Locating the University in Africa in the Global Context

The chapter maintains the stance that the modern university in Africa—a discipline-based organisation comprising administrators, academics and students, and underpinned by the traditional values of autonomy and academic freedom—is not an indigenous institution. Against the above backdrop, the chapter locates the University in Africa, and higher education governance and management, in the global context. It discusses the three waves of the university—the medieval university, the Humboldt University and the post-Humboldt university—and the forces which ignited these waves. The missions and the centuries-old traditions of the university which are integral to each wave are articulated. The unique features of the modern university, which render some of the management practices in universities to appear strange to other sectors, and their implications on the systemic, institutional and academic unit-level governance of higher education are underscored. Finally, the chapter demonstrates how the university has transformed from a loosely coupled organisation and an organised anarchy prior to the 1980s into a corporate actor starting from the 1990s onwards, and how the traditional values of the university (autonomy, collegiality and academic freedom) now co-exist with managerial values (accountability, competition and entrepreneurism).