World class: The new African university system that the author advocates for must offer academic programmes of quality, benchmarked against the
best tertiary insitutions in the world.
A reimagined African university system must dare to invent sustainable futures
We have entered the second quarter of the 21st century. In 2050, we will be halfway through a century that is often predicted to be the African century.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Africa has huge potential for sustainable futures. A regular refrain is that Africa possesses an unparalleled abundance of diverse resources — critical resources needed for the world’s economies.
Not to mention a growing and youthful population, which constitutes the majority demographic group.
What ails Africa?
Yet it seems everything is killing — literally and metaphorically — many Africans, young and old: violent and rapacious politics; corruption; wars and conflicts; violent crime; gender-based violence; injustice; hunger; disease; grinding poverty; crisis-level unemployment, especially among the youth; widening inequality; extractive local and external powerful actors dominating sclerotic economies; lack of access to comprehensive, quality education; climate change-related disasters; and more.
Some hope
Yet it is not all doom and gloom. The sun shines most of the time in Africa. Africans smile, sometimes to stop from crying about its unnecessary tragedies. Africa has some emerging economies that portend better futures.
A few Africans are unbelievably wealthy, by hook or by crook. Some Africans lead comfortable lives. There have been degrees of improvement in the lives of Africans compared with previous decades.
Yet the suffering of the majority of Africans is far greater than that of their fellow citizens around the world. It is unnecessary and cruel, given the potential of the continent. Africans deserve sustainable futures — dignity, peace, justice, prosperity and more.
Potential needs to translate into a higher quality of life across the board — and urgently. Otherwise, the constant repetition about potential rings hollow and sounds like a cruel joke.
Knowledge is the answer
Everything that Africa needs to do to create sustainable futures requires high-quality, contextually relevant knowledge systems centred in universities.
Made-in-Africa, high-end, leading-edge knowledge is the key to unlocking and translating Africa’s potential.
Knowledge based on imitation and adaptation has long reached its sell-by date. It has contributed to the current stasis that breeds crises.
The need for an African knowledge system
Reimagined universities, organised as an African knowledge system, are central to pathways towards a new Africa of sustainable lives. Africa has good universities whose quality and excellence have improved over the past two decades.
But they are too few to make a decisive difference to a growing continent’s intellectual and practical challenges. It is a case of islands of excellence amid a sea of mediocrity.
The continent needs a high-quality, extensive, strong, well-funded, connected and differentiated university system that creates knowledge to invent sustainable futures in a changing global context. Such thinking would give real meaning to aspirations to create knowledge-driven economies.
The current situation is unsustainable
The continent has an assortment of universities — not constituted, even nationally, as integrated systems — of varying quality. In general, public universities are chronically and perennially underfunded. They lack the depth and alignment to Africa’s knowledge needs required to drive sustainable futures.
Further, a considerable number are badly governed and poorly managed, to the point of dysfunction, undermining quality, excellence and societal impact. Such universities contribute to graduate unemployment.
Compounding this situation is low to no institutional autonomy and academic freedom, principally because of governments. This cripples the ability for incisive critical inquiry and knowledge breakthroughs that would generate informed solutions for sustainable futures.
As a result, the majority are not the first choice of the best and brightest students, academics and managers. Some leave the continent, deepening an ongoing brain drain that is many decades old. Radical change is necessary — and soon.
Creating the new system
The reimagined university system should be created through substantive, ongoing strategic transformations. The system should consist of existing, radically reformed national university systems.
Reformed systems should include new universities — public and private — created on an ongoing basis to expand access and widen participation for a growing population.
Funding is key
Central to these transformations is significant, sustained and sustainable public funding, complemented and augmented by funding from African private and business sectors, philanthropy and external sources. Such funding will enable the knowledge sovereignty necessary for Africa to determine its own pathways towards sustainable futures.
Funding that comes in dribs and drabs is inappropriate and even wasteful. So, too, is reliance on external funding. Although it may partially fulfil critical needs, it is not without problems. It can create dependency. It is inadequate.
Some funding comes with subtle strings attached. Exacerbating matters, colonial and apartheid markers remain evident in curricula, research agendas and the societal orientation of African universities.
External funding is not assured and can be reduced or stopped at any time, as is evident during the current period of brutal aid cuts.
It can be argued that Africa can afford to fund its university systems.
Vast sums are siphoned off through rampant corruption, inept governance, wasteful expenditure, vanity projects, illicit financial flows and generally poor economic management.
Institutional autonomy and academic freedom
The system must unequivocally enjoy institutional autonomy and academic freedom.
Universities must be free to pursue ideas, create curricula, appoint the best staff and admit students in ways that advance Africa’s sustainable futures.
They must not become appendages or instruments of power, controlled and manipulated for narrow interests. Such interference by vested political, economic, social and cultural forces undermines the mission of transforming the continent.
Transforming universities to invent sustainable futures
For the African university system to be central to knowledge creation, several key transformations must be activated.
First, fundamental reforms to governance bodies and university management are required, focusing on appointing visionary, qualified, knowledgeable, experienced and energetic leaders who drive a culture of quality and excellence. This includes appointing the best-qualified academics and creating enabling, nurturing and safe environments in which staff and students can thrive.
Second, African universities must make a strong, explicit commitment — articulated in vision and mission statements and implemented in practice — to contribute meaningfully to Africa’s sustainable futures. Reinvented structures, academic programmes, decolonised curricula, and research and innovation agendas must be directed at the continent’s challenges for relevance and responsiveness. This system must offer academic programmes of high quality, comparable with leading universities globally.
It should be known for cutting-edge research and innovation that address Africa’s most pressing challenges. Contextual relevance and responsiveness must become its DNA.
In particular, universities must drive interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary graduate studies and research programmes capable of addressing the wicked, complex, interrelated and seemingly intractable challenges facing Africa — a recognised weakness even among leading institutions.
Universities must equip graduates with knowledge and skills that enable employability and lifelong navigation of a changing world of work. At the same time, the African university system must engage in partnerships, collaboration and cooperation internally and globally.
Critically, universities must build strong partnerships with broader society, including employers across all sectors. The co-creation of knowledge and skills must take centre stage, with universities acting as trusted societal knowledge coordinators and aggregators.
Indigenous knowledge systems must be integrated, alongside partnerships with African think tanks. Positive, transformative societal impact must be the goal. A palpable sense of excitement and urgency about transforming Africa through African-generated knowledge must pervade the university landscape.
Third, the African Union’s programme to harmonise quality assurance and accreditation systems must be accelerated to enable student and staff mobility across the continent.
Fourth, programmes should be co-created and taught collaboratively across borders, using contact, online and virtual platforms. Rapidly advancing technologies, including AI, offer opportunities for innovative teaching and learning approaches.
Fifth, the contributions of Africans in the diaspora must be intentionally harnessed through structured, funded and sustained programmes supporting teaching, research and innovation.
Professor Tawana Kupe is a global higher education strategist, the former vice-chancellor of the University of Pretoria and former vice-principal of Wits University in South Africa.