African Higher Education and Development:Connecting the Local and the Global

1
African Higher Education and DevelopmentConnectin
g the Local and the Global

• Mala Singh
• Centre for Higher Education Research and
  Development
• Open University

2
Setting the Scene

• Focus-how is national HE policy shaped in the
  face of powerful global factors in a context
  where the sovereignty and power of states differ
  between the developing and developed world.
• How will this play out in African HE-African Dev
  nexus? Will global HE policy frameworks form the
  inevitable basis for developing national/regional
  policy or can they be autonomously domesticated
  to serve local priorities and needs/supplement
  the local?

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Setting the Scene

• Challenge-how to optimise contribution of African
  HE to Dev in a way that is realistic, sustainable
  and value-adding for both HE and society?
  Connection rooted in the local (endogenous)
  while drawing on the global (exogenous) rather
  than vice versa Connecting local need with the
  best of local and global knowledge-constraints
  and opportunities.
• Presentation not an empirical narrative of crisis
  and intervention in African HE (despite huge
  empirical gaps) but a conceptual reflection on
  the framing conditions for an approach to the
  issue-questions.

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Setting the Scene

• Concern-history of African development over
  determined by external forces(often with
  collusion of national elites)
• Globalisation-power of convergent social policy
  as universal common sense impacting on all
  countries. National/local differing capacities
  to conceptualise/initiate/sustain
  alternative/autonomous educ policy vision

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Setting the Scene

• What is creative connection bet the local and the
  global-how can the global be made fit for purpose
  and the local enlarged (Marginson et al,
  glocalisation)what are local vernaculars of
  global discourses(Appadurai) how to maintain
  engagement with local realities in the face of
  global imperatives.
• If economic glob. has not benefitted millions in
  the developing world, under what conditions can
  global HE policy directives make African HE more
  effective as a contributor to development ?

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Setting the Scene

• Premise-policy connection is desirable but with
  clear conditionalities neither a simplistic
  return to the local nor an uninterrogated
  embrace of the global critically engaging the
  global a useful heuristic to rethink both local
  and global. The global can distort and even
  derail local interventions but also act as
  another mirror to enlarge the local and transcend
  its limits
• Clearing the undergrowth involves interrogatory
  and conceptual reframing tasks development in
  whose image, HE in whose image? Rethinking the
  who, why and how of HE policy discourses for the
  African context. Making African HE part of global
  HE community not only through received ideas but
  also on its own terms.

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Terminologies

• Local not necessarily national-thin layer of
  urban elites vs the urban and rural poor
• Global-the transnational and the meta national
• Higher Education-public and local private,
  research univ and post secondary vocational
  training, national and foreign(?)
• Development-not reducible to econ dev, relates to
  building sustainable livelihoods and sustainable
  democracy

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Contextualising Development

• Debate about HE-Dev connection is deeply
  political, not only technocratic (e.g. more
  training, more ICTs)
• No blank slate-connection embedded in political
  and socio-economic history of continent and
  associated ideological frameworks of the
  different eras.
• Early origins in general post WW2 focus on
  political and economic reconstruction and social
  inclusion (both capitalist and communist models)

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Contextualising Development

• Post-independence nationalist and pan-Africanist
  discourses in their liberatory and repressive
  phasesthe modernisation approach challenges to
  it by the dependency/underdevelopment theorists
  the neo-liberal market prescriptions of the
  WB/IMF the aid and trade debates the focus on
  MDGs, the EFA campaign and NEPAD
• Current postulation of the knowledge
  society/knowledge economy approach esp iro HE and
  development.(CODESRIA Bulletin 3/4, 2005)

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The Return of the Dev Univ

• African Higher Education-swings and roundabouts
  of growth, crisis, deterioration,
  renewal/revitalisation and ???.
• The re-incarnation of the African development
  university AU vision of Dev Univ of excellence
  which responds to local needs but pushes
  frontiers of kn as a peer in the global kn
  economy(Strat Plan 2004-7)
• What preconditions for its success this time
  around?

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The Development University

• 1960s and 1970s version underpinned by
  nationalist vision(rooting univ. in African soil,
  addressing plight of common people,
  Africanisation of staff/ curriculum/ research
  themes) and connected to post-independence
  theorisations and debates about African
  modernisation (development) and underdevelopment.
• Current version underpinned by familiar global
  discourses-markets, links to econ growth,
  consumer demand, private benefits, industry
  partnerships, knowledge economy.

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Prospects for the Dev Univ

• 1990s-wave of political liberalisation in many
  African countries-who are the beneficiaries and
  in what ways, what prospects for democracy? Is
  context for HE Dev nexus more enabling or is
  there continuing social duress for the
  majority(poverty, disease, war, famine, despotic
  and corrupt leadership, fragile states and
  democratic institutions, failing or absent
  systems for governance, service delivery).
• Wave of revitalisation interventions in many HE
  systems-who are the beneficiaries and in what
  ways?

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Prospects for the Dev Univ

• New govt policy commitments to HE revitalisation
  but not followed by increased public investments.
  What progress in relt to system and
  instit.capacity, access, quality, responsiveness
  to labour markets and community needs,
  ameliorating impact of brain drain and AIDS?
• Alternative developmental vision in HE needed but
  not silver bullet approach. HE itself needs
  public investment and systemic framework-
  necessary but not sufficient condition for
  contribution to democracy and development
  (Lipset)

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Prospects for the Dev Univ

• Many external funding and technical support
  intervention projects in HE in range of areas
  e.g. capacity dev., governance, HR development,
  research dev., scholarships, institutional
  strengthening, quality enhancement, gender
  equity, infrastructure dev. (ICTs, library dev.),
  HIV AIDS, etc.(ACU AHEAD database 2005).
• Initiatives by AU/NEPAD, AAU, etc. Funding from
  PHEA, JICA, DFID, ACBF/WB, SIDA, CIDA, etc.

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Prospects for the Dev Univ

• Donor preferences-concentrations of resources in
  particular countries and HEIs-Matthew
  effect(Merton).
• Where to target interventions and resources- MDGs
  and EFA, adult education, demands of public and
  private HE, univ and post-secondary vocational
  training, basic and applied research?

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Challenges

• Scarcity of data/analyses on HE operations and
  little public info on eval of interventions.
  Difficult to judge specific and cumulative impact
  either on dev. of HE or its contribution to
  African dev.
• Is more of the same needed (upscaling/optimising
  existing interventions and covering new or gap
  areas) or some rethinking of the
  political/conceptual and strategic framework and
  preconditions for interventions?

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Transnational/Global Influences

• ICTs have created one world where
  info/data/ideas/explanations/trends/events become
  globalised instantaneously in real time and
  accessible across borders and cultures. Knowledge
  boundaries have become permeable-kn has
  translocal, transnational, transgenerational
  potential.
• Transnational provision and African public and
  private HE- bring competition/international
  reference points for curriculum, qualifications,
  quality, acad. experience, etc.

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Transnational/Global Influences

• Common global policy trends in HE-privatisation,
  differentiation, rankings, harmonisation of
  qualif., QA and accreditation, NQFs and RQFs. AU
  schemes on harmonisation and rankings.
• African academic diaspora with roles in N and
  SAfrican participation in internat. networks,
  academic exchanges-internationalising influence
  on research, curriculum, HE structures

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Transnational/Global Influences

• Global level governance without
  govt(Dale)-supranational bodies like OECD,IMF
  and WB set global agendas and rules of the game
  in dominant policy discourses (e.g.liberalisation)
  -reinforced in definitions of good practice,
  conditionalities of loans, consultants delivering
  technical assistance

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Policy Transfer

• Different policy transfer mechanisms under
  globalisation(Dale 1999)
• Harmonisation(collective agreement-EU)
  Dissemination(agenda setting-OECD)
  Standardisation(membership-UNESCO)Installing
  interdependence (persuasion-global NGOs)
  Imposition(leverage-WB loans)

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Policy Transfer

• Different from traditional policy
  borrowings/emulation(NQF in SA) and policy
  learnings(Modes 1 and 2 in knowledge production)
  
• Who initiates, who makes final choices, is
  influence only on mechanisms and processes or on
  policy vision, goals and frameworks?

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What is known/agreed on already

• Global HE policy hegemony is not
  inevitable-spaces for mediation and creative
  appropriation-political and intellectual tasks.
• Role of the state in dev and HE.
• Role of leadership-both political, HE and civil
  society.
• National and institutional ownership of
  policy-already position of donors, lenders,
  multilateral organisations.
• Not reducing the social to the economic, public
  good.

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Research Tasks

• Rigorous analysis of new policy transfer
  mechanisms in African HE- how they shape the relt
  bet the local and the global-what spaces for
  autonomy/negotiation in policy choice?
• More critical analyses of dominant global policy
  discourses-premises, applicabilities and
  conditionalities in African HE. What does kn
  economy mean in contexts of weak/non existent
  systems for HE/S and T, is high level skills
  production better targeted at institution
  building than industrial dev., can development
  consciousness in students be built on HE as a
  private good?

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Research Tasks

• Producing vernaculars of the global-what
  intellectual and policy skills required?
  Exemplars of successful initiatives.
• More data, empirical and analytical work on
  efficacy of revitalisation initiatives-is prime
  focus privatisation of public HE and income
  generation, will QA save quality, correlation bet
  access and success, has public good been
  advanced?
• How to facilitate HE contribution to dev without
  instrumentalising HE- role for critique and
  resistance?

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End Points

• Role of critical scholars/scholarship in
  development debates and initiatives often
  asserted (inclusive of non-African scholars)
• Autonomous evaluation of powerful HE policy
  discourses/models iro of local relevance and
  impact.
• Creative domestication and social shaping of
  new global approaches and technologies-could
  itself give rise to original local approach that
  in turn enriches the global.

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End Points

• Building self-reliance capabilities in policy
  interpretation, development and application.
• Role of HEIs/sector and research organisations in
  producing capabilities for critical development
  consciousness but also engagement/negotiation
  skills in global fora.