ABSTRACT
Africa is receiving an increasing amount of foreign direct investment from an ever more diverse list of countries. It is important to warn the rulers about the absolute necessity of intellectual and cultural development as the indispensable prerequisites for the good use of our natural and financial resources. In this chapter, the author lays the groundwork for an intellectual and pedagogical re-appropriation that he think has yet to be achieved. One promising initiative is the World Bank-supported programme of Africa Higher Education Centres of Excellence, which focuses on the sharing of resources between several high-quality educational institutions across the continent based on their fields of specialisation. While education budgets are often consequential, they are almost entirely devoted to salaries and rarely to investments in infrastructure and training. University education and pure research are the cornerstones of the re-appropriation of our intellectual sovereignty.
