Universities in developing countries are ignoring potential areas of strength because they’re too focused on imitating successful Anglo-US institutions, a vice chancellor has claimed.
Speaking at the Times Higher Education BRICS & Emerging Economies Universities Summit, held in Moscow on December 3-4, Malegapuru Makgoba, vice chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said universities in his country must become “more African”. “There’s a major debate in South Africa about whether we have any African universities or just universities located in South Africa. Universities must derive their inspiration from the context they find themselves in and reflect the challenges they face in society,” said Prof. Makgoba, an immunology expert.
Prof. Makgoba, who is retiring at the end of 2014 after 10 years in charge of KwaZulu-Natal, says universities in Africa often try to please their former “colonial masters” by producing research and teaching that is relevant mainly in an Anglo-Saxon context. “We want to have the same curriculum, research and laboratories as European universities, but our problems are very different. For instance, we have poverty, crime and corruption in South Africa, but there are no professors of corruption found in our universities — it’s not seen as an area for academic study,” he says.
Prof. Makgoba, who took his D Phil at the University of Oxford, says that academics in Britain have managed to produce world-class research by analysing their own environment and it’s time now for scholars in Africa to do the same. “When Sir Isaac Newton saw that apple fall from the tree, it inspired him — without apple trees, he wouldn’t have discovered gravity,” he explained.
(Excerpted and adatped from Times Higher Education)