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Appraising Journalism Education Interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Critical study of the Norwegian Model

Mon, May 29, 17:00 to 18:15, Hilton San Diego Bayfront, Floor: 4, Sapphire Ballroom M

Abstract

For several decades sub-Saharan Africa’s education sector has been among the testing grounds for a project-based approach to development assistance. The vast majority of these bilateral interventions—especially fashionable en masse in the 1990s— have focused on basic literacy and elementary education pedagogy, and they have been marked by a disappointing lack of sustainability. More recently there has been a growing interest in targeting higher education institutions in sub-Saharan Africa for development assistance. The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) is notable for its involvement in higher education journalism training at a graduate level in select developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to narrate and critically assess NORAD’s presently discontinued involvement in the establishment of a graduate journalism program at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. In doing so, we review lessons over the lifespan of NORAD’s sponsorship of the program by discussing what worked and what did not. Framed as a problem-posing discussion where questions are raised (not necessarily answered), this paper also examines the long-term sustainability of NORAD’s reproduction of the Ethiopian experiment in other African countries such as Uganda.

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