Re‐orienting internationalisation in African higher education

Abstract

In both policy and research contexts, internationalisation in African higher education is welcomed for its potential to strengthen local capacity and cautioned against for its potential to extend long‐standing asymmetries of power in international partnerships. This paper examines two sets of developments which seek to re‐orient internationalisation to allow for greater local control, local focus and local benefit. The one relates to a more formalised policy, planning and research approach to internationalisation and the other pertains to an intra‐regional form of internationalisation under the influence of the Bologna process. The paper explores prospects for internationalisation on the continent to yield more equal North–South partnerships and to support the revitalisation agenda and its development priorities in higher education. It suggests that continuing lack of local capacity, continuing structural inequalities in partnerships, and insufficient interrogation of dominant concepts and models of internationalisation may still pose problems in moving towards an alternative internationalisation politics in African higher education.

Keywords:

• African higher education
• internationalisation
• revitalisation
• asymmetries of power
• North–South partnerships

Notes

1. I am applying to internationalisation an argument made by Scott (1998, 122) about the impact of globalisation on higher education institutions.

2. A counter‐factual example is South Africa, which has an increasing number of African students (CHE 2009, 26–7) and staff migrating to its HEIs, and which is also a ‘sending’ country for cross‐border education.

3. See, for example, various case studies of higher education in Africa published under the auspices of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, James Curry Ltd, Oxford.

4. This still only adds up to 6% of the global total (41 institutions out of a survey sample of 745). See Egron‐Polak, ANIE Conference, PPT 2009, http://www.anienetwork.org.

5. See, for example, Kishun (2006); Teferra and Knight (2008); presenters at the First ANIE Annual Conference, Kenya, September 2009; and the special issue of Higher Education Policy on ‘African Universities and Internationalisation’, Vol. 22, No. 3, September 2009.

6. See, for example, the 2008 EUA project ‘Access to success: Trust and exchange between Europe and Africa’. There is also a planned European Commission initiative for a Tuning Project in African Higher Education.

7. The Arusha Convention, adopted in 1981 to facilitate cross‐border recognition of studies and qualifications in African higher education, has been ratified only by 20 African countries. It has not been effective as a legal, political and educational instrument for academic mobility. In the AU’s renewed initiative, an expanded ratification of the Arusha Convention is envisaged, with a target of 80% of African countries signed up by 2015.

8. See Ogachi (2009) on sub‐regional higher education initiatives in the post‐independence 1960s.

9. See Dale’s distinction between the influence of external reform models on ‘policy programmes and organization’ as well as on ‘policy goals and values’ (2007, 52).

10. See Yang’s analysis of ‘soft power’ relating to Chinese government funding for Confucius Centres at African universities to support the study of Chinese culture and language (this issue).