Reconnecting African universities to sustainable development
Abstract: To a significant extent, Africa’s lapses towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) vis-à-vis the reverses in strategic initiatives for growth and development are deeply intertwined with the broader question of how the continent’s university sector is evolving as a complementary sector in accelerating progress and the larger implications for Sustainable Development (SD). For some time now, there is a strong emerging opinion that African universities are severely losing capacities in terms of intellectual capital growth and sustainability and promoting skills-led curricula and lifelong learning, all of which are integral to SD discourses. Consequently, this paper addresses a range of questions: Are universities, as institutional stake holders or repositories of knowledge and human capacity development, in the contemporary discourse of Africa’s development? Are African universities relevant in this discourse? What should be the universities’ role in or contribution to advancing the discourse? What should constitute the agenda and focus? How should the universities’ performance be evaluated in relation to progressing the ideals of SD? This paper addresses these questions by examining the knowledge-for-development provisioning capability of African universities within the context of the MDGs’ realisation (and SD) and suggests target areas for reform emphasis.
