The UNESCO Symposium on Higher Education was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 24th to 27th July at the Ethiopian Airlines Aviation Academy. The key theme of the conference was Internationalization of Higher Education in Africa and same was addressed through a series of high-level panel discussions and interactions with the participants. One of the sessions was specifically devoted to “Collaborations between African HEIs to contribute towards the SDGs”. A major factor that was highlighted (among other classic factors such as research, engagement with local communities, continuing dialogue with stakeholders, collaboration & exchanges) was the promotion of intra-African mobility. It was highlighted that intra-African mobility was a real short-coming as many African institutions were mainly looking to the north for partnerships and as a result, neglected internationalization within Africa.
One keynote speaker highlighted, according to him, the key mistakes that African countries were making while focusing on internationalization. He stressed that in so doing, many countries or Higher Education institutions in Africa were merely copying and pasting what was done by other countries mainly in the developed world in terms of their strategy. His main argument was that internationalization within Africa (what he calls Africanization) was a key step towards strengthening Higher Education Systems in Africa globally. The argument was that a power relationship would still hold when African HEIs partner with those in the North which is not necessarily good for developing countries in the long term. Internationalization of HEIs in Africa has to preserve local contexts, identities, cultures and practices and has to result in the export of these to the global world. The downside of internationalization has also been highlighted, such as increased competition for student recruitment, access to research funds and rat-race for publications. Internationalization activities have also been limited to a handful who have the means to travel abroad (e.g. student exchange).
The internationalization strategy of the University of Mauritius was also presented to the participants of the Masterclass workshop on internationalization and the different components that has been put in place under these strategies. The issue of different secondary educational qualifications within different African countries and their equivalence to meet entry requirements at the University was lengthily discussed and different participants shared their own models and experiences. The moderator highlighted that in the US or UK Universities, they deal with the problem through the Foundation course for African students from those particular countries (who do not have a direct equivalence to match formal entry requirements). While the UNESCO through a presentation regarding conventions for recognition and equivalence of post-secondary educational qualifications in Africa urged countries, who have not yet ratified the convention to do so, it was highlighted that there was a dire need for an African Transnational Qualification Framework that would help address the gaps and harmonize the secondary education qualifications and quality throughout the African community.
The role of Digital Technologies in the internationalization process could not be overlooked and there was a growing consensus among the participants. For a long time, e-learning has been seen as a new form of distance education. However, the emergence of digital technologies, high-performance telecommunications infrastructure has given rise to a completely new dimension to the educational transaction. One speaker coined the idea of having common first year modules for a number of African Universities online to achieve the so-called Africanization of Higher Education. Such modules could be either taught by one lead academic from one University or jointly taught depending on the model in place. Such measures largely made possible by new technologies is a key enabler for internationalization of African universities.
