Challenges and Opportunities for International Higher Education Collaboration for Africa’s Sustainable Development

Abstract

This paper argues that the role of higher education in Africa’s sustainable development is crucial and concerted efforts should be made to promote universities’ international collaboration to enhance this role. Most African universities today, however, lack resources, capacities and institutional basis even to maintain their existing operation, and the international collaboration they have sought with industrialized country donors and universities have not helped redress this situation either. This is in essence because the collaboration is skewed towards benefitting partner universities in industrialized countries, with the uneven movements of students and faculty members in favour of these countries. Given the global shift in development discourse and international cooperation, seriously-disposed universities in these countries would respond positively by instituting internal reforms to encourage intra-university and international collaboration thus increasing their contribution to sustainable development. This is because stakeholder collaboration for knowledge mobilization to solve practical problems is the essence of sustainable development effort. Higher education institutions have a key role to play in this respect as they are in a position to create knowledge through research, to distribute knowledge through education and training, to utilize knowledge through public outreach service, and combining all these functions in an integrated manner to assume leadership for the promotion of sustainable development. This paper argues for the promotion of international collaboration of African universities for sustainable development.