Entrevista com o Sr. Dr. Raul Araújo
Reitor Universidade Lusíada de Angola

(Em Português)

Luanda, May 12, 2005

Mr. Principal, Lusiada University was created in 2001, so what is the story around? And who are the founder and the owner?

Lusiada University is propriety of an Angolan association by the name (Saber Angola) this association has two partners which are the Ambassador Rui Mingas and Dr.Paulo Murrias those are the only owner of the university, shering 50% each one without any other shareholder.

What course do you have at University?

At this moment we have two faculties, the faculty of law and the faculty of economic science, so we propose law study and international relation in the faculty of law, and in the faculty of economic science we have 4 courses: economy, business administration, accounting and human resource administration. Beside those courses we have the architecture, information technology and psychology which started last year, those courses are working as a department not as faculty.

You also are about to start the course of Marine Biology and Information Engineering?

Yes it is true that we intend to start this course in Lobito, because of the fact that Benguela is one of the biggest fishery points in Angola. We haven’t started yet because of a lack of candidates. Being a technical course with one of the main subject is math, the people tend to abstain, but as soon as we have the candidates we will start the course.

Recently the governor of Bengela has encourage the university to start a Medicine course, do you intend to start it, if so when?

I don’t think so, as you know the medicine course demand a big infrastructure to work properly and we don’t have any financial support from the government or any other private institution, right now we are working with our own money from the school fees. To have a medicine course we should have a hospital and now financially this is not possible, although not officially together with administration we are thinking to initiate a basic course in medicine science, for example it is being tried the clinical psychology, them we will see if in 3 or 4 years the University can really have this course.

Most of the student getting into this University for the first time, get low marks because of the poor preparation in the previous level, so what do you do to improve that?

Basically we have notice two things, in this last academic year, that ended in January the marks of the students were extremely low, so now we are trying to introduce a new system where by the students are more attracted and participative called “avaliaçao continua” continuous valuation, that mean less theory more practical lesson, more research. I spoke personally with student to collaborate in all aspects to the success of the system, in the others universities the students are less participative, and using this method we intend to improve the marks of the students. Being a university but working as a big college.

We have notice that the number of candidate is increasing. But what is the exact number this year?

Our enrollment time go till the end of May and and the number of candidates up to now is 3500. Also and we preview to have more than 4000 candidates, even though we would like to go up to 5000, but I don’t see it will happen because of the rigorous selection procedure.

How many lectures do you have?

Right now we have about 200 lectures.

By the end of the year the public university will open the university village which will accommodate about 17000 students. They also going to introduce some course you have here. Do you think there will be a big competition between you?

I don’t think so because Agostinho Neto University is the only public university and we are a private and our teaching method are different from them, we are more practical which make ours students prepared for the work environment.

In the law course the lectures are active layers and judges, and we have a court room to simulate some cases during the course, and in the future we are thinking to send them in some official court section. We are able to do that because of the reduced number of students, we take per class 100 students, and in the public university it’s difficult to implement this method because of the number of students they take per class. I still can’t see them changing much from the method that they are using now in the year to come.

What is the relation between the Portugal Lusiada and your University?

It’s mainly in academic side. We also signed an agreement last year concerning in muster courses and doctorate. This was approved by the Portuguese high education ministry, where by they will provide us with those courses. The courses will take place here, approved by education ministry and recognized by Portuguese authorities. But there is no real partnership between the two universities.

Was it difficult to find 200 qualified lectures?

Yes it was. Till 1998 we only had the public university, in the past we didn’t invest in the lectures, most of the lecture are from the public university. I personally think that we still have deficit of lectures that have master degree or doctored. Not being more than 2% in our education system and some of them were doctored in socialist country and the academic point of view of doubtful and all this facts reflect in the Angolan education system.

We heard from USA embassy that there are exchanges between lectures and also between students from Angola and USA. Do you also have this kind of collaboration?

For the moment not but in the future we are thinking about having this interchange with Portugal Lusiada, but only when we will have improved our academic standard.

We also have a lecture from Huston University with whom we are studying this possibility to have this interchange, it is interesting mainly in the international relations course, but the problem is the language. Even though we have an compulsory English course, the result are poor because the English language are only use in the class room. And the study of English is not yet a priority as academic subject in the country.

Do you do some workshop?

Yes we do, we are going to have the first workshop about a penal code which will start on second of June, and it will take 3 days, for the law course, we still have other workshop in June for the architecture department, which was postponed because of the illness of Marburg, and the theme is the building preservation of the old city of Luanda. Around October we will hold the international workshop about the economy of the Portuguese speaking country CPLP the first workshop was held in Brazil.

Do you have a university pole in Cabinda and Benguela?

Yes we do have in those provinces. We are present in Benguela from about 4 years and students are now on 3rd academic year. Courses are: law study, economy, accounting, business administration and information technology.

In Cabinda we have human resource administration, international relation, law study, economy and accounting.

Are you thinking to expand to other provinces?

Yes in Huila and Huambo, all depend on the condition up there. For now the priority is to consolidate the already existing poles.

Are you open for outside partnership?

Yes but until now there is no proposition.

We are here to promote and inform the American business investors and our readers about the business opportunity in Angola, in the education sector what is your advice for all our readers?

I think there should be a mechanism of cooperation between Angola universities and U.S. universities considering the experience that American have, today we see that European are following the system used in U.S. and according the Bologna treaty, but yet we still use the Portuguese method which is classical.

Today we can feel that the relation with U.S. is going to be more strengthened than with the European countries, despite of the historical link between the colonies and their colonizers.

Lately, experience show it is easier for African and Latin American to have business relation with U.S. than their colonizers, where they keep mostly culture relations, and this happen because of the trauma during the colonization process, some see that they are superior or are afraid of not being well accepted, but this doesn’t happen with the U.S. and the Commonwealth countries, and Spain might be one good example among the colonizers.