13 January 2022  Issue No: 342

Despite the never-ending clamour for increased budgetary allocations to higher education in Nigeria, the government has continued to turn a deaf ear. The 2022 budget for federal universities and polytechnics as well as colleges of education and their corresponding agencies has again been considered a drop in the ocean.

United States university internationalisation practices and policies reproduce and reinforce cultural and social racism, and ‘exacerbate the conditions around exclusion, discrimination and inequity they ostensibly seek to redress’, according to a recent study based on the lived experiences of Sub-Saharan African students in the US.

In the first of a series of articles, a former vice-chancellor of the United States International University-Africa in Kenya begins to reflect on how the continent as an epistemic and existential reality contributed to his return to what he considered his ‘intellectual home’.

In October 2021, medical anthropologist Professor Margaret Gyapong received the coveted Outstanding Female Scientist Prize. The prize is awarded to female scientists who have made a significant contribution and built measurable impactful research capacity through training and mentorship of a next generation of scientists in Africa.

Linda Omega (28) went from wanting a career as a rap artist to studying psychology before it dawned on him that the arts were where his interests really lay. A distance-learning degree programme in visual arts and a publishing business are helping him to realise his dream.

In Kampala slums, very few wear masks, let alone practise social distancing. But a Makerere University students’ initiative, through art, is encouraging the slum dwellers in the East African city to safeguard themselves against the fourth wave of the coronavirus even when they are hungry.

There is much to learn from shocks and crises through looking at the familiar in a new way. The study abroad industry has often been taken for granted, but now is the right time to reflect and ask where the future might lead.

Despite fears about the spread of the use of English and Mandarin in higher education, it is unlikely that either will completely dominate. In many locations, national and local languages will prevail and linguistic innovations may even make the whole debate on language dominance obsolete.

The removal of major artworks and memorials on Hong Kong university campuses commemorating the June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy student protesters in Beijing is a violation of freedoms and university autonomy and an attempt to censor memories and debate, Hong Kong students say.