28 April 2022  Issue No: 357

The African Scholars Initiative, a charity mentoring bright African students who intend to pursue higher education in Canada, has joined several other stakeholders concerned about a high study visa refusal rate for applicants from Africa. It has accused some immigration officials of racism, especially against students from Nigeria.

There are 80 African universities in 10 countries featured in the Impact Rankings 2022 produced by Times Higher Education or THE World University Rankings. They are among 1,524 institutions from 110 countries ranked globally, based on their impacts on the 17 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

African cities should be responsive to community needs and sensitive to climate change impact. Universities, researchers and think tanks can play a role in imagining what cities on the continent need to look like in the future, said Dr Debra Roberts, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II.

Assuming the position of vice-chancellor at United States International University Africa confirmed what I already suspected: the financial models of many African universities were not just broken, but faced an unmitigated disaster that, if not threatening their survival, undermined their quality.

UbuntuNet Alliance Chief Executive Professor Madara Ogot talks to University World News about projects like the African Open Science Platform that are helping to make the research that is being done on the continent more visible to the rest of the world.

Government-sponsored students in Rwanda have called for an increase in their living allowance following a sharp increase in the market price of almost every commodity that has left many Rwandans struggling. The students who receive support under the Ubudehe programme come from poor families.

All Marion Namukose ever wanted to do was to plant her fruit farm, process her oranges, brand them and sell them. But the entrepreneur had found attaining her goal rather ‘easier said than done’ – until she attended a university programme in 2018 that showed her how.

If they are not to be condemned to irrelevance, universities in Africa must strengthen their research and teaching and adopt a proactive stance in responding to the institutional and development demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, according to Paul Zeleza, academic, higher education commentator and former vice-chancellor.

Staying ‘woke’ should become a continuous task for everyone in the university, but the challenge is how we can treat one another respectfully without the debate losing its bite. A legal scholar and former university president shares some thoughts on how this might work.

The existence of memoranda of understanding entered into before the pandemic to govern the terms of international exchanges, visits and collaborations between higher education institutions begs the question: do they need to be updated in a post-COVID world or thrown out altogether?

An advanced virtual reality system which gives students access to different virtual learning environments in which they can examine problems, collect data, collaborate and design solutions offers a unique way to teach climate change and further the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.