Posititioning Universities as Engines of Innovation for Sustainable Development and Transformation

Abstract

Let me begin by thanking CUE and its CEO, Professor Mwenda Ntarangwi, for the singular privilege and honor of inviting me to give this keynote address. I gladly accepted the invitation because the theme of the conference, “Positioning Universities as the nexus of research, innovation and technology transfer for Socioeconomic Transformation” is critical and timely. Also, it speaks to my own interests as a scholar of intellectual history, and as someone who has spent a quarter century as an administrator at six universities in three countries on two continents. Clearly, those of us who studied the humanities and social sciences did not pursue useless subjects as some commentators enamored by vocational and technological education charge; we might have something valuable to say and do about development! Since my appointment as Vice Chancellor at USIU-Africa, I’ve become more keenly aware that the challenges and opportunities facing the higher education globally have a particular inflection on our countries and institutions that require innovative solutions. Like other industries, higher education around the world is undergoing profound transformations, transitions, disruptions, changes, pick your term, as I note in my book, The Transformation of Global Higher Education: 1945-2015, that examines higher education trends and trajectories on every continent over the past 70 years. This is both good and bad news for us in Africa. The bad news is that we can no longer blithely borrow solutions from abroad. The good news is no one has a monopoly on solutions as everyone is striving to devise new ways of organizing and delivering higher education for the extraordinary demands of the 21st century. We have an unprecedented opportunity to invent the future and contribute to the global search for workable models of higher education through serious, systemic, and strategic reflections. The enduring triple dreams of pan-Africanism—self-determination, development, and democracy—find their current articulations in the African Union’s Agenda 2063, various national visions including Kenya’s Vision 2030, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These projects seek realization in the context of the youth bulge, the cruelties of climate change, and the convulsions of disruptive technologies, in a world characterized by social and political polarizations spawned by the relentless march and pulverizations of inequitable globalization. In this presentation, I seek to place our discourses about higher education and development in a comparative global context. I will begin with brief reflections on development. This is an important backdrop to any meaningful discussion about the role of universities as engines of innovation for sustainable development and transformation, the topic of my talk. The bulk of my presentation will focus on the value proposition of university education and the ways in which this is reflected in its products, principally the quality of research and graduates. But to realize and sustain their institutional value, universities need enabling resources, capacities and support from all key internal and external stakeholders.