Paper short abstract:

This study aims to investigate the ongoing challenges faced by African universities in the wake of the neoliberalism policies, which have caused significant changes in the purpose, structure, and functioning of higher education systems.

Paper long abstract:

Neo-liberalism has a devastating impact on African higher education systems, transforming them from thriving hubs of scholarship and academic enquiry into subservient to market imperatives. This transformation has been facilitated by the rise of "new public management," which has brought about a fundamental shift in the way universities conceptualise and justify their existence. Due to the ascendancy of new public management and neoliberal policies, African universities have undergone a fundamental shift in their identity and purpose, transforming from centres of scholarly inquiry into academic corporations. The emphasis has shifted from the pursuit of knowledge to the production of quantifiable outputs, as universities are now expected to justify their existence by meeting market demands. Many African scholars have reduced themselves to data hunter-gatherers, whereas the fledgling intellectual scene that emerged on the continent after independence has been decimated. The study seeks to address key questions, including: How have neoliberal policies redefined the purpose and structure of African universities? What are the implications of this transformation on the quality of education, research, and scholarship? What measures can be taken to address the challenges? The study utilises a qualitative method exploring published materials, policy documents, memos and unpublished reports. The study also includes a critical discourse analysis to examine the dominant narratives and discourses surrounding neoliberalism and higher education in Africa. This paper explores the challenges that universities in Africa continue to encounter following the implementation of neoliberalism policies, which brought significant changes to the purpose, structure and functioning of higher education.

Paper short abstract:

#RhodesMustFall in South Africa and Danish everyday student activism (and their resonances) provide the material to investigate how 'translocal articulations' of social justice resonate across borders of time, space and positionality, in multidirectional and amorphous ways.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the ways in which contemporary student activism for social justice in Africa and Europe is shaped through processes of translocalisation, revolving around (contested) ‘local’ particularities, including specific demographics, social norms and institutional traditions, as well as convergence and movements across institutional and national borders. Based on Stuart Hall's work, we develop the notion of ‘translocal articulation’ to pay attention to the ways in which students' situated activism simultaneously works to express an opinion and conjure connections (and disconnections) across time, space, and positionality, to demand attention to social justice concerns.

Empirically, we explore the translocality of students' articulations of social justice concerns across two different settings and forms of student activism: First, we explore the digitally networked and highly public activism connected to the South African #RhodesMustFall movement (and its reverberations across South African university campuses and internationally as far as the United States, United Kingdom, India and Uganda). Second, we discuss the less public and less collective forms of everyday activism at universities in Denmark. The comparison between student activism for social justice in the African and European contexts, and their respective connections and disconnections, provides the material to show how translocal articulations resonate across institutional and national borders in multidirectional and amorphous ways.

Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates receptions of and responses to the ‘global education crisis’ in Germany and Kenya. It highlights the relationality between both contexts. It aims at reconfiguring comparative education research and seeks to be as postcolonial sensitive as possible in its reflections.

Paper long abstract:

The perception of being in a ‘global education crisis’ is part of the recent academic discussion worldwide. Yet, there is few knowledge on how this phenomenon is dealt with in specific contexts, and how these contexts are related to each other. The focus of the contribution is investigating receptions of and responses to the ‘global education crisis’ in Germany and Kenya. Both contexts are worthwhile for an examination, as we find the notion of ‘being in crisis’ in both contexts, albeit contextualised differently. Likewise, transformations in the education sector as a response to global processes are observable in both contexts. The paper takes up two of the research questions of the panel: Firstly, it asks, where are communalities and differences in the discussions of the ‘global education crisis’ in these contexts? Secondly, how do stakeholders in education experience changes in their (national) education sectors and what are they thinking about that? The responses and receptions of Germany and Kenya to the ‘global education crisis’ are considered in their situatedness (Haraway, 1988) and as socially distinct phenomena (Elias, 2014). In doing so the paper aims to show the multi-perspectivity in looking at the ‘global education crisis’ and to highlight the relationality between the two contexts in focus (White, 2008). On a theoretical-methodological level, the paper contributes to the aim of reconfiguring doing comparative education research, and seeks to be as postcolonial sensitive as possible in its reflections (Raina, 2016). The paper is based on literature review, website analysis and document analysis.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the global phenomenon of African students migrating for higher education through sponsorship from home countries, with a focus on African governments' expectations and the subsequent brain drain caused by shifting motivations and socioeconomic challenges in African nations.

Paper long abstract:

Globally, migrating across international borders for higher education is a recurring theme in migration literature. Over the years, numerous young Africans have been sponsored by countries of origin to study in foreign countries. Despite the prevalence of this practice, limited research and scholarly discussions have delved into the dwindling of these anticipated returns on national investment. This paper aims to elucidate the expectations of African governments when sponsoring their nationals to study abroad while shedding light on the experiences of African educational migrants, culminating in the subsequent phenomenon of brain drain that occurs after channelling substantial resources towards human and national development. The study endeavours to identify the complexities leading to scholarship awards, the motivations of the sponsoring entities, explore the preferences of the beneficiaries in choosing to study abroad, and assess the overall impact on the sending countries. Employing a qualitative research design, the paper collects, analyses, and presents data obtained from 35 returned educational migrants and 30 non-returned educational migrants of Ghanaian origin. The findings unearth a breach in agreements attributed to shifts in initial motivations and aspirations, compounded by socio-economic challenges prevalent in African countries. While these alterations pose adverse consequences for sending African nations, they concurrently contribute to the enhancement of the quality and quantity of the receiving countries. The paper underscores the need for a nuanced understanding of the complexities surrounding international educational migration, advocating for policies that address both the aspirations of the individuals and the broader developmental goals of the nations involved.

Paper short abstract:

Global education discourse, led by Western experts, often overlooks local nuances. Using Ghana as an example, this paper explores how families and children perceive education access amidst detached expert solutions, emphasizing the need for inclusive approaches to address the global education crisis

Paper long abstract:

The discussion surrounding the global education crisis is predominantly orchestrated by experts, consultants, and international agencies, primarily from Western perspectives. These narratives, framed in terms like learning crisis and variability in learning, gain prominence due to global processes that dictate acceptable knowledge and the politics of global knowledge production. Unfortunately, the nuanced understanding of education crisis in specific regions, such as Africa, seldom takes center stage in knowledge creation. This paper delves into Ghana as a case study, seeking to address a crucial question: what does education access mean for families and children—the intended beneficiaries—amidst the proposed solutions championed by international experts? The objective is to unravel how families and children in the collectivistic society of Africa interpret global education crisis and the recommended solutions, often driven by experts whose experiences are detached from their respective contexts. The inquiry also aims to scrutinize the alignment of these conceptualizations and proposed solutions with the ground realities of global education crisis. Instead of prioritizing expert viewpoints, this paper concentrates on the perspectives of the population directly affected—families and children—who are frequently excluded from the sense-making processes occurring at national and global levels where education crisis is problematized, and solutions are formulated. By emphasizing their voices, the paper seeks to contribute a more holistic understanding to the discourse on global education crisis whilst inviting readers to consider the different stakeholders and perspectives involved in shaping the narrative around global education crisis.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the challenges facing formal education in Benin, using a rural area in the north of the country as a case study. It aims to understand the issues surrounding the education crisis in Benin.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1990s, many efforts have been made to improve the level of education in developing countries. The various international conferences on education held in Africa ( Dakar, 2000) and Asia (Jomtien, 1990; Incheon, 2016) have promoted mass enrolment. This mass enrolment of children has created a number of challenges for the education systems of African countries. These include teacher overload, falling standards, mass dropout rates, training that is ill-suited to the labour market, etc., all unexpected effects that are undermining the performance of the education system in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Benin. In the face of this crisis, which continues to cast a shadow over the lives of the various actors in the education community, the education system is trying, albeit with difficulty, to perform well in order to maintain its importance as a vector of development and as a bearer of a better future for the population. Using a mixed approach (quantitative and qualitative), this article looks at formal education in rural areas of northern Benin and analyses its capacity to cope with disenchantment. It examines the challenges faced by schools and explores the reasons why young people turn to other alternatives rather than school.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the political instrumentalization of formal education as an aspect of the “global education crisis”. Using contemporary Uganda as an example, it illustrates how classrooms can be restricted sites of ideological instruction and spaces of vibrant political debate at the same time.

Paper long abstract:

In discourses on the "global education crisis", education is often discussed in terms of infrastructure, access or inclusion. However, when looking at education in postcolonial contexts, it is not only crucial to consider existing problems of inequality and underfunding, but also the implications of the fact that formal education systems were colonially designed and often continue to serve as a tool to consolidate specific structures of domination. This paper explores this aspect through the case study of Uganda. The starting point of my analysis is the currently dwindling power of the Museveni regime’s central legitimization narrative, which portrays long-term president Yoweri Museveni’s seizure of power in 1986 as a pivotal moment in Ugandan history and an act of national liberation. Among young people, however, this story finds little resonance, as it lacks an affective connection to their lives. One of the spaces in which the regime is trying to reach Ugandan youth and re-stabilize the discursive hegemony of its interpretation of the past and present are history classes in schools and universities. Yet at the same time, Uganda's ruling elite seems increasingly wary about the critical autonomous power of humanities subjects such as history – and with good reason, I argue. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic research in Ugandan educational institutions, I show how instead of simply accepting the limitations of the history curriculum, students and teachers actively engage with and even challenge them, making classrooms both sites of ideological instruction and spaces of vibrant political contestation.