Critical Perspectives on the Crises, Planned Change, and the Prospects for Transformation in African Higher Education

Abstract

This article is a summary of a forthcoming book that is a background text for CODESRIA's Multinational Working Group (MWG) on higher education. The crea­ tion and also the development of contemporary African higher education institu­ tions, especially the universities, in the colonial and post-colonial context, have been characterised by high expectations,contestations, crises, and struggles by vari­ ous African stakeholders to assert agency and introduce reforms and innovations in the search for structural transformation. Conceived as institutions for individual social mobility and national development, they could not attain theascribed devel­ opment role as a result of economic crises and austerity policies imposed by inter­national financial institutions, especially the World Bank through its structural ad­ justmentprogrammes. The initial and intemally driven reforms aimed at addressing philosophical and practical questions of relevance and Africanisation of the cur­ riculum transferred through colonial channels. In contrast, in the context of the economic crises and subsequent policies imposed by extemal powers, the new re­ forms and innovations since the 1990s tend to be technical and driven by the search for solutions as prescribed or expected by the international financialinstitutions. The author argues that given the old and new challenges - HIV/AIDS, 'brain drain',and globalisation with its corollaries such as GATS-related competition - threaten­ ing relative autonomy, African societies should take stock of, and effectively use, their assets and create a new higher education as a public good. These assets in­ clude African indigenous knowledge systems, the possibility for promoting fusion, the historie and new Diasporas, and the information andcommunication technolo­ gies. Any successful policy will require the inclusion ofhitherto marginalised groups, particularly on the basis of gender, in the production and use of knowledge. lt is