A well-designed national service programme which targets university students could contribute to a country’s future stability, productivity, and national development. But, for national youth service programmes to succeed, they need to be apolitical, skills-focused, well-funded, and linked to long-term employment and civic opportunities.

Steep cuts in US government funding have thrown much of the field of global health into a state of fear and uncertainty. Whatever emerges from the current crisis, it will look very different from the past, but this may be an opportunity to build a new global health compact for Africa.

As artificial intelligence tools become increasingly sophisticated, university administrators are scrambling to install detection software, rewrite plagiarism declarations, and develop policies to catch students using AI. This frantic focus on policing reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of both the technology’s impact and the purpose of higher education.

Despite being one of the 17 countries across Eastern, Western, and Southern Africa that participate in the Science Granting Councils Initiative in Sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia has made little progress in setting up its own national body to coordinate and steer its research productivity.

A shift is urgently needed in how degree programmes are developed in Ethiopia’s higher education system. Programme development must be based on a rigorous needs analysis, labour market data, and strategic foresight to enable the sector to contribute to national growth and be globally competitive.

Plans for a United Nations-based online university that expands access to higher education for the least developed countries are ambitious and could move the Sustainable Development Goals forward, but they require coordinated action across governments, the private sector, international development partners and philanthropic organisations.

Artificial intelligence may be good at answering questions. But can AI help us to come up with good questions in the first place? We have considered whether Large Language Models may potentially play a role in identifying important and impactful health-related research questions.

South Africa’s upcoming National Dialogue process could become a platform for rebuilding the social fabric of communities from the ground up. Through its role in ethical dialogue, public pedagogy and community engagement, the university can and must play a key role in this process.

Autonomy is a vital prerequisite for the success of research universities, but it is not a standalone solution. The government of Ethiopia should have, following the establishment of research institutions, provided the resources, governance structures and academic freedom to drive high-quality research and scholarly excellence.

PhD graduates with disabilities have to overcome more hurdles if they want to pursue posdoctoral fellowships. Without concessions for disabled doctoral graduates to support their access to these opportunities, they will remain excluded, which will also affect the equity and inclusion of disabled academics in the higher education sector.

Rhodes University in South Africa has developed a Comprehensive Postdoctoral Development Framework. Championed by Dr Kwezi Mzilikazi, the deputy vice-chancellor of research, innovation and strategic partnerships, the framework aims to ensure postdoc fellowships that are empowering and to curate the development of critical research skills.

As misinformation increasingly threatens public discourse globally, South African universities are grappling with how best to educate students about misinformation literacy without inadvertently encouraging media cynicism or disengagement. To mark Youth Day in South Africa on 16 June, this issue is interrogated further.

Climate learning needs to be part of the knowledge base of every citizen. An innovative course, involving 10 universities in its pilot phase, involves participatory research and engagement with local communities to co-create solutions to the challenges of climate change and sustainable development in Africa.

Education faculties must equip teachers to design learning experiences with care, use technology thoughtfully and reflect on their practices. Teacher education must prepare future teachers to create inclusive classrooms, recognise and challenge bias, and connect lessons to real-world issues such as sustainability and social justice.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who passed away on 28 May 2025, leaves behind one of the most enduring and transformative legacies in the world of letters. Ngugi, a towering intellectual figure, a fierce advocate for linguistic decolonisation, and a political dissident of global resonance, has produced an oeuvre that extends far beyond his fiction.

Ethiopia’s efforts to build a digitally inclusive and knowledge-driven society will be hamstrung if the private higher education sector remains excluded – a sector with about 300 registered institutions that is educating a significant portion of students with the help of about 10,000 instructors.

A contribution to the Second Annual Walter Parry Honorary Lecture at Stellenbosch University in South Africa calls for the adoption of a philosophy of moral excellence in higher education – a way of doing science that demands exquisite rigour alongside an unwavering commitment to human dignity.

Postdocs should picture themselves as the passengers on a midnight train. The train is en route to its final destination where the track comes to an end. This last stop represents the end of the line for the postdoc academic journey. What is next?

The ‘Swedish Paradox’ and ‘Makerere Conundrum’ serve as important reminders of the complex dynamics involved in optimising research returns and continue to contribute to the ongoing dialogue about research productivity in resource-constrained settings and the importance of coherent national research and innovation policies.

Due to the lack of political will within the government and institutions, we are unlikely to see a truly decolonised university in South Africa any time soon. But organising critical engagements within universities will be key if we are to see any changes.

The book Academic Xenophobia: African Scholars in South African Universities documents the lived experiences of foreign African academics who are working within South Africa’s 26 public universities. It proposes an ethic of radical hospitality, one that interrupts the logic of borders and bureaucracies.

Mounting evidence of failures to address food security in Africa suggests that a different approach is necessary. Agroecology – farming with nature – is a more decolonial approach. It covers formal research by scientists and informal knowledge of farmers who experiment in their fields.

Safeguarding Africa’s baobab trees, considered a superfood, requires a blend of cultural and community protection, and conservation and management actions at community level. It also requires strategic policy and regulatory frameworks, and collaboration on the national and global stages, research is suggesting.

Framing postdocs as a unique professional opportunity that bridges the gap between PhD study and full academic employment risks glossing over structural and systemic concerns that many students have consistently raised. Some of these fault lines have to be engaged in openly.

The rapid ascent of generative artificial intelligence, via tools such as ChatGPT, Bard and their derivatives, has unsettled the terrain of higher education. These systems, capable of generating essays, explanations, code and summaries within seconds, have dramatically reframed the relationship between knowledge, teaching and assessment.

While the postdoctoral fellow is neither faculty nor student, they enjoy a high rank in academia. Fellowship positions are sought-after opportunities. With this rejoinder, we challenge arguments in the recent commentary titled “Postdocs are the ‘ice boys’ and ‘ice girls’ of the HE sector”.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, medical specialists’ voices were at times drowned out by misinformation and disinformation. In response, a medical school has introduced a module that focuses on socio-political and historical influences, such as structural racism and healthcare, and the nature of the post-truth world.

Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education has started a process to reform university boards. The higher education sector needs efficient boards to provide direction to universities. However, the principle of minimising government interference is crucial – without losing the sense of accountability that board members should develop.

While African countries have been stubbornly preoccupied with often stale decolonisation narratives, hegemonic forces have consolidated their self-preservation and -interest. Now that a new global reality is unfolding, African countries need to proactively engage, re-calibrating their discourses. In this, the role of universities is critical.

The automation of the university has been a phenomenal strategy for improving its efficiency in service delivery, policy implementation and operational streamlining. The objective is to deliver better, precise, less labour-intensive implementation of routine tasks. However, there are questions about academic authenticity with artificial intelligence moving into writing, peer review and publishing.

Mauritius is positioning itself as a transnational education, or TNE, hotspot, combining the assurance of international quality with the benefits of lower costs, regional accessibility and cultural familiarity. Its Uniciti Education Hub is an example of how private investment, sound regulation and international partnerships can drive TNE.

Ethiopia has been listed as a country with high retraction rates of scientific papers. Combating current malpractices is crucial for the strengthening of ethical standards in research and upholding the credibility and reliability of scientific contributions from the country.

Promotion to a professorship is a significant milestone in a scholar’s academic journey. Yet, the academic promotion process in many countries is often fraught with misinterpretations and violations. In Ethiopia, promotions have been halted temporarily while the ministry attempts to address some of these challenges.

Postdocs have become the new ‘ice boys’ and ‘ice girls’ of the higher education sector – cheap and accessible labour that higher education can exploit, use, misuse, abuse and discard at will. A national framework to protect these marginalised scholars is urgently required – and necessary.

Despite the alarming headlines about the impact of United States funding cuts on South African universities – and the fact that the country lags behind others when it comes to spending on research and development – South Africa is not dependent on foreign funding for research in higher education.

With the right policies, the creation of a favourable micro-credentials ecosystem, active institutional and industry engagements, and improved digital infrastructure, Ethiopia can follow in the footsteps of successful countries in leveraging micro-credentials to boost employability, career advancement, economic growth and lifelong learning.

Universities are pivotal in advancing entrepreneurship and business incubation as a core function. To offer one example, the Centre for Entrepreneurship Rapid Incubator at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa, has incubated 35 small businesses over the past year that have created 85 jobs.

The first National Multiplication Training in Mauritius is a testament that higher education institutions can support the work of national regulators and actively champion national agendas and reforms through capacity building, peer learning and collaborative exchanges. A North-South, private-public partnership helped to achieve these outcomes.

A landmark policy shift intended to expand access for financially disadvantaged students by converting South Africa’s National Student Financial Aid Scheme, or NSFAS, loans into full bursaries has exacerbated existing inequalities and remains an unsustainable and inefficient mechanism for expanding higher education access.

Artificial intelligence enables academic writers who have access to technologies to produce submission-ready articles. This, coupled with an emergence of research cultures in which human authors are simply disinterested in research, begs the question: Are we moving towards a world in which we will not need journal editors?

University mergers are often pursued to enhance educational quality, improve financial sustainability, or adapt to shifting demographics and educational needs. In Ethiopia, mergers could serve as a strategic response to address some of the major challenges universities face. Mergers should, however, be researched and carefully planned.

The lack of women’s participation in managerial and leadership positions is linked to business education, among other factors. Women remain under-represented in business school education globally, an issue that requires more studies about women at work.

Current developments in Ethiopia suggest that the higher education sector should reassess the mechanisms for the distribution of funding to the higher education sector. The sector could benefit from a specialised agency for funding to support a more competitive, productive and accountable system.

Tension between students and university leaders is not new, nor is it unique to South Africa. But what is clear is that, until government institutions take decisive action on student funding and higher education policy, universities will continue to be battlegrounds for broader political struggles.

A meritocratic institution in a democracy that prizes diversity and celebrates inclusion must recognise the dangers of any form of exclusion as fundamentally anti-intellectual. The recent murder of a Muslim cleric who was a member of the LGBTIQ+ community is a reminder about the role of the university.

The overhaul of the existing quality assurance practices in Ethiopia is a positive development, anticipated to bring about a shift at a national level. However, the implementation thereof will be challenging, and the need to build the capacity within the Ethiopian Education and Training Authority remains critical.

While decolonisation remains a vital and necessary discourse, its problematic nature stems from conceptual ambiguities, ideological tensions and practical constraints. There are the challenges of epistemic binaries, the complexities of linguistic decolonisation, the paradoxes of globalisation, and the need for a coherent strategy for institutional transformation.

Universities have been criticised by employers in the accounting field for focusing on technical content and leaving professional skills training to them. By embedding research projects in accounting education pedagogy, students can be guided to acquire some of these skills, such as communication and networking, a study has found.

In a study about women engineering students in East Africa, the participants reported that they had to navigate gendered experiences, but they also revealed a pronounced determination to succeed and to pursue opportunities for growth. Indeed, many women are determined to be engineers.

By shifting the focus from mentorship and network-building to policy reform, a new initiative in Egypt focusing on higher education legislation aims to create structural changes that ensure sustained female representation in higher education leadership – which is not only a moral imperative but a strategic necessity.

The Ethiopian Ministry of Education, at the end of 2024, signed performance contract agreements with the board chairpersons and the presidents of 47 public universities. However, questions have emerged in the sector about how these contracts will be implemented and what the consequences will be for failing to adhere to them.

A study on internationalisation and student mobility in East Africa, which focused on Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, has highlighted some of the factors driving mobility in the region and calls for greater cooperation between countries to ensure that intra-Africa mobility practices benefit all partner states.

The Ethiopian Education and Training Authority’s recent decision to subject all higher education institutions to its new re-registration requirements is taking its toll on private institutions. At present, 25% of all private institutions in Ethopia have not reapplied for their licences.

A scholarly journal that is national and multidisciplinary is key to bridging not only the divides between disciplines, but also those between policy-makers and policy implementers, on the one hand, and scientists and scholars, on the other. The South African Journal of Science has achieved this in different ways during its 120-year history.

In a context in which the value of internationalisation has recently been questioned, higher education institutions need to understand their value in advancing the nation brand and use this to garner support and funding from the government. A nation brand is the sum of the perceptions held about a country by other nations and nationals.

You might already know the story of the African Leadership University. It has smoothened, like a river rock polished by pitches to investors and prospective students, as well as TED and TEDx talks. The narrative is so compelling, it invites disbelief. It is still true.

The International Day of Persons with Disabilities is observed annually on 3 December to raise awareness about the rights and well-being of these persons who continue to experience marginalisation and discrimination globally. Disability rights and advocacy discourses have raised society’s consciousness about the need for disability-inclusive practices.

International student returnees play a complex but significant role in the development of their home countries. While their potential to foster sustainable development is considerable, it often depends on local conditions and institutional factors, highlighting the need for tailored policy and more research.

Ethiopian higher education institutions, over the past decade, have managed to increase their research output, which is indicative of the significant strides the country is making at both national and regional level. What needs to be done to maintain the momentum?

By grounding themselves in community needs, universities can re-establish themselves as institutions that are serving the public good, but reclaiming African universities for the public good will require visionary leadership, supportive policies and sustained efforts to resist the allure of global prestige and profitability.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of online teaching and learning in higher education, both locally and internationally. However, before this change, educationalists had been exploring possibilities to enhance learning, using learning technologies.

Shifts in traditional understandings of higher education internationalisation, combined with the increased scale and variety of internationalisation opportunities available to scholars, institutions and students, invite a careful reconsideration of how we understand quality within the increasingly complex process of internationalisation.

In one of the biggest projects of its kind in Africa, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Innovation and Technology has started to recruit five million young people, including students, to become coders – a bold attempt to create active participants in a digital economy. What role can higher education play to ensure its success?

While there is an emphasis on inclusion in the Global North, and policies tend to be well implemented to support the inclusion of students with disabilities in universities in the United Kingdom, students with disabilities from Africa still face the reality of impairment-related disadvantages.