18 December 2022  Issue No: 721

The European Union is to broaden and increase its strong cooperation and support of higher education and research in Southeast Asia as part of a €10 billion (US$10.7 billion) package under its new Global Gateway scheme, focusing on ‘sustainable connectivity’ and the green transition.

Africa’s youth has to be at the centre of the region’s clamour for economic transformation. This has been a clarion call from multiple policy and education platforms during 2022, the latest being the high-level Annual General Meeting of the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture, or RUFORUM, hosted in Zimbabwe.

We need research teams to be representative of the communities they are serving. If you don’t see yourself, your struggles, your community, your potential in what is researched, it is all the more difficult to see yourself as part of those research teams.

Higher education institutions, often accused of not keeping pace with society, can find themselves in a balancing act when it comes to meeting quality assurance standards while also leading innovative teaching-learning practices, advancing novel research and responding to change in a diverse environment.

In a three-week series, University World News looks at the latest flashpoints in the battle to defend the tradition of collegial or bicameral college and university governance that has predominated in North America for more than a century but is now under threat.

Russian experts have failed to understand how President Vladimir Putin can manipulate large sections of the population to support his war in Ukraine because they overlook why large groups of people have been marginalised, including through higher education, and how Putin identifies with them and shares their resentment.

A special index for assessing a country’s vulnerability to misinformation has been unveiled, drawing on data during the COVID-19 pandemic, including on trust in governments and science, which could have important implications for public support of climate change policies and the Sustainable Development Goals generally.

Professor Adipala Ekwamu is one of the most influential figures in higher education in Africa, having founded the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture, or RUFORUM, and serving as its executive secretary since 2004. He spoke about his life’s work ahead of his retirement from the position at the end of December.

If we adhere to the idea that universities are sources of truth and knowledge, they need to expand their role and influence in society through greater engagement with the communities they are intended to serve, while also improving their communication with the public.