The sky’s the limit – A vision for quality higher education

The African Development University in Niger's capital, Niamey, is the result of the vision of a young man, Kader Kaneye, who started dreaming 12 years ago about how to empower youth in his country through quality higher education. He will be sharing his experience at the 14th eLearning Africa conference, to be held in Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire from 23 to 25 October.

Following in the footsteps of the founder of Ashesi University in Accra, Patrick Awuah, who modelled his institution upon Swarthmore College, the private United States university where he graduated with an engineering degree, Kaneye’s vision matured at Harvard University.

While Awuah worked with his wife Rebecca in making Ashesi a reality, Kaneye has partnered with Meredith Segal, one of his classmates from Harvard Kennedy School.

Where the two founders part ways is that, while Awuah had seed money sourced from his work as a programme manager at Microsoft, Kaneye had no funds at all.

Working night and day

After graduating in May 2017, Kaneye (now 35 years old) spent three months working night and day touring buildings in Niamey that were potential sites for his new university. Finally, he and Segal settled on an old building that was donated to them but required massive repairs. “Thereafter, we recruited a group of dedicated volunteers and solicited partners from around the world,” Kaneye recently told University World News in an interview.

Between July and September of that year, the modest edupreneur and his team met with hundreds of parents, potential students, tribal chiefs, religious leaders, directors of non-government organisations and senior government officials.

In his quest for political support, Kaneye sought a hearing from Mahamadou Issoufou, the president of Niger, and several ambassadors accredited to Niamey. “Surprisingly, most of those contacts believed in my vision as they felt Niger urgently needed the type of university we were describing to them,” said Kaneye.

He opened his not-for-profit university – the country’s first – in 2017, but his ambition is bigger than the creation of a single university: he wants to literally transform Niger’s higher education system.

The origins of the idea

Kaneye’s journey up to this point was envisioned years before he even received a Fulbright Scholarship to study for a Master of Business Administration at Harvard Kennedy School.

He started thinking about founding a university in 2007 while teaching at a private university in Niamey, where the proprietor expected him to teach a masters-level course in finance in a quarter of the time it needed. “I was being asked to teach the course in just 30 credit hours to students that were not as strong as the students in France that took the course in 120 credit hours,” said Kaneye.

When he noticed the problem was widespread in Niger, he decided there was a need for a more ethical higher education institution. However, he still needed more time to plan and to discover what he calls the 'American limitless mindset' before his dream could come to life.

Having established the university in 2017, Kaneye is now determined to transform it into a world-class institution to nurture talented youth to enter the workforce equipped with the knowledge, leadership and critical thinking, ethics, and collaborative mindset necessary to design and drive the Nigerien economy and the Sahel region in general.

It is a herculean task for anyone, let alone a boy who grew up in dust-blown Saga, a small village in a country that lies at the bottom of the global human development index (HDI). Niger’s average years of schooling stands at only two years, while its overall HDI is a mere 0.354.

But Kaneye appears to be a brave embodiment of a visionary whose ideas are not impacted by where he comes from or the barriers ahead. Kaneye’s father was a high school teacher and his mother a high school dropout-turned-housewife. The family lived in a mud house with no running water but his parents were extremely serious about education. “The largest part of the household budget was used for our education,” Kaneye said.

Education regardless of financial means

This investment has clearly paid off. With courage and tenacity, Kaneye has put the African Development University on its feet with the aim of educating young people, regardless of their financial means. In his own words, Kaneye is looking for students that are committed to academic excellence, prepared to work hard and committed to serve their communities.

Kaneye said the background of a student does not matter. “We have students from all backgrounds, lots of them from rural areas of Niger and surrounding countries.” The university welcomes every ambitious young person who has ever yearned for a world-class education.

At the moment, 70% of students at the African Development University (ADU) are women, while 90% of students receive some sort of financial aid. Currently 20% of students are on full scholarship which is a huge cost to the university. According to Kaneye, the university will require US$10 million to educate 1,000 students in the next 10 years.

The ILIMI Foundation, an independent body based in the United States, is mandated to mobilise and engage individuals and organisations around the world in supporting the work of the ADU.

African Development University prides itself on being the first not-for-profit university in Niger and considers itself the first university in the Sahel to offer world-class education. When the university opened its doors in 2017, it had only 35 students but that number rose to 184 last year, representing an increase of 426%.

This year, enrolment is at 524. Projections indicate that enrolment next year will almost double to 1,021 students and thereafter to 1,567 students in 2021. Entry to the university is through a competitive entrance examination.

The university has fashioned a unique academic programme that includes a three-year undergraduate degree that prepares students to become ethical leaders. A two-year specialised master’s programme is available to career professionals and a one-year MBA is also on offer.

The university has courses for adults seeking to improve their English language skills for work, travel or further education. There are also short courses for senior management to improve their business acumen, negotiation, public speaking, strategic decision-making skills, and leadership and management techniques.

On future plans, Kaneye said the sky is the limit. “Plans are underway to launch a school of engineering and a medical school when our permanent campus is complete,” he said.

eLearning

To circumvent the shortage of good lecturers, e-learning through the use of information and communication technologies is one of the university’s key academic delivery techniques.

“Massive open online courses, MOOCs, are embedded in our learning experience and technology is a big piece in our strategy because finding qualified professors is difficult here in Niger, as is the case in most universities in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Kaneye told University World News.

One such course is “CS50x: Introduction to Computer Science” developed by David Malan, a professor of computer science at Harvard University. According to Kaneye, the popular course is taught through a blended learning approach and has a wide range of concepts that include abstraction, algorithms, data structures, encapsulation, resource management, security, software engineering and web development. The programming taught is inspired by the real-world domains of cryptography, finance, forensics and gaming.