African unity needs to move beyond rhetoric at South African universities

I recently had the pleasure of of travelling to Addis Ababa. It was an experience unlike anywhere else I have ever been. Addis encapsulates the idea of "Africa Rising". You feel it on every street, as busy people rush past and huge buildings are constantly under construction. You can see it in every gigantic embassy, many of which are significantly larger than the embassies we get here (South Africa). The ever-present African Union is impossible to miss, and is as beautiful as it is imposing.

This, combined with the general busyness and the omnipresence of diplomats from all over the world, creates a real sense that you are in the capital of Africa. This feeling is reinforced by the fact that the vast majority of businesses - of which there are a ridiculously large amount - are local, with local names and local products that make it obvious that you are in Africa.

The final thing that was truly special was the vastness of Ethiopia's history. Most African nations have a basic format for history - the pre-colonial period (which very often too little is known about), the colonial period, and then the post-independence period. Ethiopia's history, as a country that was never colonised, does not follow that format. Without the destabilising effect of colonisation, Ethiopia's history truly flows from one period to the next in a way that no other African country's history does. The knowledge and recording of the past is also astounding, once again relegating the idea of the "Dark Continent" to malicious myth. To go to Ethiopia's universities and museums is to get a true sense of what exactly it is that colonisation took from us; our history and our ability to develop the way we were supposed to.

My short trip to Addis, and the profound effect that it had on me, led me to wonder why exactly universities (including my own, the University of Cape Town) were not sending students to places like Addis. UCT pays lip service to the idea of African unity and being a proudly African university, but it consistently supports (and in fact greatly pressures) its students to go universities in the United States of America and Europe instead of universities in Africa. Help, in this regard, does not come from our government either - who similarly seem to prefer seeing our students go to overseas countries instead of ones in Africa.

There are two major issues with this. The first is that these are already wealthy economies. Students from South African who go to these countries represent a leakage from the economy for every rand they spend, and the economies of countries like the USA and Europe do not need this money - and more importantly, this investment in their economy will not see any return for the South African economy.

The second issue is that the rhetoric common in both government and universities promotes the idea that students are the future leaders of our country. If that is true, then how can we not be sending them to the country which hosts the African Union - the largest and most important group of leaders on our continent? Furthermore, what exactly are we expecting our students - particularly those in the fields of Economics and Social Sciences - to learn at these institutions in the USA and Europe, whose theories have been thoroughly discredited and done huge harm through institutions like the IMF? Great controversy surrounds the so-called 'exiles', the crux of the criticism being that they were taken in by Western education and grew out of touch with South Africa - and then tried to implement models with could not work here. Regardless of whether or not this is true, if we accept that it is a valid argument then we have to ask why we are doing the exact same thing again - particularly in a time where development and education are beginning to thrive in Africa.

Institutions like universities and governments in Africa need to invest more genuinely in our continent. The trickle down-derivative idea that helping one person achieve success is enough to claim that you are benefiting Africa is completely false, and has in fact led to an institutional culture where bright and promising youths are expected to go overseas and find their success there instead of staying in and working to benefit their own country and continent.