25 February 2021  Issue No: 302

African countries have been urged to replicate South Korea’s higher education model as a way to unlock employment opportunities and to develop more highly educated and skilled workers. To do so, countries have to harness the transformative power of digital tools and this would require investment, political will and curricular reform by governments and universities.

As the world approaches the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic, the threat of Ebola is re-emerging in Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has put these West and Central African nations on high alert and has placed the spotlight on the preparedness of universities to manage these health threats.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a transformational impact on the higher education sector in Sub-Saharan Africa, accelerating online learning and scientific discovery, but that transition to virtual learning must be seized as a prime opportunity to intentionally design systems to reduce social inequalities.

The Central University of Technology has cemented its 2030 vision to be a leading institution by becoming the first South African university to join the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-led global collaborative, a network aimed at education innovation.

To engage or to contain? Western universities seeking to cooperate with China are finding themselves at the centre of geopolitical conflicts between China and their own respective governments. How should they deal with China – and the grip of the Communist Party – as mutual distrust grows?

The European Commission says it can exclude Chinese participation in Horizon Europe and other sensitive research projects using new powers to exclude third countries that do not share ‘EU values’ and is negotiating to ensure science cooperation with China is ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’.