10. the Challenges Facing Academic Scholarship in Africa

BHEKI R. MNGOMEZULU AND MARSHALL T. MAPOSA

10. THE CHALLENGES FACING ACADEMIC SCHOLARSHIP IN AFRICA

A Critical Analysis

BACKGROUND, CONTEXTUALISATION AND INTRODUCTION

A significant educational issue which was evident when the majority of African countries gained political independence in the 1960s and 1970s concerned institutions of higher learning, particularly universities, which were deemed to be the verve and nerve of envisaged post-colonial African development. Discussions at the time revolved around the role these institutions would play in championing the cause of Africa’s regeneration and repositioning, in line with the changed political atmosphere occasioned by liberation from colonial rule. Indeed, politicians not only had to grapple with transforming and redefining the role of thoseuniversities that existed at the time of independence, but they also had to establish new national universities as part of the independence euphoria which engulfed the African continent. In the ensuing years, the university in Africa has faced many challenges, which have in turn affected academic scholarship in one way or the other. In spite of the early promises, very few universities in Africa today manage to compete on a worldwide scale in terms of scholarship as it is understood in its general sense and outlined later in this chapter. Up to the presentday, the majority of African universities have not managed to produce scholarship that significantly challenges or parallels thatestablished in the West. Some of the evidence for this is manifested in the worldwide university rankings. Debatable as they are, university rankings tend to give a grim picture of African participation in the worldwide process of knowledge production across academic disciplines. For instance, even the top universities by African standards do not perform very well by international standards. According to the Ranking Web of Universities (2016),while the University of Cape Town topped the African rankings in 2016, it ranked onlynumber 332 internationally. Makerere University which ranked number eleven in Africa, ranked 1156 by international standards. Such international rankings demonstrate how African scholarship still needs to improve. It is also of concern that the excellence of African scholarship is not spread across the continent. The few universities that are doing relatively better in terms of producing scholarship are largely located in South Africa. The university rankings reveal that seven of the top ten ranked universities in Africa are from South Africa.

There ar eonly three from other parts of Africa which made it to the top ten list – these being Cairo University and Mansoura University (Egypt) and University of Nairobi (Kenya). Amongst other aspects, the growth of African scholarship should be manifested by a corresponding growth in the academics that are produced at African universities. However, as Mouton (2010) lamented, South African universities, which as noted above, dominate the African rankings, are not producing sufficient PhD holders to sustainably replace those who are retiring orlooking for opportunities overseas. This implies that African scholarship is being stunted, especially if one considers the transformation goals that universities may intend to achieve. Our primary focus in this chapter is to revisit the trend in the relationship between the state and the university and to establish how this relationship has affected African scholarship. Secondly, we bring globalisation into the equation on the understanding that African scholarship is partly (if not significantly) influenced by global developments which dictate the direction universities needto take if they are to remain relevant and competitive. Thirdly, and most importantly, we consider the role of the international community (foreign national governments and other funding agencies) with regard to the independence and autonomy of African scholarship. Within this discussion we also consider factors such as corruption, political greed, nepotism, lootocracy, political deployments and many such factors which wittingly or unwittingly impact on African scholarship in general. Structurally, we begin the discussion by addressing the conceptual definition of African scholarship to set the foundation for the rest of the chapter. We consider this exercise to be important because various authors ascribe different meanings to this concept. Secondly, we provide a succinct history of the development of higher education in Africa so that the reader mayappreciate the changes that have occurred over the years that impact on African scholarship—both positively and negatively. We then address the relationship between the state and the university by invoking concepts such as ‘academic freedom’ and ‘university autonomy’ which became dominant in the 1960s and 1970s when most African countries obtained political independence from their erstwhile oppressors. We finally engage with variousexogenous causal factors that have led to the decline of African scholarship (such as external donor funding), so as to explicate the complexity of the situation. Inconsidering the various factors that havecontributed to the decline of African scholarship, we are convinced that no matter how brilliant an idea might be, without funds to implement it such an idea remains an ideal, almost a mirage.

CONCEPTUALISING ACADEMIC SCHOLARSHIP IN AFRICA

Before we begin to trace the history of academic scholarship in Africa with the view to establishing how it developed and what led to its subsequent decline, it is of cardinal importance to begin our discussion by delineating the meaning of African scholarship as a concept. Our view is that it would be foolhardy to assume that the

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