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The African continent is filled with a textured history, vast resources, and immense opportunity. The landscape of higher education on such a diverse continent is extensive and complex. In this review of the landscape, four primary topics are evaluated. The historical context is the foundational heading, which briefly covers the evolution from colonization to independence and the knowledge economy. The second main heading builds upon the historical context to provide an overview of the numerous components of higher education, including language diversity, institutional type, and access to education. A third section outlines key challenges and opportunities including finance, governance, organizational effectiveness, and the academic core. Each of these challenges and opportunities is interconnected and moves from external influences (e.g., fiscal and political climate) to internal influences (e.g., administrative leadership and faculty roles). The last layer of the landscape focuses on leveraging higher education in Africa for social and economic progress and development. Shaping a higher education system around principles of the public good and generating social benefits is important for including postsecondary institutions in a development strategy.

The concomitance of black-skinned student-populated colleges and universities on the African continent has created a quiescence regarding whiteness, racism, and disparity in African higher education. Resultantly, scant attention has been paid to the role and possibilities for Black populated colleges across the African continent to transform the political, social, and economic realities of African nation-states. In fact, the confluence of Western imperialism, slavery, genocide, and the contemporary frame of terrorism is highly correlated with the seeming permanence of war, oppression, and poverty across the African diaspora in general and on the African continent in specific.

This chapter explores the perceptions that custodians of African cultures such as parents, grand-parents, village chiefs, and other community leaders hold regarding what higher education institutions ought to achieve for their children, and the extent to which these final ends are being, or can be, achieved through teaching and learning in cyberspace. Using the African context of Botswana as a reference point, the chapter situates learning and teaching practices online in the context of culture. After exploring the literature on cultural worldviews, African expectations of higher education, and online pedagogy and technology, the chapter documents the understandings and perceptions of the final ends that higher education institutions ought to pursue held by 39 village chiefs, community leaders, and parents from different cultural groups and communities. Evidence from phenomenological interviews revealed that Africans held that Afro-communal purposes for higher education in which promoting virtue, supporting culture, facilitating cooperation, and contributing to socio-economic development were seen as the paramount final ends for higher education institutions. The findings support Metz’s (2019) theoretical model of the ends of African higher education institutions. The chapter argues that, for online pedagogy in African universities and colleges to be successful, it should be grounded in collectivism where emphasis is given to the use of synchronous communication systems for the delivery of learning experiences, pedagogical practices are framed within community of practice, students are exposed to education for morality to foster a deeper sense of being real humans, and a socio-economic development agenda is emphasised.

What are the current trends that mark out the process of internationalization of higher education? In what directions do these trends influence the direction of research and development in African universities? Does internationalization of higher education have the potential to boost knowledge production relevant to Africa’s development needs or it will further hasten the marginalization of both African universities and African development agendas within the global network of scientific knowledge? Internationalization of education is not new. Historically, students have sought better higher education abroad influenced by the desire to benefit from better opportunities provided by universities in the developed countries. The current phase of higher education internationalization has however emerged more vigorously in the 21st century and is associated with the twin trends of globalization and liberalization. Proponents of globalization have argued that higher education is bound to be more strongly affected by worldwide economic developments. They also point out that higher education institutions in developing countries should embrace aspects of internationalization to boost their efforts to be ranked among the best league of universities globally. At the national level, internationalization of higher education is presented as a process that institutions in developing countries must embrace in order to address the persistent challenges of sustainable development. For universities in Africa, the literature argues that internationalization provides them with opportunities that cut across disciplines, institutions, knowledge-systems, and nation-state boundaries thereby exposing the institutions and academics to the world’s best scientific research and infrastructures. In summary, it is contended that internationalization is a strategy to realize success in human-capability and institutional-capacity development in the universities. This chapter revisits these assertions and their tenacity to developing a culture of research and innovation in African universities, and linking the universities to the continent’s development aspirations.

This chapter grapples with questions of agency in the development of African higher education, with a special focus on the Association of African Universities (AAU), an organization outside of formal education policymaking on the continent. Through the lens of rhetorical institutionalism, findings illustrate how the AAU has adopted and adapted competing institutional logics to exert influence over development policymaking. Next, I will discuss how systems of persuasion were cultivated and symbols employed to establish the legitimacy of the organization in a heterogeneous institutional field that includes universities, development agencies, nongovernmental organizations, supranational arrangements, and the influence of international financial institutions. This enabled the AAU to extend institutional logics into African higher education. This case study seeks to upend the pervasive crisis narrative that perpetuates both the impotence of African institutions and the stewardship of outside development elites. Finally this chapter considers the implications of this critical case study for development discourse and practice.

This chapter discusses the role of language in the transformation of two African institutions of higher education, namely the University of Botswana (in Botswana) and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (in South Africa). The transformation of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, which is aimed at addressing the inequalities and other ills of the apartheid era, has taken on board language issues. For instance, isiZulu is being developed and promoted to join English as a language of scholarship. In contrast, the University of Botswana’s transformation does not stem from a political background of oppression. The institutional transformation has to do internationalization and the conversion into a research-intensive university. This transformation, unlike at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, has not taken a strong move to develop and promote Setswana (Botswana’s national language) as a language of scholarship.

In 1980, there were 1,106.8 million African Americans enrolled in college. Of this number, 463,700 were males and 643,100 were females. In other words, among African Americans enrolled in higher education, 58.1% were female. By the year 2004, of the 2,164.7 million African Americans enrolled in higher education, 65% were female. Thus, between 1980 and 2004, the gender gap in higher education within the African American community increased by nearly 7 percentage points. What happened to African American males? Why are they not enrolling in higher education at higher rates?

The recent development of higher education in Africa has been spurred, in part, through a variety of cross-border higher education (CBHE) initiatives. However, this is not a new trend and this chapter traces the development of CBHE activities in Africa from the early 1900s through the current era. While the earliest forms of CBHE were largely fostered through Western nations providing advice and validation to institutions in Africa, the types of CBHE engagements are much more varied, including collaborations among African nations. The chapter also explores the push by some African nations to become educational hubs, the variability of CBHE policies across nations, and the shift of collaboration from the global north to south.

In the last decade, the speed and intensity with which regional level connections are expanding in all areas of the world has been remarkable. Higher education in Africa is no exception. This chapter focuses on African policies and programme initiatives to further higher education regionalization. Regionalization is defined as the process of ‘building closer collaboration and alignment among higher education actors and systems in a designated area or framework, commonly called a region’. An analytical framework, consisting of functional, organizational and political approaches, is applied to the evolution of higher education regionalization at the continental level in Africa through a close examination of the progress related to the implementation of the “African Union Strategy for the Harmonization of Higher Education Programmes.” Special emphasis is given to the harmonization of degree structures and the recognition of qualifications through sub-regional qualification frameworks. Key issues and challenges such as rationales, governance, benefits and risks, unintended consequences, language, engagement for all and innovation are raised at the end of the chapter to stimulate further reflection and exploration of the complex process of higher education regionalization.

The very essence of internationalisation, which depends heavily on academic mobility and cross-border interactions, has been adversely affected due to the COVID-19 pandemic and has been associated with a significant decline in student and staff mobility in South Africa and around the world. Nonetheless, it has also catalysed innovation and inspired new approaches to teaching and learning that have the potential to transform the future of higher education. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education institutions are grappling with a fundamental question that goes beyond the practicalities of internationalisation: How can we re-envision the concept of internationalisation to meet the challenges of the new normal? This question calls for a deeper reflection on the nature of internationalisation itself. How can we ensure that cross-border interactions and exchanges continue to foster a sense of global community and intercultural understanding, even in a world that is physically distanced? This chapter seeks to explore the profound implications of the pandemic on the internationalisation of higher education (IHE) in South Africa. It aims to critically examine the present challenges to internationalisation and the strategies that have been developed to address them in the context of the post-pandemic world. The chapter employs a critical reflection approach through the use of qualitative research, systematic literature review, and document analysis. By utilising these methodologies, it seeks to delve deeper into the implications of the pandemic on the IHE in South Africa.