Rabat – Between the still pertinent but less raucous debate of pan-Africanism vs afro-politanism, there might still be today, roughly speaking, two ways of looking at Africa and Africanness. There are those who fetishize an elevated and monolithic idea of Africa while blaming the non-African world — mostly the West — for all of Africa’s problems. And then there are those for whom Africa is both an idea and a complex reality.

While the former group revels in revolutionary finger-pointing and impassioned invocations of Mother Africa, the latter speaks in terms of “shared responsibility” and of taking advantage of the opportunities to make things better.

Hicham El Habti, president of Morocco’s Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P), comes across as belonging to the second breed of pan-Africans. “African development;” “pan-African vision;” “our continent;” “innovation adapted to African realities;” “African solidarity” — these are the hallmarks of the Moroccan academic’s discourse as he presented his university’s “African vision” in an interview with Morocco World News.

When asked where UM6P stands in the cacophonous debate over clashing notions of Africa and pan-Africanism, El Habti appeared to fudge theoretical disputes to focus on what, to him, matters the most: action on the ground, statistics that measure tangible impact and the change that his institution aims to inspire in Morocco and across Africa.

Africa as land of opportunities

“We have an idea about Africa as a land of huge opportunities, whether intellectual or scientific,” El Habti told MWN. “So our vision for Africa comes from the fact that we are convinced that the continent represents for any researcher a fertile ground in te