JJ: ANIE is a pan African network and think tank which focusses its activities on research, advocacy, policy dialogues, capacity building and information sharing focused on the international dimension of higher education in Africa.

We are currently undertaking different activities in our key focus areas. On research, we are working on mobility of international students in Africa, the other project is on knowledge production and doctoral training in Africa, the other is focussed on the impacts of internationalisation on university leadership in Africa and another is on learning mobility between Africa and Europe.

Currently we also do capacity building especially for our young researchers, for professionalising international offices in African universities and also focused on internationalisation at home, especially because most African students do not have possibilities for international exchanges. Also important is our annual conferences which gives us platforms to discuss International Education in Africa. We have so far held six such conferences with the 2015 conference taking place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in October.

“Many universities didn’t have international offices, they didn’t know how many international students they had and dealt with internationalisation in quite an adhoc way.”

The PIE: When was the ANIE set up?

JJ: ANIE was set up in 2008 out of a project that was analysing the developments in the international dimension of higher education in Africa. It brought together researchers from 15 African countries and culminated in the publication of a book of countries together. We had the first meeting in Cairo, Egypt, the second meeting was in South Africa and the last meeting was in Kenya.

The PIE: What type of information was published in the book? 

JJ: The publication was very revealing, as it not only showed the trends and developments in international education in Africa but also the gaps in data and capacity in this field. Many universities didn’t have international offices, they didn’t know how many international students they had and dealt with internationalisation in quite an adhoc way.  It brought out the need to deal with internationalisation structurally and seriously and part of the approach was the establishment of ANIE.

The PIE: What universities have you worked with and how you have helped them?

JJ: At Moi University for example we partnered with the International Association of Universities (IAU) to help the university develop a strategy for internationalisation. IAU has the Internationalisation Strategy Advisory Services (ISAS) programme with expertise to advise and support institutions in developing strategies for internationalisation.

They send us experts and we also combine this with African experts and the institution’s experts so the institution itself carries out a self-audit of themselves including their key stakeholders and through this they identify their situations and desired priorities while taking into consideration their intuitional realities.

“Africa is beginning to look like a player. even though we are still in the periphery we are coming a little bit towards the centre”

They undergo a conversation within the institution and finally set their priorities, then the IAU experts work with them to find the best way to go. Should the institution maybe focus on European students and not on American but to focus on original students or what you could do now is to focus much more on research because you are already doing so. Moi University, University of Botswana and University of Ghana have participated in this.

The PIE: How does ANIE membership work?

JJ: Members are drawn mainly from African universities and other research organisations in Africa. We also partner with other like minded organisations in different parts of the world such as the EAIE. Our members are either researchers, international office practitioners, university leaders and even students. We are thus not an association of universities but a network of members who share similar interests.

The PIE: How have mindsets towards internationalisation changed in Africa?

JJ: One, in the way that other people look at Africa. It is changing positively in the sense that Africa is beginning to look like a player. even though we are still in the periphery we are coming a little bit towards the centre. Africa is also changing its mindset towards internationalisation. We thought it could be taken for granted. universities didn’t think it was important, but now universities are starting to have international offices, they are starting to learn from each other, like now in our conference we have a whole day training for international officers, to make them better managers.

And the fact that Vice-Chancellors met in May in Burundi through the Association of African Universities to discuss only internationalisation agendas is a sign it is beginning to take centre stage.

“Internationalisation gives a lot of opportunities to build up capacity, for research, for many different things within higher education”

The PIE: One of the challenges in Africa is capacity in higher education. What are your thoughts on what can be done, and how do you think internationalization will help?

JJ: We can use internationalisation, especially partnerships between African universities and other universities, to create local capacities either by training abroad or by setting up centres of excellence in Africa where people can be trained locally.

And there are already efforts towards that, to create regional centres for specialised training in different special areas. I can be doing a PhD in Kenya but then I can come to your university for two months to use specialised equipment or to be with a specialised professor in this area and then I go back to Kenya. So internationalisation gives a lot of opportunities to build up capacity.

The PIE: What are some of the big trends you are seeing in Africa at the moment in terms of outward mobility?

JJ: Mobility is increasing as it is increasing in many other parts of the world. With Africa’s youthful population and lack of adequate opportunities in many African countries, mobility is set to rise. The age group 14-25 is quite booming in Africa now and they want education and the challenge that Africa has is lack of access for all these people and the universities have a challenge of numbers. Many countries have responded either by creating more universities at a time when capacity is not there and then the question of quality comes in, others have decided to close the young people out.

“With Africa’s youthful population and lack of adequate opportunities in many African countries, mobility is set to rise”

When you close more than 50% of your young generation out of the universities, in years to come or even now, you will be criticised for having ruined the lives of so many young people, the future of Africa. If the African governments do not allow them access to education we’ll have a very big population of less educated people in just a few years’ time.

There are some African countries that have more students studying abroad than in their local countries for example, because the opportunities for access are quite limited.

And one interesting dimension that is coming up now is mobility within Africa. Previously Africans didn’t use to go to other African universities, we thought that good universities were in Europe and America, but right now Kenyans go to Uganda, Kenyans go to Ghana, Ghanaians are studying in Kenya and that is very interesting.

The PIE: Some of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals weren’t all achieved so what are your thoughts on the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals?

JJ: I think it is good to have big ambitions, it depends on how much you achieve. One issue that I would have with them is awareness, how much people, especially in the developing countries, are aware of them. Which people are aware that the SDGs are being developed because not many people in the developed countries ever knew that there was something called the MDGs.

Our 6^th ANIE conference discussed the SDGs, but I don’t think there is anywhere in the higher education sector in Africa where the SDGs have been discussed in depth. Partnerships, collective responsibility are really key issues in higher education and the things that are going to be addressed– poverty, environment, water– a lot of research, knowledge and collaborative effort will go into that. I think universities have quite a critical role to play in this.