Higher Education as an Engine of Development: Sites of Domination, Contestation, and Struggle in Africa

The debate over the purpose of higher education is set in the backdrop of recent developments in addressing socioeconomic inequities in the world including Africa, as well as the relationship between the mass model of higher education and necessary policy decisions for continued participation growth. Using the human capital theory supported by the neoliberal ideology, this chapter contributes to the global debate on the role of higher education as an engine of societal development in Africa and internationally. The chapter argues that while higher education has played a significant role in facilitating development in Africa, and indeed, with remarkable achievements, the role higher education plays has been executed in an environment characterised by tensions, conflicts, domination, contestation, and struggle. Two contending interests are evident, namely: the Eurocentric Western epistemic system underpinned by the neoliberal ideology and the African development agenda. The chapter demonstrates that these contending forces have tended to pull higher education in two opposite directions at all times, a move that potentially has negative consequences for the African development agenda. The chapter proposes an alternative approach to decolonise higher education, however, adopting a decolonisation approach that is supportive of a pluralistic worldview and hybrid model.