Gabon: Omar-Bongo University no longer attracts students

The scientific center of Omar-Bongo University in 2014 in Libreville (illustrative image). Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 Clairebouanga

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2 min

Sixty years after independence, where is the Gabonese university? We were interested in Omar-Bongo University, the largest in the country. The university no longer attracts Gabonese students, and no longer welcomes expatriate students.

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With our correspondent in Libreville, Yves Laurent Goma

At Omar-Bongo University (UOB), problems are piling up: rutted streets, dilapidated building insufficient for the 30,000 students, obsolete computers, no wifi. The complex, built in the 1970s, evolves on the sidelines of progress.

Suddenly, the UOB does not attract, summarizes Loïc, student in Master 2 anthropology: “  Our university is in decline. Why ? Because it does not attract foreign students. Gabonese students are thinking of going into exile, for lack of adequate conditions in our university  ”.

Natacha Masangoni, doctoral student in economics, remembers that the establishment was attractive a few years ago: “  There are students who came, for example, from Madagascar, who came from the Congo. There were white people coming and now the campus is closed, it's really sinister, actually  ”.

Separation of the university and the grandes écoles

The evil came from the separation of UOB from the grandes écoles, explains the rector, Mesmin-Noël Soumaho: “  The university now houses only two faculties, that of letters and human sciences and that of law and sciences. economic, you will easily understand that very few foreign students can come to Gabon to study…  ”

Repeated strikes, academic years that drag on, bloated staff ... There is much to do to improve the image of this university.

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