EMNET TADESSE WOLDEGIORGIS

2. HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL PERSPECTIVES1

On Regionalization of African Higher Education

INTRODUCTION

Within the framework of the functional, organizational and political approach, the political dimension is a crucial component explaining the historical and political context of regionalization processes in Africa. Political dimension, as stated by Knight (2012, p. 19), “…refers to political will and strategies that put higher education initiatives on the agenda of decision-making bodies”. It focuses on analysing the historical and political context of policy formulation processes and its ideological justifications. Here, the evolution of the policy itself, its rationale, intended goals and its legal frameworks are discussed. The history of regionalization of higher education in Africa is a subset of the regionalization processes of all sorts in the continent. Regional collaboration on various policy issues in Africa emerged immediately after independence in the 1960s. As Africa was emerging from a long period of colonization, the idea of regional co-operation was perceived as a necessity for newly independent states to have a joint endeavour against poverty. As argued by Rugumamu (2004, p. 2) stating the notion of the time “…if Europe needs economic and political integration for strength and prosperity, Africa needs it for survival” (Rugumamu, 2004). The newly independent African states were weak in all senses of the term inheriting not only crumbling colonial institutions which did not have legitimacy from the public but also were inefficient in representing the African cause at a global scale. Thus, there were big expectations from the newly formed African governments to ensure the full independence of the continent and achieve economic development. The idea of African nationalism and pan-African movements were also popular among the newly formed governments of Africa. Nationalist African leaders such as Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sekou Toure and Emperor Haile Selassie were advocating the establishment of a pan- African institution against any form of imperialism (Mazrui, 1980). Thus, it was in this context that the idea of close co-operation and regional integration started to surface among independent African states. This initiative of creating an African regional integration forum was then conceived in April 1958 on the first pan-African conference held in Accra, Ghana with eight independent states2 with the objective

J. Knight & E. T. Woldegiorgis (Eds.), Regionalization of African Higher Education, 29–46. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. E. T. WOLDEGIORGIS of creating a regional organization that could serve as a forum for regional policy dialogue. It was within this context that the idea of regional integration was institutionalized in Africa with the establishment of the first continental regional organization called Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963. The OAU charter stipulated its core principles around the main idea of integration through strengthening unity and solidarity among African states, promoting socio-economic and political co-operation among them, preserving the territorial integrity and sovereignty of member states, and promoting co-operation at international levels within the structure of the United Nations (Organization of African Unity, 1964). Thus, it was within this set of priority areas that higher education was taken as the major issue of regional collaboration in the continent. There are two important processes that constitute the evolution of regionalization of higher education in Africa which this chapter will discuss in detail. The first one is the consecutive intergovernmental conferences among African Ministers of Education that brought the dialogue on regionalization of higher education in Africa at continental levels from the 1960s to the 1980s. The second process that constituted and impacted the evolution of regionalization of higher education in Africa is the institutional transformation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to the African Union (AU) in the post-2000 era. This transformation brought higher education policy issues to the mainstream of regional policy discourses among African leaders as one of the main processes of regionalization. The transformation of the European Community to the European Union, for instance, has impacted a lot of regional policy issues in Europe since 1992; in the same way, the transformation from the OAU to AU has also brought new paradigms in the regionalization of higher education in Africa. This chapter, therefore, deals with the above two processes providing analysis on the genesis of regionalization of higher education in Africa. Here, regionalization of higher education is understood as the process of regional policy initiative to deal with a particular higher education issue among members of a certain region. In a broader sense of the term, it includes the close collaboration of higher education actors for particularly agreed ends. As it is defined by Knight (2013, p. 2), it is the “process of building closer collaboration and alignment among higher education actors and systems within a defined area or framework called a region”. Thus, within this context, the chapter explores and analyses the historical evolution of regionalization of higher education in Africa and its implications for the current initiatives.

EARLY MOVES TOWARDS REGIONALIZATION

The years immediately after independence were considered as landmarks in the struggle for African identity as the newly independent states were working on nation-building and economic development. This was the beginning of the so- called ‘development decade’ as declared by the UN in the 1960s, whereby issues of

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