SARUA to build SDG framework for ‘engaged’ universities

A consortium of 15 universities from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Europe will collaborate on EngageSDG, a project which seeks to empower higher education institutions in the SADC region by leveraging digital platforms for knowledge-sharing towards implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular through the use of participatory approaches.

The Southern African Regional Universities Association, or SARUA, a membership-based association of public and private higher education institutions in the SADC region has been tasked with coordinating EngageSDG.

The overall goal of the three-year project, funded by Erasmus+, will be to develop a conceptual framework and a supporting digital ecosystem, to strengthen decision-making, capacity-development and collaboration among higher education institutions in the SADC region in the use of participatory approaches for local engagement.

Said Professor René Pellissier, the lead for knowledge co-production at SARUA: “The participatory approach focuses on the community, which means that the project will be aligned to what the community needs are.

“When we look at the SDGs in terms of poverty alleviation, food security and education, that becomes critical in terms of where the applications lie and, so, building a framework that will help higher education is a significant advantage to what the project delivers. It adds democracy, inclusivity [and] equality because it is embedded in the community needs,” she added.

The SADC-based academic institutions participating in the project include the universities of the Western Cape and of North-West in South Africa, the University of Zambia and the University of Lusaka, as well as the University of Mauritius and University of Technology, Mauritius.

OBREAL, a non-profit association that promotes inter-regional cooperation and dialogue in the higher education sector, Universitat de Barcelona (the University of Barcelona) in Spain, University College Cork and National University of Ireland, Universita di Bologna (the University of Bologna) in Italy, Technical University Dortmund in Germany and Vrije Universiteit (Free University) in Brussels are some of the global institutions taking part in developing the community of practice that forms part of the EngageSDG project.

The ‘engaged university’

Driven through the ‘engaged university’ concept, the project ultimately seeks to contribute towards a regional network of universities capacitated in the use of participatory approaches towards SDG engagement and implementation and building SADC member states’ capacity for sustainable development.

According to SARUA, an engaged university is “a responsible and responsive institution that serves the needs of its stakeholders and contributes to the broader well-being of society through various forms of community engagement, collaboration, and service”.

“The institution addresses the needs and challenges of its surrounding communities and wider society and strives to make societal impact by collaborating with communities, promoting civic engagement, conducting relevant research, transferring knowledge and technology, as well as practising ethical and sustainable approaches.”

In an interview with University World News, Pellissier, on behalf of SARUA, highlighted that higher education institutions in Africa are uniquely positioned to work on SDGs, given the impact of regional challenges such as climate change, poverty and slow economic growth.

She also noted that the EngageSDG project is one of SARUA’s biggest projects, bringing together regional and international universities to engage and exchange knowledge over three years in order to build a framework that would be applied, not only within the participating universities, but across higher education institutions in the SADC.

“This project is different because it focuses on the ‘engaged university’ that is a university that engages with its community and works towards collaboration and partnerships with the community, civil society, government, business, industry and also with academia.

“This follows on the work already done on the climate change and sustainable development project because it also sits within the SDGs. However, this project takes a wider approach and cuts across all the SDGs,” she said.

“The SDGs are very important to the SADC and they speak to the development of nations that have lower income and are struggling due to climate change and a lack of economic growth. It is, therefore, important to find a way within the higher education sector where the SDGs and economic growth can be placed at the forefront of building a framework that will support its implementation at higher education institutions,” she said.

Towards working with communities

Pellissier stressed the importance of institutionalisation and that SARUA’s initial needs analysis conducted in 2023 across SADC higher education institutions showed that participatory approaches were being followed in an ad hoc fashion, with little understanding as yet of the benefits of such an approach at an institutional level.

Indeed, said Pellissier, individual approaches are less fruitful and cannot be applied effectively in implementing the SDGs.

On institutionalisation, she said: “There’s bigger support, rewards systems and recognition for the way in which these activities are conducted. The critical issue remains that the SADC higher education institutions are not currently aware of the approaches that can be adopted and also not currently aware of how to adopt these approaches.

“These approaches become critical to the implementation of the SDGs, so building a framework in support of participatory approaches will capacitate higher education institutions towards working with the communities and getting better at SDG implementation,” she stated.

A digital ecosystem

One of the main objectives of the project is to develop a digital academic ecosystem that will support learning and collaboration among higher education institutions in the SADC in the use of participatory approaches for local engagement.

Some of the challenges confronting the SADC higher education landscape include limited resources, infrastructural constraints and the urgent need for educational reforms aligned with the SDGs.

Pellissier outlined that the digital ecosystem would enable connectivity by bridging the gaps between institutions and enabling seamless collaboration across the SADC region while allowing resource access by centralising academic resources and making knowledge more accessible to all. The innovative hub would also enable adaptability by supporting educational continuity and resilience in response to global shifts and challenges.

The impact of the ecosystem would have a profound impact on the SADC higher education landscape by facilitating cross-institutional partnerships to address SDGs collaboratively, promote knowledge sharing through a shared repository of research, educational materials and best practices and equipping educators and students with the digital skills necessary for meaningful engagement.

She added that, while challenges such as technological infrastructure, digital literacy and lack of funding and resources could affect equitable participation and engagement, the digital ecosystem would provide a centralised hub for academic content, including research papers, educational materials and engagement resources.

The digital hub would also be an interactive platform offering academic courses, workshops and training tailored to developing skills and knowledge for SDG-related projects while providing digital tools and platforms such as MS Teams that allow collaboration, communication and management within and across institutions.

Said Pellissier: “A digital ecosystem will be developed to host the framework, and capacity-development programmes will be created. These programmes will be assessed in terms of impact, and that will also provide further opportunities for higher education in SADC on the research and academic side.

“One of the spinoffs to already come out of the EngageSDG project is an inter-regional dialogue series in partnership with OBREAL across Southern Africa, Latin America and Europe to host five themes towards the Engaged University.

“Members of SARUA’s community will participate in the series of interviews and regional dialogues that will be conducted,” she noted.

These ongoing dialogues, running between May and June, take the form of webinars with specialists from the SADC, Latin America and Europe participating in rich discussions on topics such as ‘What is the Engaged University?’ and ‘Why is this model important to discuss inter-regionally?’.

Others are ‘Incorporating Engagement into Institutional Strategy: Developing effective institutional monitoring and evaluation systems for engagement’; ‘Engaged higher education institutions for innovation: Quadruple and quintuple helix models for co-production’ (which describes university-industry-public-environment interactions within a knowledge economy); and ‘Enabling engaged universities for development: A multiregional perspective’.