Welcome to GoLive CyberStudio 3

From: "John Afele" <jafele@plant.uoguelph.ca>
Organization: Plant Agriculture, Univ. of Guelph
To: utsumi@columbia.edu, John Mack <jlmack@erols.com>, lasmith@usaid.gov,
Steve McCarty <steve@kagawa-jc.ac.jp>
Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 16:18:59 EST

Dear Prof. Utsumi-san:

1) I have an edited version of the African Initiatives which is still not in the infoDev format but has incorporated some items from the Latin American group, as you suggested. I have also deleted reference to the Mobile Van system.

2) Steve has placed it at the URL (but we will continue to modify it until it is DONE. For now, it is a working document.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Pantheon/7197/Afele/africa-g.htm

http://www.kagawa-jc.ac.jp/~steve_mc/global-univ-99/africa-plan.html

3) I will be going to the infoDev's Networked Economy and will be in Washington from November 8 - 14. I have scheduled appointments with some of the Bank's people who have expressed interest in our program.

4) Africa's education and research communities are facing severe problems at all levels therefore our design is from the perspective of integrated distance learning and research. Yesterday, I read from on-line African news systems about the state of students performances in some of the on-line news systems about Africa. Specifically, about the West African Examination Council's annual
review, and the state of scientific investigations which could be generalized for Africa.

5) The examination board is responsible for secondary and high school examinations in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra-Leone, and The Gambia. That is GCE O and A levels. It said "... there was a high failure rate in the November/December 1998 SSCE for private candidates ... in which the Chief Examiners reported "massive show of poor knowledge on the rules of grammar."
<http://www.africanews.org/west/ghana/stories/19991102_feat11.html>

6) In a separate case, the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principal (CVCP) of the universities of Ghana held on Thursday 23rd September, 1999 the committee deliberated on the current crisis in funding tertiary education and the events that led to the closure of the University of Ghana. The committee made the following observations Purchase of items such as chalk, chemicals, books and journals, equipment and what goes into direct teaching has been virtually impossible. This has made it very difficult for the Universities to effectively carry out their programmes.
<http://www.africanews.org/west/ghana/stories/19991102_feat6.html>

7) In a third news item, the Director-General of the Counci lfor Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) said the new expenditure framework could not provide the needed funds to address demand-driven researches. Prof. Alhassan said the awareness had been created but the commitment to practise does not appear to be total and it is contributing to low performance. Other factors were lack of seed money to carry out projects through pilot-phase testing
<http://www.africanews.org/west/ghana/stories/19991103_feat2.html>

8) That is why for the Ghana/Africa proposal I have a large network. What we aspire to is that we converge efforts to bring knowledge to bear on these insecurities. It would be the only way to make real gains. Our stakeholdership include CSIR, etc.

With kind regards,

John Afele