African Higher Education in the Context of Internationalization: Altruistic Partnerships or Global Academic Pillage

Résumé

What is the connection between economic globalization and internationalization of higher education? How does the connection influence the manner in which scholars articulate internationalization of higher education in and for developing countries? The nature and character of higher education in Africa today manifests its historical linkages to Africa’s colonial past. In the 1960s and 1970s, the language of ‘Development and Modernization’ defined the linkages as necessary. Implied here was the public role that higher education institutions in Africa were supposed to play in the development of the new nations through various forms of assistance from the former colonial powers. The international dimension of higher education in Africa is therefore not as new as the tone of some of the literature may misleadingly imply. However, globalization has heralded a new phase in these relationships. In the 1980s, a sense of despair dominated the discourse on higher education, especially its public dimensions. By the mid-1990s, private higher education had come of age. In particular, donors lobbied for national policies to promote private higher education as the saviour to address the increasing social demand for higher education in the continent. Empirical evidence rarely informed these assertions...