By Prof. Levi Obonyo
No less than fifteen universities from across Africa convened in Malawi to showcase the potential of media-enhanced courses on migration and their practical applications in addressing the vast demand for higher education on the continent. This initiative is of unprecedented scope.
The Dean of the School of Communication, Prof Levi Obonyo, was among the scholars at the three-day Blantyre meeting exploring joint efforts that could be expended towards a collaborative journalism curriculum delivery through e-learning platforms.
The Erich-Brost Institute for International Journalism (EBI) at Dortmund University in Germany organised the e-learning conference in Malawi that focused on media coverage of migration in Africa. Dortmund University is leading a three-year EU-funded project called ‘CoMMPASS,’ aimed at developing an e-learning platform for future and practising journalists in African universities.
Dortmund University has closely worked with the School of Communication at Daystar University. Dr Jeremiah Nganda, a faculty member in the School, will be travelling to Dortmund later this month on a fully sponsored month-long training on journalism education.
Thanks to additional funding from the German Federal Foreign Office, the Malawi conference organisers—Prof. Dr. Susanne Fengler, Professor of International Journalism at Dortmund University and Director of the Erich-Brost Institute, and Dr. Michel Leroy, Project Manager of the Erasmus+ CoMMPASS project—brought together colleagues from all over the continent at MUBAS, the host university in Malawi’s largest city, Blantyre. Delegates came from countries as diverse as Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.
Over 70 journalism researchers and students from English- and French-speaking African countries participated in the three-day conference alongside representatives from Portuguese- and Kiswahili-speaking nations. The CoMMPASS online course, currently in a test phase in English in Uganda, Burkina Faso, and Malawi, will be more widely available next year in these four languages.
Talking to Involvement newspaper, Prof Obonyo said the School of Communication will be keen to participate in a joint curriculum delivery that will expose Daystar communication students to a learning experience involving faculty and students from elsewhere in the continent and beyond.
The statistics are telling: Today, 1.4 billion people live on the African continent. According to United Nations projections, this number will nearly double by 2050. This population growth presents enormous challenges to African education systems. By 2030, the number of children and young people under 18 is expected to increase by 170 million.
For African nations, this surge means millions of new school and university places will be required quickly. Education is key to the continent’s recovery, which continues to lag behind other regions economically and has been particularly hard hit by global inflation. One figure highlights the scale of the problem: Approximately 100,000 students in Côte d’Ivoire pass their A-levels (baccalauréat) each year—a number nearly equal to the capacity of all the country’s universities combined, both public and private.
However, according to studies by the Berlin Institute for Population and Development, resources for school and university education in Africa are stagnating at best and declining in some countries.
As the German scholar Prof. Dr. Fengler noted in her keynote address, “Investing in the education of young journalists is paramount for African countries. Particularly given the rapid population growth, Africa’s often politically fragile states are being tested. Jobs and healthcare are becoming even scarcer. Meanwhile, press freedom is restricted in many African countries. Now, more than ever, African nations need a critical public debate on addressing these challenges. This will only be possible if there are enough professionally trained journalists and independent newsrooms. This is where we aim to contribute.”
Another keynote speaker, Prof. Dr. Sisanda Bukeka Nkoala, from the University of the Western Cape, gave a remarkable speech entitled ‘Embracing Innovation in Higher Education Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Enablers’. Prof. Dr. Nkoala also serves as General Secretary of the African Journalism Education Network (AJEN). This network takes a leading interest in the issue of appropriating these new teaching tools.
Thanks to support from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), Dr Girmachew Adugna also shed light on migration trends and the processes/initiatives aimed at regularising and securing migration on the continent. Dr Adugna belongs to the Center for Forced Displacement and Migration Studies at the University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
In addition to Prof. Fengler and Dr. Leroy, the Erich-Brost Institute was represented by Dr. Merle van Berkum, who is leading a comparative study on migration reporting in countries of origin and destination, and Johanna Mack, editorial director of the European Journalism Observatory based at Dortmund University. The Dortmund team provided conference participants with an in-depth introduction to the structures of the CoMMPASS e-learning portal, which is currently in its test phase and scheduled to go live in 2025.
The conference also featured intensive discussions about the varying conditions for e-learning across African countries. While nations like Kenya and Nigeria are digital pioneers, already incorporating digital teaching formats, educators and students in other African countries face challenges such as high internet costs, frequent power outages, and a lack of adequate space for focused online study in cramped living conditions. The African journalism educators exchanged experiences and explored potential solutions to these issues.
Project website: https://commpass.org, www.facebook.com/CoMMPASS.org