Contestation in the 21st Century African University: Local and Global Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

In this conceptual article we posit that, if the African university is to locate itself in the 21st century, the precedence of local needs over global demands ought to be central to its agenda. The university space in Africa is a contested arena in which participants are claiming their dominant space in terms of knowledge production, control and responding to local needs. Standing on the one side is the university’s commitment to promote transformation by producing knowledge relevant and being responsive to local needs, with the fulfilment of the global demand for knowledge for the global market on the other. This creates an anomaly in the competing demands in university practices that lead to the polarisation of the role of the university. In this article we submit to Guy’s (2009, p. 1) assertion that the global and the local are best understood as the two opposite sides of the same distinction, which assists in describing various elements of social movements, inequalities, crises and identities.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n1s1p53