by Tade Akin Aina
African Studies Review (volume 53, number 1)
April 2010
Editors’ note: This article was presented as the 2009 Bashorun M. K. O. Abiola Lecture at the fifty-second Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in New Orleans in 2009.
Abstract: In spite of over a half century of interventions and waves of “reforms,” higher education in Africa today consists of institutions, systems, and practices that lack distinct values and goals, or a mission and vision connecting them to the ma- jor challenges of their local and global contexts. What is needed in African higher education is true transformation, which will involve practical and epistemological ruptures with previous ways of doing things and a reconstruction of structures, re- lations, cultures, and institutions. Of particular importance are initiatives that will ensure gender equity, changes in the organization and process of knowledge pro- duction, and a reenvisioning of universities’ funding sources and mechanisms.
Read Dr. Aina’s article (PDF) in our Publications database under “Articles.”