LJUBLJANA CONFERENCE ON HIGHER EDUCATION REFORM2-4th October 2013

HIGHER EDUCATION IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA:

THE PAST, THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE

Professor Catherine A. Odora Hoppers

DST/NRF South African Research Chair in Development EducationUNISA

University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa

South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI)

• A strategically focused knowledge and human resource intervention into the South African Higher Education system.

• Mandate:– Advance the frontiers of knowledge, create new

research career pathways and stimulate strategic research.

– Fast track leadership building through postgraduate training.

DST/NRF SARChI Chair in Development Education

• Funded by the South African Department of Science and Technology.

• Administered by the National Research Foundation.

• Hosted by the University of South Africa (Unisa)

UNISA

• It is a mega-university (400,000 students)

• It is the biggest university in Africa

• It is the 8th biggest in the world

Introduction - Ljubjlana

• Higher education in sub-Saharan Africa:

• in the form and shape we recognize today,

• is a young and nascent phenomenon.

Inception to challenges

• Since its inception, • through the incarnation of the educational

systems of colonial powers, • higher education in sub-Saharan Africa has

made significant strides, • but also faced major challenges.

Higher education in sub- Saharan Africa •has emerged from virtual nonexistence some four decades ago •to an enterprise that enrols several million students •and recruits hundreds and thousands of faculty and staff (Teferra 2006).

From Non-Existence to an Enterprise

The Questions

• What are the major features of universities in Sub-Saharan Africa at the current time,

and• what are the major historical developments

that have contributed to this situation?• Where do we go from here?

First conceptualizations

• Taking the short-sighted vision the shortfall emerges right from the first conceptualisation of the African university.

• In those early days, universities were conceived of as institutions for producing manpower to indigenise the civil service following independence.

an understatement

• To say today that this framework involved a complete misunderstanding of the tasks that lay ahead is an understatement (Mkandawire, 2000:1).

Short-sight….

Clearly there was a gross underestimation of:• the intellectual and •political processes of development, and •nation building that followed independence, and the short-sightedness of it all became evident very quickly.

For instanceOnce indigenisation was achieved, •governments had little reason continue to support universities, •especially after indigenisation was compounded by the dubious claims •of the World Bank that higher education in Africa had lower returns than secondary and primary levels of education – signalling to all donors to diminish their support for university education

RepressionSoon thereafter, •the repressive politics became the norm across the continent (esp. in the 1970s)•entrenched the relativization of academe•left no room for intellectuals to occupy public space, •sending scores of Africa’s best brains into exile, self-effacement and invisibility, self-imposed marginalisation, fawning adulation of power, jail or death.

Instinctively organic

• In better times, African intellectuals had been instinctively organic

– that is to say, • they submitted their intellectual values to

the nationalist project.

The 5 projects

This project had five tenets: •complete decolonisation of the continent and national sovereignty;•nation building;•economic and social development;•democratisation; and •regional co-operation

Submission

African intellectuals shared these objectives and•were willing to submit themselves to the command of the nationalist and developmental state, •which they viewed as the custodian of the development process.

Mutual tolerance

• The university was seen as the institution that had to train human resources for “that” development.

• This consensus generated mutual tolerance and amicable co-operation

The mumblings• By the 1970s, however, things had began to

sour, and • by the arrival of structural adjustment, African

governments had turned elsewhere.• They began to mumble that local research was

‘irrelevant’, by which they meant that it was not usable in policy matters.

The two sides of the road

• Supported by donors, they were on one side of the road insisting (in a populist manner) on relevance

• – which was by then reduced to the provision of manpower resources for “development”

• – while the academics lined up on the other side of the road waving ‘quality’ placards at the government

Gravitation towards applied research

In order to be relevant, universities were expected to gravitate:•towards the attainment of concrete and demonstrable goals, •with an emphasis on applied research.

Structural conservatism

Not surprisingly, the response to this pressure was structural conservatism•as universities whined about how such a move would detract them from their classical objectives of teaching and research (Sawyerr, 2002), •even though no serious questions were being asked about the nature of research questions.

A status quo in disrepute

Universities were defending a status quo•– which was itself in disrepute •– stressing the maintenance of a stale stability, and •vowing it would continue •to do the same thing, in the same direction, and at the same pace

You are on your own

Under enormous pressure to account for themselves (Mafeje, 1993) •many African intellectuals soul-searched about their role as intellectuals, and the•relevance of the institutions that they inhabited or ran, or were invited to occupy.

The beginnings….

It is from this soul-searching •that one picks up •the critical cultural analysis of the African university.

Focus on African society

Mazrui had long argued •that the African university was conceived of •as a transmission belt for Western high culture•rather than as an institution to contextualise standards, and •set parameters of excellence based on the needs of African society and people.

Second Level Indigenization

It is this latter conception that •enabled the grounding of the very process and agenda for learning and research in local conditions; and •which in the 21st century, some African universities are finally realizing 5 decades deep, that they could have started with “Second Level Indigenization” (SLI) at the very start.

Briefly: the difference

• First Level indigenization (FLI) deals with the regulatory rules, accepting the plot and leaving the frame intact.

• Second level indigenization questions the rules of the game.

• It goes into the constitutive rules that make the paradigms of practice, what I call, “the codes” (Odora Hoppers 2009, 2013).

For instance

• Making transdisciplinarity in knowledge production be a focus.

• The disciplinary knowledge spectrums (Law, economics, education and science) are transformed by enlargement.

Transformation of the Academy

1. Ethical space imperatives and dialogues on epistemological and cultural jurisdictions

2. Transformation by enlargement and restorative action

3. African metaphysics and paradigms of livelihood

Science

Science is examined from the way it has created:•fundamental cognitive deficiencies in much of the African population, •resulting in the massive evacuation of Indigenous Knowledge Systems •and the lower hierachisation of IK producers.

Economics

Economics is dealt with from its roots of notions of scarcity, •which endorses the paradigm of ‘survival of the fittest’ and •which is boxing all graduates into thinking this is the only way •– into a paradigm of abundance—which deals with notions of human survival differently.

Innovation

Innovation based on these precepts •has excluded the knowledge that the African people have, and •therefore students need to be made aware of how innovation links to this enterprise and investment, and how it excludes in this process.

Introducing bi-cultural experts

The absence of bicultural experts at the epistemological level •has made it next to impossible •to break the cycle of hierarchisation of knowledge •endemic in the structures of the university.

Repairing a flying plane

• Transformation of the Academy is crucial;• Not just reform!• But, we have to repair the plane while it is

flying…

• That means that we have to create new notions of democracy; in fact democratising democrary.

• Africa needs intellectuals who are able to see the link between science and citizenship,

• democracy and epistemology, cognitive justice and peace,

The wings and one of the engines are done

• and superimpose them on governance issues in the university

in fact meaning…• Create a context

in practice ..• as the plane moves on…

What do I mean???

• Thus all theory must be linked with its epistemological locus and anchored in ethics.

• The link with the “other” through the democratic imperative prevents duress from setting in.

• This is the meaning and task of cognitive justice.

Duress and Humiliation

From and African perspective,•Duress and humiliation are the “single” and most important weapon of mass destruction•It has imprisoned Africans and African academics and policy makers into a corner

Cognitive Justice

• Cognitive justice is the right of all forms or traditions of knowledge to co-exist without duress.

• The approach is o free African knowledges to co-exist with other knowledges WITHOUT DURESS

The answers going forward

• When we raise the ethical benchmarks in research and policy work;

• We create a unique moment when the inner voice of disenfranchisement meets the outer voice of empowerment…

• When the inner cry for self-determination meets the warm embrace of co-determination.

Thank you!!!

I thank you for inviting me to Ljubljanaand listening to me