More intra-African and South-South cooperation is needed in higher education at both the institutional and government level, ministers from across the continent have said. Speaking at the British Council Going Global conference in Cape Town this month, ministers pointed to a lack of intercontinental collaboration and a need to promote brain circulation.
“One of our problems I think is the lack of collaboration between Africans on the African continent in higher education,” said Naledi Pandor, the South African minister for science and technology.
“And I think this is an aspect we must address both as governments, as well as funding partners on the African continent.”
“One of our problems I think is the lack of collaboration between Africans on the African continent in higher education”
Speaking at the conference plenary, ‘National Goals and Tertiary Education approaches: Made in Africa solutions’, Pandor pointed out that although many South African institutions have “robust” internationalisation policies, more should be done with “collaboration on the African continent”.
“I think international tends to be the north rather than south-south and intra and African links,” she said.
Similarly, although he acknowledged that internationalisation can “often be ubiquitous”, Blade Nzimande, South Africa’s higher education minister, urged delegates to consider: “How can its benefit be optimised?”
“In particular, how can the South participate as equal partners and in significant numbers?” he challenged.
The President of Mauritius, Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, also nodded to the need for internationalisation on the African continent.
“We also need to ensure there is brain circulation and to do this I think it is down to the level of the country, and the institution, to establish the partnership and the linkages with the appropriate university, the appropriate institution to allow this to happen,” she said.
“Because we will not be able to succeed in the higher education if we don’t have this kind of exchanges.”
David Some, chief executive of the Commission for University Education, said that the East Africa Higher Education Area, which, among other things, facilitates staff and student mobility between different countries in the region, has the potential to boost inter-African collaboration.
“The question we must ask ourselves is: how can we sustain the Africa rising narrative?”
“Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and now South Sudan have endorsed that the region become one higher education area,” he said.
“It would be really nice if we could expand this from the regions to the entire Africa so that Africa becomes a common higher education area.”
With the population of Africa expected to double by 2050 to over two billion, increasing access to education without compromising the quality was a key question of the discussion.
In her keynote speech to the delegates, President Gurib-Fakim highlighted the “critical role” played by science and technology and ICT in tackling sub-Saharan Africa’s development deficits.
She also called for a “greater push to mobilise education, knowledge and science as drivers of growth and wellbeing on the continent”.
“Africa’s youth bulge can be harnessed through greater public investment in basic education, tertiary education, especially in STEM, and vocational skills,” she said, adding that it will help build human capital as well as economic transformation.
“Tapping this potential will require vision, sound policies, innovation and investment backed by keen implementation capacity,” she said.
“The question we must ask ourselves is: how can we sustain the Africa rising narrative?”
Around 800 delegates from around the world attended the Going Global conference in Cape Town, to discuss higher education policy.
This year also marks the first time the conference was hosted on the continent.
