African Networked Knowledge Systems Needed Urgently For Sustainable Futures 

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At the half mark of the 21st century in 2050, Africa needs to have picked up the pace if it is to realise its vaunted potential to become a successful continent with bright sustainable futures for its people.

Abundance amidst sadness and some hope

At present, despite some promising developments, the large majority of its people cannot foresee a better future.

A scandal given the potential. Africans cannot just keep surviving or dying.

Enough of glimmers of hope too.

Africans need to thrive. Not in the long term.

Self-fulfilling prophecies that it will take long must stop. They feed inertia and inaction.

It is possible.

There is no shortage of blueprints, plans, and hopeful speeches.

Africa is populous and has an abundance of critical resources needed for its own and the world’s advancement.

Its growing youthful population – largely unemployed – can become a demographic dividend.

And not a bomb of disgruntled mobs driven into senseless destruction and drafted into endless wars and conflicts.

Or perennial protestors agitating for a better life, facing teargas and brutal security forces.

New horizons – the African dream

For its potential to become a remarkable reality in this century, Africa needs to intentionally redesign its fragmented knowledge systems into an integrated whole that delivers for the continent.

To be able to achieve this transformation its islands and silos of knowledge – universities, think tanks and government research institutes, private sector research and development divisions – currently performing below the level required to decisively uplift, the continent needs radical changes.

Conscious action

First, there is a need for a consciousness and urgent action about the need for a connected, networked, integrated, well-funded knowledge system that is African and future focused on Africa’s challenges.

These challenges include but are not limited to the burden of disease, devastating impacts of climate change, food insecurity, perversity of all kinds of violence, conflicts, war, hunger, poverty, widening inequality, low economic growth, political and economic domination by global powers, risk of marginalisation by new technologies, and poor health and education systems.

It need not be so.

A new bespoke knowledge system

Second, a new knowledge architecture that is inclusive and comprehensive, eschewing inherited models that are limiting the continent’s potential, must be created.

Such a knowledge system must be driven by an ethos and ethic of partnership and collaboration for positive, transformative change.

Universities, private and public, government research institutes, African think tanks, and private sector research and development divisions must all work collectively in this new system to drive a challenge led research and innovation agenda.

A strategic African fund for knowledge sovereignty

Third, African governments, the private sector, philanthropy, and African development finance institutions must all come together to invest significant long term funding for the system.

Departing from the prevalent inadequate, infrequent, uncoordinated project type and pilot funding.

A strategic funding mindset must drive the initiative to ensure knowledge sovereignty.

A strategic African fund must be used to leverage additional and complementary funding globally, allowing no single or any external funder to control and direct the system.

It is important that in the system students are well funded through a variety of mechanism and graduate without debt.

Radical transformation of African academia

Fourth, universities should be radically transformed to become coordinating centres of the knowledge system.

The good that they do must be scaled for greater benefit.

The range of transformations should include linking, connecting, and integrating all universities on the continent in every respect.

Their decolonized Africa focused curriculum, credit transfer system, programme accreditation, quality assurance, research, and innovation collaborations must be harmonised to co-create knowledge and skills for sustainable futures for the continent.

In this regard, private universities must be funded by their owners to offer not only limited supposedly market-oriented programmes but a broader suite and to invest in and participate in research and innovation.

All hands are needed on the deck.

Governments and other powerful actors in society must unshackle the universities from narrow control to allow freedom of thought and pursuit of ideas necessary to generate new insightful ideas and innovations that liberate Africa from its challenges.

Quality and excellence for success

Fifth, the entire university and knowledge system must reflect quality and excellence in every respect – not just the very few who are ranked by foreign university league tables.

It must not be better elsewhere except in Africa.

Appointment of people at all levels who are qualified, able, knowledgeable, experienced, and academic programmes and research that are innovative and creative are critically important for success.

Widening access to quality education for bright students should be an imperative.

Knowledge beyond borders and boundaries

Sixth, universities must transform their structures and organisational design which at present restricts education and skills training and knowledge creation.

They are stuck in colonial modes of knowledge prisons.

It is now known that academic disciplines housed in departments perpetuate siloes that cannot address changes in the world of work and the complexity and interrelated nature of society’s challenges.  

As a result, universities are not the natural choice for people seeking solutions to complicated seemingly intractable problems – the wicked problems.

Add to that a global distrust for facts and science driven by disruptive technologies.

And the rise of misinformation and disinformation.

At this rate universities are now just ATMs dispensing degrees from which graduates find it hard to get employment.

They risk contextual irrelevance at a time when they are needed most.

New interdisciplinary structures and academic programmes that are more appropriate for this century and beyond should be created.

Students and academics must be enabled to work across disciplinary borders and boundaries – at the leading and cutting edge of knowledge.

Across borders means also working collaboratively with society and colleagues globally.

Creativity and innovation needs to be nurtured in the in-between spaces for knowledge breakthroughs.

A variety of strong Masters and PhD programmes – a weakness for the continent – that are professionally and research-focused should be located in these spaces.

Graduate employability in the unfolding new world of work

Seventh, universities must intentionally and in a structured manner engage all employment sectors – public and private – in designing all their curriculum to make it relevant to the changing labour landscapes.

Apprenticeships, internships, work experience, mentorship and attachments must be factored in strongly.  

Universities must also rethink and reimagine teaching and learning in the age of rapidly advancing technologies, including AI.

It is not enough to approach the issue from binaries of contact and online teaching.

Nor to police and punish those students using generative AI.  

It is the intelligent, innovative, and creative combination of modes of teaching and learning that is the frontier to engaging a new generation of students born with smart devices in their hands.

Such an approach is better suited to the unfolding world of work where technology is a powerful force.

Critical thinking and practical skills need to be integrated for work and sustainable lives.

Challenge lead research and innovation will set us free

Eighth, universities must craft new challenge led research and innovation agendas that are directed at using knowledge to address Africa’s  challenges, so it achieves its potential.

Most importantly they must craft these agendas collaboratively with all stakeholders in society.

Society should also challenge universities to be responsive to societal challenges.

To the traditional disciplinary and multidisciplinary research driven by the curiosity of academics must be added interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary challenge led research, which centre co-creation.

These forms of research go beyond curiosity and transcend disciplinary siloes to bring together knowledge from different disciplines in academia and knowledge from outside of the university context.

In this way societal knowledge co-creation to solve real life problems becomes a reality.

This approach while recognizing the premier role of universities in knowledge creation also recognises that universities do not have a monopoly on all knowledge.

A collective co-creation agenda strengthens all institutions and creates a robust knowledge system necessary for sustainable futures.

Positive transformative societal impact

These transformations should create reimagined African universities that in turn transform Africa’s potential, to claim the 21st century and assure its sustainable futures.

For the African knowledge system to be impactful in transforming the continent it requires active ongoing engagement with all sectors of society and policy makers.

It is one thing to create knowledge only for it to be “stuck” in books, journals, patents and conference reports in libraries, it is another for it to be translated into forms in which it can be easily accessed for use.

When the history of Africa’s quest for sustainable futures is written, it must be said that the critical and decisive turn came when Africa created a knowledge system that was distinct, globally comparably to the best, contextually relevant, responsive, creative, and innovative.

Knowledge sovereignty or death!

*Professor Tawana Kupe is a Global Higher Education Strategist, the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Pretoria and former Vice Principal of Wits University in South Africa. The views expressed by Professor Tawana Kupe are not necessarily those of The Bulrushes.

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