@ANSA e.V. Conference Frankfurt am Main 10/2012

talking on shaping higher education Germany/Africa

What, so the question leading heated discussion @the annual ANSA e.V. conference Frankfurt, can one do with regard to the challenges faced in economic, ecological and (higher) education structures in African countries?*

Such were the questions driving the gathering of the young attendees from various African countries as well as from Germany. Invest into Banks - was the interesting approach presented by the African Development Cooperation. Development aid, as one of the attendees highlighted, could had not been the solution - despite being perpetuated by African as much as by the German/ European actors. Eco-friendly technology - amazing! BUT the preoccupation remained: how could one raise the sense of achievement with the various attempts and activities in place or that are planned to be put in place?

Engage in discussions, was the call of Christel Gbaguidi, ask those people that you want to work with, what their challenges are. Now listen to the solutions they come up with. It is with their solutions that you can use to start figuring what would be interesting and viable for you to contribute.*

I suppose it is the listening to solutions, which, in so many occasions, we are skipping over hastily.

*indirect quotes - wording may divert from original contribution

on businessmen and students as informal ambassadors

Westerwelle at yesterdays Ambassadors Conference at the German ministry of foreign affairs: with regard to the German national and international economic interests it is important to look at visa policies. It is important to facilitate the necessary mobility of people - with special reference to the relevance of facilitating international students the access to higher education systems!

on a P E R S O N A L note

Engaging in destructive discussions on whether or not a certain institution should exist, whether or not a particular cooperation should take place and whether certain policy initiatives should be pursued or rather not is a tedious undertaking. After all, institutions will not seize to exist, cooperation will not be resigned and policy initiatives will not be abandoned in response to the theoretical considerations of the ivory tower. They exist as long as they serve the odd overt and covert purposes of those parties and actors involved.

This research intends to take a constructive approach. It attempts to investigate the prevailing overt and covert interests that feed in and sustain the cooperation between the EU and the ECOWAS in the area of migration policies. Challenges and problems are used as helpful guides towards more fruitful areas for policy initiatives, not as a hint to forestall the cooperation. This constructive approach on what could be possible and how it could be possible is based on the unique insight granted by the organizational staff of the EU and the ECOWAS and exemplarily the German and the Ghanaian governments as respective member states.