Internationalisation and Globalisation of Higher Education: Implications for Africa's Higher Education System

Abstract

While governments are responsible for ensuring that their national education systems adequately meet the human resource needs of their countries, the provision of education -- especially higher education -- is gradually shifting to the private domain and is increasingly commoditised. Amidst these global trends, the higher education sector in Africa remains poorly developed and unable to cope with increasing demand; the reason is partly caused by a focus on primary and secondary education in earlier times, and a lack of focus on the development of a tertiary education sector. Despite excess demand, Sub-Saharan Africa has, on a global basis, the lowest higher education participation rate; preventing the region from providing the specialist knowledge and skills required to support its development. This paper explores global developments in higher education in order to assess opportunities that the global higher education market can provide to Africa to help it overcome low domestic higher education opportunities.