How engaged are Africa’s universities in their communities?

In the mid-20th century, it was well established that the three missions of a university were teaching, research and community service or outreach, the latter being understood as providing services or reaching out to the community, essentially a one-way outward process.

By the end of the 20th century, perhaps in view of the criticism levelled at universities for being ivory towers and not contributing to national development, the notion of universities engaging with society emerged. What such engagement meant, and how it should be undertaken, was not clear.

What is university engagement?

In an attempt to explore the issue and better understand university engagement, the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) initiated a research project about it in 2000. A year later, a survey among its 500 member universities in the Commonwealth followed, using an extensive consultation document titled, ‘Engagement as a Core Value for the University’.

The document provided a definition of engagement as follows: ‘Strenuous, thoughtful, argumentative interaction with the non-university world in at least four spheres: setting universities’ aims, purposes and priorities; relating teaching and learning to the wider world; the back-and-forth dialogue between researchers and practitioners; and taking on wider responsibilities as neighbours and citizens’.

The outcome was a book published by the ACU in 2003 titled The Idea of Engagement: Universities in society, in which 13 senior academics from five Commonwealth countries, drawing from the results of the survey, gave their perspectives of the engagement debate.

The book concludes that, to meet the demands of government, industry and the world of work, society and the community, ‘requires a university to be fully engaged, not tacitly but explicitly, and not only in research partnerships, but in ways that profoundly influence both teaching and research as well as reaching out to meet societies’ intellectual, social and cultural needs’.

Two years later, in 2005, a group of universities from around the world assembled in Talloires, France, and created the Talloires Network of Engaged Universities with the aim of strengthening the civic roles and social responsibilities of universities.

Today, the network comprises a global coalition of 437 universities, including 65 in Africa spread across 86 countries.

First-generation African universities

In almost all African countries, a public university was established by the colonial powers just before or at the time of independence.

They were the first higher education institutions to be set up and are essentially what one might call ‘first-generation’ African universities.

Their academic structure, governance model, course curricula, and language and methods of instruction were all modelled on European universities, with which they developed strong ties.

They were often staffed by European academics supporting the African ones who had been trained in Europe. They were created in major cities, meant for the elite African society, and alienated from rural areas where most of the population live and where the development challenges are greatest.

At that time, these universities could hardly be expected to be engaged. In fact, the relevance of such higher education institutions to Africa’s post-independence development has often been questioned.

These universities thrived for a couple of decades with generous funding from the Global North. Then, over the next two decades, they faced serious budget cuts resulting, not only from the downturn of African economies, but also from the misguided policy of several international funders and donors that funding basic and secondary education, instead of higher education, yielded greater economic and social returns.

The situation worsened with political turmoil in African countries in which these universities invariably got involved. Battered, the universities, nevertheless, weathered all the storms and proved to be remarkably resilient.

Gradually, they recovered and, over time, made efforts to be more relevant to the development needs of their respective countries. Because of their background of being, not only the oldest, but also the largest and most reputable public universities in their countries, they are often referred to as flagship universities.

University engagement of flagship universities

An open-access book titled Revisiting Africa’s Flagship Universities: Local, national and international dynamics by James Ransom has recently been published, which focuses in greater depth on this topic.

The author explores 10 flagship anglophone universities in 10 Sub-Saharan African countries to understand how these institutions engage with and contribute to the development of their local surroundings and, at the same time, respond to regional and global development agendas.

And he does that by analysing the universities’ strategic plans to get an insight into their institutional priorities and values and their engagement practices with their communities, their governments, the cities where they are located and their international partners.

The book shows that these universities have now evolved into institutions which are nationally and regionally recognised as centres of learning and research and are pivotal actors in shaping national policies, fostering innovation and addressing pressing societal challenges.

However, their persistence in following higher education trends in the North, irrespective of their relevance to the local context, is questionable.

They may also need to reconsider their aspiration to be world-class universities or to be globally ranked, which many higher education observers consider futile and inappropriate.

What type of partnerships exist?

As a result of their past histories, a characteristic inherited by most flagship universities is their weak partnerships with other African universities.

By comparison, they have a far greater number of partnerships with universities in the North.

Individual African universities lack resources to address some of the real development challenges of the continent. However, by collaborating with other universities in the region and by pooling their resources, they can overcome their shortcoming.

Over the past couple of decades, several networks and collaborative projects involving African universities have been created to encourage greater regional collaboration. There are several examples, such as the African Economic Research Consortium, the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture, or RUFORUM, and the more recent African Research Universities Alliance, or ARUA. But this is still work in progress and more needs to be done by the individual universities, themselves.

By unpacking the complexities of African development and the role of flagship universities within it, Ransom’s book provides invaluable knowledge for policymakers, university leaders and development practitioners alike.

It challenges us to think differently about African flagship universities. More importantly, it provides the tools to turn that thinking into action, offering a valuable resource for anyone invested in the future of African higher education.

Other engaged African universities

Several public universities have, of course, been set up subsequently in Africa after the initial flagship ones. Because many of them have been created in smaller cities or towns, and in several cases near to or even within rural areas, they have greater opportunities for community engagement.

One remarkable example is the University for Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale in the north of Ghana. Created in 1992 as a public university, a major objective of UDS is to ‘blend the academic world with that of the community in order to provide constructive interaction between the two for the total development of northern Ghana, in particular, and the country as a whole’.

The university has a pro-poor focus and aims at playing an active role in addressing societal problems, especially in rural areas, for speedy development. A unique feature of the university is that every student, each year, must spend the ‘third semester’ undertaking community-based field practical works.

Another example is Busitema University, a multi-campus public university established in 2007 in Eastern Uganda. It defines civic engagement as mutually beneficial partnerships between the university and communities. In its teaching and learning, it encourages faculty and students to solve problems facing the communities; in its research activities, it considers community needs, and values its input and knowledge.

One can conclude that, in general, most African public universities are engaged, and are conscious of their role in the social and economic development of their community and country.

But they still have to address two thorny issues: achieving financial sustainability and reducing graduate unemployment. It is through even greater engagement with their communities that they would be able to overcome these challenges.

This article is an adaptation of the foreword by Goolam Mohamedbhai in the book Revisiting Africa’s Flagship Universities: Local, national and international dynamics by James Ransom and published by African Minds, 2024.

Goolam Mohamedbhai is an internationally respected higher education expert. He is former secretary general of the Association of African Universities, former president of the International Association of Universities and former vice-chancellor of the University of Mauritius. He is also a former member of the governing council of the United Nations University and a current board member of University World News – Africa.