This article addresses the changing role of higher education in Africa from the pre-colonial time up to the 1990s. The basic argument is, though higher education institutions are a product of socio-economic and political dynamics of the society in the course of history, these interactions have always been imperfect in Africa since universities did not originally evolve out of social interactions. The introduction of European education during colonial period also did not serve the interests of African societies; instead education was used as a means of extending colonial ideology. After independence, African countries inherited fragile institutions which did not have social legitimacy from the public. The donor-client dependency relationship had inhibited the development of African institutions and the capacity of Africans to develop educational policies which are socially relevant and financially feasible. Thus, higher education institutions in Africa have been carrying out various roles of economic development, Africanization, nation-building, and engines of knowledge economy; at the same time executing foreign roles which have not been owned by African societies.
There have been various higher education policy reforms at regional level to overcome the challenges and impacts of globalization in the current knowledge based global economy. Universities have already been involved in various internationalization processes establishing both bilateral and multilateral cooperations across borders. Through various integration schemes, regional organizations like the European Union (EU) and its Commission, the African Union (AU) and its Commission are engaging in policy harmonization processes to foster more integration and provide regional remedies for the common challenges of globalization in their respective regions. Researchers also engaged in academic debates and analyze various higher education system integration discourses at professional level. Most of the theories used in higher education discourses however are borrowed from other disciplines and when terms and concepts from other disciplines migrate to the higher education sector and vice versa there is fertile ground for confusion and misunderstanding unless they are conceptually framed and analyzed. This particular article focuses on theories of regional integration and higher education harmonization discourses. It discusses the process of policy harmonization in higher education and interprets the notions of regional integration theories in the interpretive paradigms of informal/formal, top-down/bottom-up, proactive/reactive, gradual/ quantum leap and internally driven/ externally driven relationships in policy formulations. These interpretive paradigms provide a theoretical perspective on conceptual framework of higher education harmonization and integration schemes form the neo-functionalist and intergovernmentalist point of view.
Since the 1990s, the development in the international dimension of higher education including student/scholar mobility, regional and international research networks and initiatives have brought new opportunities for African higher education to be incorporated in the global knowledge production and circulation processes. One of the instruments of internationalization process that facilitates international knowledge flows in the knowledge society is academic mobility. This research will touch upon the major issues related to student mobility in Africa since the 1990s addressing pressing issues like; what is the current trend of both intra and inter African student and staff mobility in higher education in the region? How do the continental initiatives already in place to promote student and academic mobility work? What are the challenges and prospects of academic mobility in Africa? Recent developments in the area have also been described through quantitative and qualitative data generated from primary and secondary sources.
Access to higher education has been one of the critical areas of concern in South Africa, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The pandemic has brought the systemic cleavages into sharp relief, with 'access' and subsequent 'success' emerging as an important variable. Availability of digital facilities and internet connectivity have been important factors in enabling participation in higher education during the Covid-19 pandemic. The advent of the pandemic has, however, brought a new context to the challenges of higher education access, deepening the precarious position of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Thus, online teaching and learning intensified the digital divide between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots', exacerbating the already existing inequalities in the South African higher education system. The paper reflects on the question of how digital divide and access to learning infrastructure exacerbated inequality among students during the Covid-19 pandemic in South African higher education. This question is particularly important, given the rapid digitalisation of the curriculum that many South African institutions are still struggling to align with. This paper aims to interrogate the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic on South African higher education, highlighting the challenges of the digital divide and access to learning infrastructure using a social justice approach. The article draws on the work of Fraser (1999), which refers to the idea of social justice as distributional justice, re-allocating resources accessed solely by the privileged to the historically disadvantaged. It also aims to understand how the typology of inequality across the differentiated institutions affected the delivery of education during Covid-19. This is a qualitative research based on both secondary and primary data exploring official documents, statistics and published materials. The article argues towards a comprehensive and inclusive digital learning strategies with substantial coordination both from government and non-government stakeholders. It recommends that digital pedagogy and online platforms of learning should become an integral element of South African higher education services to ensure the continuity of education; this is necessary to avoid similar difficulties if crises that restrict physical movement occur in the future.
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