How is the ongoing reform programme in Myanmar impacting on higher education?
Some of the answers were provided by Kevin MacKenzie, British Council country director there from August 2012 until 1 July this year, during a recent briefing in London.
He arrived 15 months after the military junta was dissolved, during “the early days of the reform agenda”. The election of Aung San Suu Kyi as a member of parliament and an amnesty of political prisoners in 2012 “helped convince sceptics the government was serious”, although it was still dominated by “the same faces without military uniforms”. It was a time of “power cuts, empty roads, taxis with holes in the floor and scarce mobile phones”.
Much has obviously happened over the past four years. Mr MacKenzie mentioned “a notable change in basic infrastructure” and the election of a government led by Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy in 2015, even if three of the main ministries and a quarter of the parliamentary seats are still controlled by the military. (Courtesy of timeshighereducation.com)
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