Articles · Vol. 6 No. 2-3 (2008): Journal of Higher Education in Africa · Pages 61-75

‘We no go sit down’: CAFA and the Struggle Against Structurally Adjusted Education in Africa

Vol. 6 · 2008 No. 2-3 Journal of Higher Education in Africa JHEA

Abstract

This paper is a short history of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa (CAFA) since its founding in 1991 to the present. It describes CAFA documenta- tion of the formation of an Africa-wide student movement against the structural adjustment of African universities. It also details some of CAFA’s campaigns in defence of student struggles against both the World Bank’s role in propagating the introduction of tuition fees and the cutting of housing and food subsidies to stu- dents and the repressive action of the African governments against protesting students. We argue that academic freedom also includes the right to be involved in the production of knowledge and hence to have access to the means of its produc- tion. To deny Africans such a right in this period in history is to condemn them to the fate of being the damned of the earth once more and to put the ability of Africans to manage their own resources in peril.

Keywords

CAFA Education Africa

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Author Biographies

  • Ousseina Alidou

    Ousseina D. Alidou is Professor of Linguistics and Gender Studies. She teaches in the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She directed the Center for African Studies at Rutgers University (2009-Spring2015) and currently the Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership.She taught in several American Universities (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; The Ohio State University; Ohio University; Cleveland State) and was a visiting Professor at the University of Bayreuth BIGSAS-Germany, the University of Hamburg in Germany and the University of Lueneburg (Germany); Université Abdou Moumouni (Republic of Niger); University of Winneba (Ghana); She also serves (and continue to) as a Senior Faculty Advisor to UNESCO BREDA for the design of UNESCO-Rutgers University’s Gender and Transformative Leadership Curriculum for African Universities and Civil Society Organizations.
    Alidou is the author of Muslim Women in Postcolonial Kenya: Leadership, Representation, Political and Social Change (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013); Engaging Modernity: Muslim Women and the Politics of Agency in Postcolonial Niger (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005, a runner-up Aidoo-Schneider Book Prize of Women's Caucus of the Association of African Studies); Alidou co-edited Writing through the Visual and Virtual: Inscribing Language, Literature, and Culture in Francophone Africa and the Caribbean with Renée Larrier (Kentucky: (After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France) Lexington Book, 2015); Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Africa with Ahmed Sikainga (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2006) and A Thousand Flowers: Social Struggles Against Structural Adjustment in African Universities, Co-edited with Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000). In addition, she has published over 50 book chapters and articles which appear in Research in African Literatures, Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika (SUGIA); Comparative Literature; and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East; and Africa Today.
    Alidou is the recipient of several national and international scholarly and service awards including: Obafemi Awolowo Center for Gender and Social Policy Studies Distinguished Visiting Scholar Service Award (2015); Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Award (2015); Newark Women-in-the Media Distinguished Community Service Award (2015); Rutgers University 2011 Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching; Africa America Institute’s Distinguished Alumni Award (2010); Ford Foundation Human Rights and Social Justice Grant Award (2005); Rutgers University Board of Trustee’s Scholarly Excellence Award (2005); University of Hamburg, Germany, Visiting Professor Fellowship, Department of Linguistics and African Studies and Graduate Faculty of Intercultural Education (2003); and University of Lueneburg Graduate Faculty in Postcolonial Cultural Studies Visiting Scholars’ Writing Fellowship Award (2002).Director of African Languages and Literature in the Department of Africana Studies at Rutgers Uni- versity, New Brunswick, USA (Ousseina@hotmail.com)

     

  • George Caffentzis

    Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Southern Maine, USA (gcaffentz@aol.com)

     

  • Silvia Federici

    Professor emeritus and Teaching Fellow at Hofstra University, New York, USA (dinavalli@aol.com)

References

  1. Academic Staff Union of Universities, 1986, ASUU and the 1986 Education Cri- sis in Nigeria, Academic Staff Union of Universities: Ibadan, Nigeria.
  2. Africa Watch, 1991, Academic Freedom and Human Rights Abuses in Africa, New York: Human Rights Watch.
  3. Caffentzis, G., 2000, The International Intellectual Property Regime and the En- closure of African Knowledge’, in C. B. Mwaria, S. Federici & J. McLaren, eds., African Visions, Literary Images, Political Change and Social Struggle in Contemporary Africa, Westport (CT): Praeger.
  4. CAFA, 1991, Newsletter N.1, Spring. CAFA, 1995, Newsletter N.9, Fall.
  5. CAFA, 2001, Newsletter, N.16, Spring/Summer. CAFA, 2002, Newsletter N.17, Fall/Winter.
  6. Federici, S., Caffentzis, G. and Alidou. O., eds., 2000, A Thousand Flowers: So- cial Struggles Against Structural Adjustment in African Universities, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
  7. Federici, S. and Caffentzis, G., 2000, ‘Chronology of African Student Struggles: 1985-1998’, in S. Federici, G. Caffentzis & O. Alidou, eds., A Thousand Flow- ers: Social Struggles Against Structural Adjustment in African Universities, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
  8. Juma, C., 1989, The Gene Hunters: Biotechnology and the Scramble for Seeds, London: Zed Books.
  9. Laubscher, M. R., 1994, Encounters with Difference: Student Perceptions of the Role of Out-of-Class Experiences in Education Abroad, Westport, CT.: Green- wood Press.
  10. Newswatch Magazine (Nigeria), 1989, December 6.
  11. Pit ouse, R. ed., 2006, Asinamali: University Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

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