Mali, like so many other developing countries is particularly concerned with the persisting world economic crisis. This crisis is characterised by a shortage of financial resources, structural imbalances, the difficulties of corporate enterprises and organisations, competitive disadvantages which combine to hinder the economic and social development process.

In such a context, training, changing, acting for better management and development appear to be the mission assigned to the University of Mali, we indicated for confronting and spreading knowledge and competence.

The creation of the University of Mali proceeds from both a necessity and a hope. A necessity because the academic structures quite old could no longer meet the expectations

of the new millennium.
A hope because, of ail the alternatives theoretically imaginable, only the creation of the University is undoubtedly the one that offers, potentially speaking, the greatest chances of success.

The University of Mali has therefore the merit to exist and it is capable of playing its role if it is provided with the essential tools for its material, personnel, and especially financial operation. To this end, one must not only be proud of the progress already made, but also steadfastly pursue the ongoing effort without any reserve nor reluctance.

It appears therefore that the progress made by our University will heavily depend on the effort that the Government is ready to make in its favour. In other words, this requirement for efficiency which is not beyond our reach, calls for everybody’s commitment.

An important step has already been taken with the implementation of the TOKTEN Project..

TOKTEN: TRANSFER 0F KNOWLEDGE THR0UGH EXPATRIATE NATIONALS

Mali has a significant number of expatriate university graduates and researchers other university and research institutions are very proud of. Unfortunately, the country does flot profit from these scholars’ skills and competence. The ‘Tokten’ project jointly developed by Mali and UNDP intends to fill this gap.

In fact, it aims to make this set of expertise available to the malian students. Mali is a country which badly needs technical competence and which faces a significantly high migration rate of its population in general, and its scholars in particular. Appointed by Decree N0 93-002/P-RM, a university mission was assigned the preparatory work of setting up the structures of the University.
The University of Mali opened in 1996.
In the year 2000, only four years after its opening, the University of Mail had some 19700 students. At the same time, there was a need for qualified teachers.
In fact, Mali suffers from a brain-drain which results in many highly competent Malians living abroad.
In certain countries, the adaptation of technology to the local conditions is often made possible by these expatriates of malian origin. Yet, the creation of the University must be accompanied with several principles the most important of which are the quality of the teachings, an opening to the outside world, and the advancement of university research. The pedagogic supervision of students during the academic year 1999-2000 was done by 538 teachers. The new needs for qualified teachers expressed by the different university institutions total 177, a number that the contractual recruitment of local staff can not satisfactorily meet.
Fields of study such as the management of biological diversity, biotechnology, tele-detection, cartography, urban development, geology and genetic biology, specialised documentation, archaeology, epistemology, psychology, linguistics, etc, require, in most cases, a great expertise not available locally. Hence the necessity to ask for external assistance, especially the national expatriate expertise throughout the world.

This programme, set up by UNDP, focuses on a project of co-operation and transfer of technology known by the name of TOKTEN (Transfer of Knowledge Through Expatriate Nationals). TOKTEN has been well-tried in more than 40 developing countries. Its objective is to use the competence and the skills of expatriate national executives in order to improve on the quality of university training and facilitate the opening of the university to the outside world so as to promote scientific and technological research. The purpose is to fill the gap in qualified teaching personnel and, in particular, the lack of highly qualified expertise in the above mentioned fields of study, in short change ‘brain drain into brain regaining’.

“The new orientation of Higher Education has led to the creation of the University of Mali. By its very nature, higher education fits in an international context. Certainly, science and ail men everywhere and in every age have contributed to its progress.
The inequality which prevails today between nations as regards scientific development is only relative and circumstantial. Thus, humanity has a natural vocation for scientific co-operation. One of the objectives of higher education is to contribute to the development of knowledge and it is only through within a national context that one can hope to reach this objective. The TOKTEN Programme is a project of the University of Mali to be implemented nationally. Put under the trusteeship of the Ministry of National Education, it is taken care of by a management committee composed of the representatives of the following structures:
The Cabinet of the Ministry of Education, CNRST (National Centre for Scientific Research and Technology), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Malians Abroad, the Directorate of International Co-operation, the Malian National Commission for UNESCO, the Rector’ s Office, the Deans of the Faculties, the Directors of Higher Schools and Institutes, the Directors of Research Centres of the Ministries in charge of Health (National Institute of Research in Public Health) and of Rural Development (Institute of Rural Economy), the Directorate of Planning and UNDP. The programme works in close collaboration with the embassies of Mali throughout the world. TOKTEN is therefore intended to malian university graduates living abroad and who are willing to bring in their academic assistance to the research institutions of higher education. Upon completion, it must contribute to make up for the shortage of competent teaching personnel in key fields, to improve the quality of higher education, to develop between the consultant and his malian homologues a continuous correspondence and sharing of experience. The project also facilitates twining and the consolidation of exchange between the young university of Mali and the universities of the consultants.

APPENDIX - I

SPECFIC OBJECTIVES 0F THE SECOND PHASE 0F THE PROJECT

The finality of the TOKTEN project in its second phase is to contribute, among others and through training and research, to:

Bring the University of Ma/j, before the end of year 2001, to engage itself in a process of planning and strategic reform taking into account the increasing size of students and the development, in Africa and internally, of the needs for research and technology focusing on Internet and other means of communication. This can make possible the production of articles and dissertations.

STRATEGIC ACTION PLAN (2001 to 2004)

The major activities of the project are teaching assignments (lectures, scientific conferences, participation in the supervision of DEA, i.e. Master’s Degree, and doctoral dissertation students, the development of curricula, promoting and sensitising.
It is hoped that these teaching assignments will contribute to improve the quality of education, reinforce the inter-university twinning and co-operation ties. The promoting activities will enable to sensitise around the TOKTEN objectives and to enrich the repertory of malian university graduates abroad. The project also aims at identifying malian citizens abroad who have the expertise and the experience require to lecture and/or supervise research works at the University of Mali; participating in the creation, the organisation and the animation of doctoral programmes, in research studies and projects, in the creation of Departments for the Supervision and Proficiency courses for the teaching personnel at the level of certain university structures (training of trainers), the definition of programmes adapted to the present context of african integration and globalisation to prepare the well performing managerial staff for the job market.
The true transfer of knowledge, which will be efficient and durable, can be realised through the consolidation, if not the specialisation of the local trainers. TOKTEN will strive to set up a work board, a guiding reference for quality and efficiency standards and a number of validation criteria to assess the efficiency of the various training activities of the University of Mali.
In its development in Mali, TOKTEN should open itself and solve, in addition to the university, a certain number of problems facing other sectors of activities. A special will be put on the relationship between training and employment by getting corporate enterprises and administration involved in the development of training programmes meant to meet their expectations.
Much effort has to be made to value research 50 that the results can be used by the enterprises and agents in the economic field. TOKTEN will actively contribute to that. Research teams will be formed on research topics selected and paired with those of research teams of foreign universities.
For the development of teaching systems and research, it is urgent to harmonise and reinforce the teaching proposals, favour research, create scientific magazines to promote the training of trainers, to provide the economic sectors and the social domains with highly qualified executives, performing and competitive, to develop and increase the level of research in order to help in the advancement and the strengthening of training programmes for managerial executives capable of reinforcing the managerial capacity, the analysis and making of development policies, which ail together, greatly contribute to the improvement of the quality of management as well as the speeding up of growth.

National round tables and workshops bringing together the executive officers of training institutions and the representatives of the private sector (PME, PMI, Rural and professional world, N.G.O) will increasingly be held.
These round tables and workshops will give the opportunity to the participants to express with precision their needs, to define the guiding principles in each sector of activities, to confirm their adhesion and precise their respective roles. The aim is to develop reflection upon the courses on research, mainly the improvement of the performance and the productivity of our enterprises; to collect the opinions and attitudes of executive managers about the training programs and their perceptions of their major constraints. This will make possible to increase the personal efficiency of our national businessmen and thereby their regional competitiveness (at the level of the West African Economic and Monetary Union) through a change of their perceptions and their management styles.
The University must therefore permit and facilitate the emergence of new executives in symbiosis with their environment, by necessarily involving the users/employers in the definition of training programmes, and integrating their concerns in these programs. The creation of a co-ordinating committee of the round tables and workshops is therefore necessary.
Set up and sustain a network of partner institutions following the round tables and make possible a programme of co-operation.

Develop within this framework more adapted instructional contents and materials in collaboration with the networks responsible for the training of trainers. Organise at the University sector-based units in terms of:
functioning procedures, adapted programmes of training and applied research and harmonisation of the actions of these units with those of the Departments of Teaching and Research. strong involvement of businessmen in the training process, large involvement of students and research institutes in research activities, development of reflection upon courses on research, mainly the improvement of the performance and productivity of our enterprises and organisations, development of co-operation and exchange with higher schools and training centres being at the same level as the University, through student and teacher exchange systems, to enable a much larger widening up on other systems of organisation and production, development within our courses of activities likely to motivate the creation of enterprises, special emphasis upon training accompanied with follow up activities making possible the implementation of practices capable of bringing in change.

The creation of short fields of training, of the teaching personnel supervision and proficiency course chairs and the promotion of research must be subjected to studies on the feasibility of these creations which are indeed very important, especially if Mali is obliged to open up to sub-regional, regional and international competition, in the economic sector as well as in the sector of communications and new technologies.
Hence the relevancy of a global study which requires high level experts and yet a relatively weak budget if one calls upon the national expatriates working with an international expert who will not be influenced by any types of external factors capable of hindering the clarity of the study.

Within the activities of this phase of the project, it is also planned to organise:
-colloquiums, symposiums on scientific research and exchange activities to favour the collaboration between the teachers of Mali and their homologues abroad, the development of projects sponsored to finance this collaboration, the supplying of equipment and materials to local researchers, the identification of partners living abroad, the preparation and writing of scholarship application forms, malian researchers’ trips abroad, the development of malian industrials’ interest not only as sponsors but also as active participants in technical and scientific discussions.

The following are also under consideration:
subscription to different scientific magazines through Internet and multimedia, and the use of technology through CD ROM.;
the possibility of university research funds;
the study of training needs in research methodology and scientific writing; the creation of an office for the project financing;
teachers’ evaluation as topic for consultation within the TOKTEN Project.

Concerning the advancement of research at the level of university institutions, a special emphasis will be put on trainers’ training through research topics to be published, and the number of publications will have to be taken into account for advancement. Teacher evaluation by students will also have to be considered. Instituting an honorary distinction prize for the best teacher or a best researcher of the year can also be stimulating and motivating.

Out of 46 topics for research proposed and presented by the different university institution for the academic year 1999-2000, only 14 projects were financed up to 65,500,000 CFA. A sustained financial support is needed to globally satisfy ail the requests for research project financing. The projects which are financed must followed up and evaluated, and the outstanding teacher or researcher will need to be given a prize or a scholarship as a reward for his work. These prized research topics will help to improve the different curricula of the university institutions. For a further and substantial content of the training provider, the students should be associated to the research works and be able to diagnose enterprises within the adaptation of training to employment and this in its turn will profit the enterprise.

MEANS FACILITIES ALREADY IMPLEMENTED:

1. Budget.

1.1. First year (1998-1999)
for the first year of TOKTEN Project activities, UNDP’ s assistance to the programme amounts to 170,000 US dollars, about 69,86% of the Project’s budget. The government in return provided 44,000,000 CFA (about 73,900 US dollars), which is about 30.13% of the Project’s budget.

1.2 Second Year (1999-2000)
.UNDP’s Contribution: 221,140 US dollars. .UNESCO’s Contribution: 40,000 US dollars
.Contribution of the Malian government: 32,940,000CFA, about 54,900 US dollars.
TOKTEN’s BUDGETS (1998 to 2001)

2. Personnel.
The personnel of the Project includes:

2.1. Personnel on contract (UNDP Budget)
• A Project co-ordinator
• A Project Assistant.
Two Drivers

2.2. Personnel on annual local contract (malian contribution)
An administrative Assistant (in charge of the secretariat)

3. Material Equipment.

3.1 UNDP’s Contribution:
Rolling stock,
Various computer equipment: copiers, projectors, binding machine, tele-copier.

3.2. Contribution of the malian Government:
Office equipment,
Various equipment (refrigerators, air conditioners, office furniture).

XI. DIFFERENT CONTRIBUTIONS
A. The Partner’s Contributions
1 .Candidate’ s transportation from their residence country to Mali;
2. Consultants’ Fees;
3. Contribution to the consultants’ internal transportation fees (car renting);
4. Support for the production and the multiplication of course handbooks;
5. Assistance for the transportation of scientific materials and documentation intended for the University of Mali by the consultants;
6. Material equipment;
7. Fees for the administration and the co-ordination of the Project.

B. Contributions of the Government of Mali
1. Housing for the candidates;
2. Extra hours;
3. Duplication of the reports;
4. Telephone, fax, water and electricity;
5. Luggage;
6. Equipment for the Co-ordinator’s office.

XII. FOLLOW UP - EVALUATION

The project is followed up by the partners. It will be subjected to an annual review and will be evaluated every other year by an external evaluator recruited a bid for International Services.