Towards Academic Freedom for Africa in the 21st Century*

Abstract

This paper begins by reviewing the ways in which the higher education landscape in Africa has changed significantly during the last decade as a result of the ongoing regional crisis and the changing perspectives on African higher education articu- lated within the international development arena and argues that, if the higher edu- cation crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was the result of financial conditionalities imposed through structural adjustment, then the ensuing decade has seen a global policy shift that has profoundly changed the conditions under which academic work is carried out. Particular attention is paid to the manner in which the changing, economically-driven constraints on academic freedom, institutional autonomy and conditions of service in higher educational institutions are mediated by other social conditions such as gender inequalities, the HIV/AIDS crisis, the effects of long- term brain drain and the manner in which local capacity is diverted into survivalism. I argue that higher education reforms threaten to undermine the material base for academic life by emphasising privatisation and cost recovery in contexts where poverty is a major feature of life. Exaggerated concerns with “efficiency” and “ex- cellence” lead to increased regulation and surveillance of scholarly output, render- ing academic freedom vulnerable to formulaic measures of performance that may be insensitive to the work of African academics. The paper concludes by recom- mending a programme of activities designed to re-affirm the public stake in higher education, strengthen and diversify independent scholarly work and encourage Af- rican governments to adopt policies that will strengthen the tertiary sector and en- sure an enabling environment for intellectual development and freedom.