Ms. Simuyi, a Zambian mother of four children, works in her country’s Ministry of Agriculture. Mr. Moonja is a program manager for ECLOF, the Ecumenical Microfinance for Human Development, which provides access to small but potentially life-changing amounts of credit for the poor. Ms. Sithole is a Zimbabwean refugee in South Africa who works on H.I.V./AIDS prevention in rural communities.
None of them have the resources — or the time— to enroll in a conventional M.B.A. course. Yet because of a new program at Heriot-Watt University’s Edinburgh Business School, up to 250 students from Africa will be given full scholarships to enter Edinburgh’s online M.B.A. — considered one of the world’s best distance-learning business degrees.
“We wanted to establish an initiative to promote life-long learning across the continent,” said Professor Keith Lumsden, director of Edinburgh Business School. “Africa needs assistance to help develop its full potential, and with these scholarships we are offering 250 individuals the chance to make a difference – not only to their own lives but to the wider communities around them.”
With more than 8,000 students scattered across the globe, the Edinburgh M.B.A. program puts all lectures and reading material online. Exams are held twice a year in more than 350 centers around the world, including African countries from Algeria to Zimbabwe.
“The exams they sit are exactly the same as students in Edinburgh or New York,” said Alick Kitchin, the school’s business director and a key architect of the scholarship scheme. “There is no easy ride.”
Made up of nine courses, each costing £650, or $1,015 — students in Africa, India and China already are charged a reduced fee; European and American students pay £800 per course — the M.B.A. would otherwise cost nearly £6,000.
For Joma Simuyi, who graduated in November, managing to finish the five-year course in just two years, the value of her degree can’t be measured in money alone. “It really opened me up to new ideas and new ways of thinking,” she said. “I’ve worked in government for 20 years, first at the Ministry of Finance and now at Agriculture. And though most of the cases we studied were in the business or financial sectors, the same things we learned commercially can be applied in the public sector.”
Ms. Simiyu’s fees were paid by her government. But Mr. Moonja’s employer couldn’t afford to pay for his continuing education. “I was admitted to a Dutch program two years ago but couldn’t secure funding. Then I applied to a Swedish scholarship, only to be told that since I came from outside the European Union I wasn’t eligible. So when I heard about the E.B.S. scholarship I was very excited,” he said.
Though he has only completed one course, in organizational behavior, Mr. Moonja said he was already benefiting. “The course was really practical and very applicable to my current work environment. I’m program manager but our organization is not that big and it really helped me to understand the other roles I also have to fill.”
According to Alex Vines, director of Africa programs at Chatham House, an institute of international affairs in London, such persistence is not unusual. “Africa does not suffer from a lack of entrepreneurship. Africans have to be incredibly entrepreneurial just to avoid poverty,” he said.
African universities suffer from the same scarcity of resources that afflicts the continent as a whole. “The quality of teaching is variable,” he said. “And historically, African universities have been plagued by a lack of funding, brain drain, even erratic supplies of electricity.”
Yet the Edinburgh program might have been designed with such pitfalls in mind. To be eligible for scholarships, students not only have to demonstrate financial hardship, they also have to show how they plan to use their degrees to benefit their communities.
Distance learning means the students remain in Africa, and in most cases continue in their jobs while the course materials are designed to be downloaded, minimizing both high internet access costs and problems caused by unreliable power supplies.
“If you want an M.B.A. in order to become a hedge fund manager in Manhattan, this is not the scholarship for you,” said Mr. Kitchin, adding that, while Edinburgh felt it had “the means and the reserves and the infrastructure to do this,” the school has entered into an unusual partnership with the Canon Collins Trust, an African educational charity, to select deserving students.
Founded by the late John Collins, the Anglican canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and a longtime anti-apartheid activist, the trust originally provided welfare and legal support to the families of South African political refugees. After the end of apartheid the trust shifted its activities toward education for all of southern Africa.
Sandy Balfour, the trust’s new director — also a best-selling author and the founder and director of Divine Chocolate, a company selling fair trade chocolate — explained that “education is empowering whether or not a country is liberated.” Edinburgh Business School needed “expertise in finding the right sort of students to take on, people who have already proven their mettle, whose track record shows focus and desire and the ability to go the distance, ” he said.
In addition to handling the applications process, the trust provides mentoring. The trust put Edinburgh in touch with Graça Machel, the wife of Nelson Mandela and a veteran political activist in her own right. She agreed to mentor two students each year.
Martha Sambani, an administrator at the University of Malawi, is one of them. She hopes to use her new skills to help her university shift from state to commercial funding in order to grow.
“Above all, I want to see a change in terms of university financial performance and accountability and this will be my greatest and first assignment to accomplish as soon as I qualify,” she said.
“The great advantage of distance learning,” Mr. Balfour said, “especially for women, is that you don’t have to abandon your life and go off to Edinburgh for two years.”
For Ms. Sithole, who spends her days crisscrossing South Africa for the Catholic Healthcare Association, the flexibility of distance learning is crucial. “I can advance my career and still work and take care of my family,” she said.
Her goal is “provide capacity to rural organizations that are battling to fundraise for their H.I.V. care.”
To Mr. Vines this shift “from humanitarianism to entrepreneurship and capacity building” will help Africa to stand on its own feet. “More business and investment, better management of resources is really good news for Africa — really good news for all of us.”
- – - - Source: NY Times