Aggregation: No inferiority complex

Yaounde is currently hosting a continent-wide examination to select the best in terms of academic excellence to teach in universities.

The examination, referred to in its original French appellation of Aggrégation, is the highest-level teaching qualification for French-speaking universities which confers on its laureates, the authorization to teach at the highest levels of the university system and to lead research teams in a broad spectrum of scientific areas.

Those who pass this difficult examination are almost always sure of a safe passage into the highest rungs of the academic ladder in Francophone universities and the holder of an aggregation is almost certainly sure of securing the position of Associate Professor virtually as of right.

For example, the Cameroonian university system is full of holders of this envied title and many proudly brandish it as a beacon of academic excellence. In the university milieu, announcing that one is holder of an aggregation, especially in the faculties of medical sciences, law or economics brings obvious gains and academic consideration.

But there is more to what the eye sees, especially in terms of where such an aggregation was obtained. The system is purely of French-inspiration and only in recent years did a number of African French-speaking countries thought it wise to organize an African examination with the hope that the numerous African candidates, sitting for the examination and very often frustrated on the sheer basis of being African were often disqualified, thought it wise to organize an exclusively-African aggregation examination.

But discrimination and criticism were not long in coming into the show; leading a number of African Ministers of Higher Education to come together to create the Conseil africain et malgache de l’enseignement supérieur, CAMES to which was given the responsibility of organizing the African version of the aggregations in the various fields.

This was perceived as an African response to the discrimination indicated above but, above all, to stress the fact that Africa could also contribute to the development of science and that its universities did not need the tutelage of universities in the West to be recognized as veritable centres for the dissemination of knowledge.

Holders of the French aggregation began to leave the impression that theirs was of a higher quality and that the new African response was. Right here in Cameroon, that feeling is observed in the university milieu where those with French degrees and academic titles from French and other European universities often treat their colleagues with the same qualifications from African universities with some disdain, even if it is not very noticeable.

The level of participation in the ongoing examination seems to confirm this trend. Of the 200-or-so candidates running in this year’s competition, only ten are Cameroonian, even when the examination is being organized in Cameroonian territory and when Cameroon continues to hold the reputation of an academic hub in the entire francophone African realm.

The tendency here is to think that Cameroonian scientists would rather go for the French aggrégation, otherwise, what explains this crying apathy for the examination which opens wide avenues for academic progress? It is up to academic leaders across the board to give this examination all the credit so that its laureates enjoy the full benefits of all the academic windfalls the holding of such titles can bring about.

We are first and foremost, supposed to be the promoters of institutions we have put up to check academic accountability and cannot afford to be the same who undermine the institutions we have freely set up, otherwise we get caught up in the trap of rejecting our own institutions in favour of foreign ones and in so doing accept a position of inferiority.