Statement by Political Adviser Mr. Olav Kjørven

”The Development Challenge: The Role of Higher Education”

University of Bergen, Nordic University Conference on Nordic Challenges in North-South Cooperation, April 15-16, 1999

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Ladies and gentlemen,

Let me first say thank you so much for inviting me to this important conference. I also want to congratulate the Nordic Universities for putting the greatest challenge of our time on your agenda: the fight against poverty. A special word of thanks to the organizers, the University of Bergen.

Why Should We Care?

I will take as my point of departure one of the key points made yesterday, by dr. Hans Rosling, in his excellent presentation. He asked a key question: why should we spend our time, energy and resources learning about people and conditions in far away places? The question could just as well have been: why should we engage in development cooperation?

Rosling provided a compelling answer: The world is one. We do not live in separated realities. What happens in Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc. has profound effects on the world and therefore on us. Socalled tropical diseases like malaria are on the march and will affect even Scandinavians more and more. Rosling even went so far as to say that ”Sweden needs the World more than the World needs Sweden.” I would of course agree that, in the case of Sweden, that statement is true. Of course, it is true even for Norway and the Nordic countries as a whole.

But I will take a different point of departure, and provide a different rationale, for why we should learn and care about people and conditions in places far from our shores. I will provide a moral argument, which by the way is very different from a sentimental argument.

We must learn and engage because people, no matter what their conditions are, have intrinsic value as human beings. All people have intrinsic human rights. It is our obligation, our moral responsibility, to do something about the world’s number 1 moral problem: poverty. It is an unbearable fact that a couple billion people are deprived of basic human rights, deprived of the right to make fundamental choices.

So, you might say that we need to learn and engage in the fight against poverty because it is in our own interest. It is to a large extent true. But even more, we do indeed have a moral obligation, as human beings.

However, I see no contradiction here. You may call it the push and pull factors. The moral imperative is the push factor. Our interest in self preservation is the pull factor.

Yesterday Rosling gave us an interesting example: he asked why must Swedish students of geology learn about volcanoes? After all, there are no volcanoes in Sweden. The answer is evident: you must learn about volcanoes in order to understand geology. If you didn’t learn about volcanoes in Swedish universities you would have pretty poor universities. I will make the claim that the same is true for people and societies. If we want to understand ourselves as individuals, communities and societies we must learn about peoples living under totally different conditions in other parts of the world. We must learn about them in order to understand ourselves. If our universities had no interest in them, they wouldn’t be doing their job for us. They would lack relevance.

I also believe the building of knowledge and understanding builds empathy. I believe in the humanizing effects of understanding. Whereby we also move towards a more profound understanding of our moral obligation towards fellow man. This is what we in modern jargon call synergy! Synergy between the push and the pull factors.

Knowledge Institutions as Partners

So dear friends, knowledge is important. Knowledge is important also because wellmeaning intentions and empathy without knowledge is dangerous. Especially if combined with money. Which is why we who are involved in development policy depend more than most on knowledge and on you as knowledge institutions. We have the potential of doing great harm! And great good.

I would like to tell you, representatives of Nordic knowledge and learning institutions, that we, who are responsible for development policies and programs, consider you important. You must be an important partner in the international development efforts of the Nordic countries.

I want to stress the importance of partnerships. Effective partnerships are a precondition for progress in the fight against poverty. This truth has been made even more true by the unfortunate downward trend in the transfers of international development assistance. It is only through effective partnerships that we can succeed in making the most out of every dollar spent on development. And we need effective partnerships with knowledge institutions if we are to make the most strategic financial interventions and succeed in the effective transfers of knowledge. We also need more effective partnerships between and amongst knowledge institutions: in the North, in the South and between North and South.

The Norwegian Strategy

Our Strategy for Strengthening Research and Higher Education in Norwegian Development Cooperation, which has been circulated to all of you, should be seen in this light. It is a central building block in our development policies. It has two main objectives: (1) stimulate to knowledge development in the South, relevant to the challenges of the South, and (2) help ensure that our development policies work: that they are based on the best available knowledge. This is key to success, whether we are speaking about aid coordination policies, debt policies, health and education policies, private sector development policies, the combat against corruption, humanitarian assistance, etc. A third objective is also important: dissemination of results to partners and to the public at large.

So, let’s work on this together. We have to, if we are interested in results. We, the Norwegian development authorities need to partner with leading knowledge institutions. I believe the same is true for the other Nordic countries. Together we can do more, better. And it is also more fun.

Key Challenges

Let me end by drawing your attention to some of the key challenges we are facing in our development efforts, challenges where you can all play a role.

• Universities in the poorest countries

What do they need of assistance to be more useful, more relevant in their countries and to the people they are meant to serve? What can we do to strengthen their position in society, and their freedoms?

• Conflict prevention and resolution

We are all concerned about the unravelling of peace and stability in many African countries in the last couple of years. Could adacemic institutions play a role in preventing and solving conflicts? Could Nordic universities do something together and in partnership with African universities to put peace on the agenda? On the curriculum? Could good things come out of building networks of professionals and academics, across lines of conflict? If you can come up with good, sound, daring initiatives in this area, you will find our support.

• HIV/AIDS

We all know too well the dramatic effects of this tragic disease in many developing countries. Special efforts are clearly needed. The title of a NUFU publication recently was: ”What to do when the respondents kill each other”. A similar question might be: ”What to do when our colleagues and students are dying of AIDS”. Can the universities play a greater role in facing this terrible challenge?

We urge you to be daring, ambitious, aggressive in entering into these and other development challenges, and in combining your forces, and not always go for the external, additional funding first. These are our common challenges,

• if we want to be relevant
• if we want to make progress
• if we want to be truly human
• if we want to understand the human condition.

I believe poverty is the most difficult, but most exciting challenge in the world today. Someone has said that once you start thinking about poverty and what it means for those living in it, and once you start thinking about what it might take to overcome poverty and provide people with the choices they have been deprived of — it is difficult to stop thinking about it. Thank you for your attention, and again, congratulations with this important conference.