy, and the College of Urban Planning and
public Affairs.
