Malawi : Bunda Agricultural College

This impact evaluation report reviews A.I.D."s involvement with the Bunda Agricultural College, which was founded within the University of Malawi (UM) in 1966 to address this personnel constraint. Bunda has been the focus of two A.I.D. projects (covering the periods 1966-70 and 1976-82) to finance campus construction, provide long-term expatriate faculty, and train Bunda faculty at U.S. universities. Bunda"s record over the past 20 years has been one of outstanding accomplishments as a teaching institution. During this period, Bunda has granted 861 diploma degrees and 300 B.S. degrees; nearly all the expatriates in the agricultural sector have been replaced by Malawi nationals. The relevance, quality, and efficiency of Bunda"s educational program remain high, even though the College has had to adjust in recent years to a shrinking operational budget. Despite Bunda"s success, changes in Malawi and in the College itself now dictate a new approach. Demand for Bunda graduates is projected to decline during the remainder of the 1980"s. At the same time, Bunda"s still growing Ph.D. faculty focuses almost exclusively on teaching and has had but little involvement in Malawi"s national research program. Clearly, Bunda"s traditional emphasis on teaching needs to be adjusted to focus more on research, but such a change would require a closer institutional link with the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA). Bunda"s relative isolation from the MOA and even from other colleges within the UM has caused problems in faculty career development, in designing educational programs that address national priorities, and in the college"s ability to contribute to the larger agricultural research/extension systems already in place in Malawi. Future programs to develop agricultural colleges should include measures to strengthen inter-institutional relations.