African Journal of Rural Development

Higher Education in Africa: Current status and perspectives for inclusive transformation

S. MENSAH — 2025-05-09

African universities are expected to help tackle challenges facing the African society and realise the aspirations of the Africa Agenda 2063 and the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals 2030 in the current context of globalization of higher education. Unfortunately, there have been substantial challenges affecting Higher Education in Africa, notably the disparities in gender inclusion, limiting the potential of women, and the decline in average public expenditure per tertiary education student, making Sub Sahara Africa tertiary education enrollment ratio the lowest in the world. This editorial introduces the third issue of the fifth volume of the African Journal of Rural Development. In this edition, we have published nine papers addressing issues related to higher education in Kenya, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Zambia, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Sudan. In particular, the issue brings insights into the future of the African University, the importance of regional academic training programs, the gender disparities in participation in Science, Technology and Innovation, and the mechanisms for financing and strengthening higher education in Africa. It is our hope that the readers will find this information useful to guide further decision in the efforts towards transforming the higher education sector in Africa.

Envisioning the future of the African University: Needed reform, and adjustments to respond to the emerging challenges

J. A. AKEC — 2025-05-09

The paper shares the author’s perspective on the future of African higher education through
a university lens. It identifies global trends regional agenda that will influence change
within the African university systems in the next decade. The paper is divided into (8)
sections as follows: Section 1 introduces the background and purpose of the paper and its
organization. Section 2 reviews the historical developments that influenced the emergence
of the Multiversity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the western world, especially
the United States and Europe; the implications for the reforms of university systems in
the twenty first century. Section 3 reflects on the current global trends affecting the university
governance, driving change by reviewing a plethora of models of governance, especially
the Anglo-Saxon, Homboldtian, Napoleonic, and Japanese models. Section 4 describes the role
of university innovation and entrepreneurship in the fulfillment of the ‘third mission’ besides
university core business of teaching and research. Section 5 covers the integration of technology
in learning and transitioning of universities to Education 4.0 in order to serve the unfolding
Fourth Industrial Revolution. Section 6 highlights the role of academic rankings in measuring
success and fueling reputational competition; thus, leading to improvement in research output
and impact, and influencing strategic choices in higher education globally. Section 7 reflects
on the causes of stagnation of African higher education in comparison to BRICs’ explosive
expansion in the last two decades, and proposes strategies for closing the gap in terms of
graduate enrollment ratios and differentiation.

Building higher level skills to drive development in Africa: The case of the RUFORUM Doctoral Regional Training Programmes

A. M. MWEETWA — 2025-05-09

Africa still lacks the required human capacity to respond to critical development challenges.
Skills are inadequate in many areas from primary to tertiary level, and vocational training.
There is need to develop high-level skills, institutional capacities, critical technical skills,
and resources in key investment areas. current situation is a major constraint to the
implementation of development programmes continental frameworks hence the foreseen
delayed emergence of African counties as knowledge economies. Progress has so far been
made by several regional stakeholders to identify key critical soft hard skills that are
necessary to drive the Africa Agenda 2063. With this, educational institutions being the main
actors in the skills, competencies technological development value chains, are expected
to transform realign their interventions to develop the high-level skills needed to deliver
Africa Agenda 2063. The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture
(RUFORUM) responded by commissioning an institutional competence analysis of
its then 10 member universities to document strengths and weaknesses, status of facilities,
human resources/expertise and experiences to map out the niche areas as well as institutional
comparative strengths and weaknesses. Other studies also identified skills and competence
gaps in students graduating from African universities. A key outcome of this process was the
adoption of strong course-based doctoral training that involved engagement with other leading
experts in and outside Africa in the training.In 2008, RUFORUM launched the courseworkbased
doctoral regional training programmes, has since supported the establishment of
seven such programmes, namely Agricultural Rural Innovations, Food Science and Nutrition,
Soil Water Management,

Financing higher education in Africa: The case of Kenya

E. J. MUKHWANA — 2025-05-09

Demand for tertiary education in Kenya has significantly increased and continues to swell
against the backdrop of insufficient funding thus affecting the quality of teaching and learning.
The population of the tertiary education age group in the country (between 18 and 25 years)
was 6.9 million in 2019 representing 3 per cent share of the total population. This calls for a
review of the higher education spending in order to prioritise providing equitable opportunities
for training this critical category that is expected to contribute towards national growth and
competitiveness. This paper discusses the status of financing higher education in Kenya and
points to developments that have been achieved by the subsector amid the challenges of
insufficient funding.

Strengthening higher education capacity to promote gender inclusive participation in Science, Technology and Innovation

F. NAKAYIWA — 2025-05-09

Despite global Science, Technology and Innovation (ST&I) initiatives to ensure achievement
of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 5 on gender equality, and those geared
towards supporting greater engagement of women especially in research for development,
fewer women are still employed in the Science, Technology and Innovations (ST&I) sector.
The Forum for African Women Vice Chancellors (FAWoVC) is exploring interventions to
promote women in higher education, and ST&I. A baseline study of the ST&I ecosystem from
four African countries, reveals that higher education is still skewed against ST&I. Female
participation is still low and steeply declines at the graduate and academic leadership levels. In
promoting female engagement, the policy framework at national and institutional level needs
to target the overall education pipeline and create an environment that supports students in
Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) and females in the R&D employment
sector.

Gender-based assessment of Science, Technology and Innovation ecosystem in Ethiopia

D K. MOGES — 2025-05-09

The development of a country is primarily based on the progress made in science,
technology and innovation (STI), and the equitable contribution of both men and women in
the STI ecosystem. However, there is a big gender gap in the ecosystem as the participation
of women is very low in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. This
study assessed the gender dimension of science, technology and innovation eco-system in
Ethiopia. Both primary and secondary sources of data were used. The primary data were
collected from key informants, and reports of various UN agencies, Ministry of Education
(Ethiopia), Ministry of Science and Higher education (Ethiopia) and journal articles were
among the major secondary sources reviewed. The study found out that the participation
of women in the STI ecosystem was low in Ethiopia. Undergraduate female students
who were studying science and technology (Engineering and technology; natural and
computational sciences; medicine and health science; and agricultural and life sciences)
comprised 31%, 29.4%, 30.7%, 31.4% 34.4% of the student population in 2014/15,
2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18 and 2018/19, respectively. In 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17,
2017/18 and 2018/19, the percentage of postgraduate female students in science
technology were 30.8%, 19%, 14.7%, 15% 15.6%, respectively. Among the academic
staff of higher education institutions on duty in 2017/18 academic year 19.3%, 11.2%
and 6.9% of the women were holders of first, masters/speciality PhD/ sub-speciality
degrees in science and technology fields of study, respectively. The participation of
women in research and industry that requires higher skills were also very low.

Current statistics in Science, Technology and Innovation in higher education in Cameroon and the establishment of gender participation

T. R. KINGE — 2025-05-09

Higher Education (HE) in Cameroon aims at promoting and strengthening Science, Technology
and Innovation (STI). However, statistical evidence indicates that there is no clear policy that
addresses STI educational concerns in Higher Education in Cameroon. This study was carried
out to document current statistics in Science, Technology and Innovation in Higher Education
and to establish gender participation. The findings indicate that enrolment in STI fields for
students and lecturers is relatively high in the natural sciences, but diminishes significantly
in health sciences, agriculture and engineering. Numerical evidence indicate that there are
more males enlisted in STI fields than females. This disparity is more pronounced in the field
of engineering where female students are near absent. There is a need for more investments
in STI in Higher Education in Cameroon but with special attention to addressing the gender
disparity.

Strengthening Higher Education and Science, Technology and Innovation in DRC

J.G.M. MAJALIWA — 2025-05-09

The state and quality of education of a country is strongly and positively correlated to its
economic development. It contributes to building the workforce of knowledge-based
progressive societies. Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced a proliferation of Higher Education
Institutions (HEIs) particularly, private HEIs in the last two decades. The quality of the private
universities is variable across the continent and dependent on the existence and level of
implementation of the legislative requirements, the quality of governance at the HEIs, quality
of the infrastructure and student recruitment. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is
a signatory to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Higher
Education and Training, and has acknowledged the role of higher education in national
and regional development and the importance of a regional higher education system. The
country has experienced two decades of instability which has impacted several sectors of its
economy, including its education sector. For the last two decades, limited statistics has been
published concerning the status, investment and challenges facing the sector. This information
is important in designing appropriate strategies for enhancing the impact of this sector to
the national and regional economy. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to i) review
the current statistics (including investment) available on Higher and Technical Education in
DRC, with a focus on those relating to Science, Technology and Innovation; ii) establish key
challenges for Higher Education;

A theoretical analysis of public expenditure on education and agriculture sector growth nexus: Case of Uganda

C. OWUOR — 2025-05-09

Uganda’s economic development prospect is intertwined with agriculture sector growth.
The country has 80% of the land, which is arable, but only 35% is being cultivated majorly
using subsistence suboptimal methods. On the other hand, the country’s population age
structure is a paradox of its own. Census data indicates that close to 63% of the total
population is below the age of 24 years and 50% below the age of 15 years. It is therefore
imperative that the education expenditure as a proxy for human capital development should
underpin policy and public investment choices. At the sector level, growth and prosperity
are positively correlated to a reduction in rural poverty that is still a characteristic of rural
households. This paper seeks to deepen the theoretical understanding of agriculture and
education nexus and the low transformation of the agriculture sector in Uganda.