The impact of the 2008 global economic recession on Engineering Education in Africa - A case study from the AFRICON international conferences

摘要

International academic conferences provide rich opportunities for life-long learning which is embraced by engineering education. The AFRICON series of conferences are held on the African continent and were subjected to the global economic recession of 2008. Many felt that this recession would impact on academic attendance at conferences worldwide, and especially so for academics from universities in Africa that is considered a poor continent. Little though has been published to support this theory or hypothesis for the AFRICON IEEE Region 8 based conference. This paper aims to substantiate this hypothesis by comparing the number of papers presented at the AFRICON 2004, 2007 and 2009 international conferences. Conference demographics relating to the author's country of origin (grouped into Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America and South America,) lend credence to the hypothesis that the global economic recession of 2008 would impact negatively on conference paper presentations. However, paper submissions from Asian countries increased, which may indicate that their universities were not as seriously affected by the 2008 recession. It was also established that academics from older more prestigious universities in South Africa tend to present more AFRICON conference papers than their counterparts from less prominent universities of technology.