There is a new book out on Rwanda that, for various reasons, has made quite some “waves”: Michela Wrong’s Do not disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad (published end of March 2021). It is about a controversial topic: the politics of the government of Rwanda, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and President Paul Kagame. The book blurb reads:

Do Not Disturb is a dramatic recasting of the modern history of Africa’s Great Lakes region, an area blighted by the greatest genocide of the twentieth century. This bold retelling, vividly sourced by direct testimony from key participants, tears up the traditional script. The new version examines afresh questions which dog the recent past: Why do so many ex-rebels scoff at official explanations of who fired the missile that killed the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi? Why didn’t the mass killings end when the rebels took control? Why did those same rebels, victory secured, turn so ruthlessly on one another? Michela Wrong uses the story of Patrick Karegeya, once Rwanda’s head of external intelligence and a quicksilver operator of supple charm, to paint the portrait of a modern African dictatorship created in the chilling likeness of Paul Kagame, the president who sanctioned his former friend’s murder.

Wrong also published a Guardian opinion piece a few days ago that begins as follows:

There are moments when the international community’s perception of a leader shifts into a new configuration, often for reasons that can’t be entirely logically explained. Myanmar’s Aung San Sui Kyi reached that tipping point during the Rohingya crisis, Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has been undergoing the same transition since war broke out in Tigray, and the same process is taking place with the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame. Today, he is welcoming the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to Kigali, his spotlessly tidy hillside capital. . .

The piece closes with:

In February, Rwandan officials attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva seemed taken aback by the bluntness of the human rights concerns aired by US and UK delegates. Kagame was not included among the five African presidents invited to Biden’s climate summit in April, and Rwanda was bypassed on Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s virtual visit to Africa. A lot of this recalibration can be explained by the sheer passage of time. Kagame has now been at the helm for 27 years, and such longevity carries its own message. As one development official told me: “Anyone who is in power that long, well, you have to regard them as a dictator, don’t you?”

Like her book on corruption in Kenya, Our Turn to Eat, published back in 2009, Wrong’s new book has been received with enthusiasm in the UK and US. Various high-end webinar and podcast book launches have already been held in, among other places, the UK, the US and South Africa, with, for example, the Royal African Society/SOAS, the Foreign Press Association USA, the South African Institute of International Affairs, or Public Affairs Books (see also for other launch talks here, here, here, here, here, here and here; further reviews and launches are publicised at fast speed). The book was much praised by various launch hosts and speakers. On one event page one can read: “Near the end of this episode, host of the Departures podcast Robert Amsterdam tells his guest, ‘This is perhaps the best book I’ve ever read on Africa, and I’ve read a lot of books.’ Such is the esteem we hold for Michela Wrong.”

And one can find headlines like this Reuters one in the ongoing launch phase of the book.

So, there is great interest in the book. The cover carries praises by John Le Carré who assesses the book to be “A withering assault on the murderous Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame – very driven, very impassionate”, and, according to the longer review available online, “a melancholy love song to the last dreams of the African Great Lakes”. Archbishop Desmond Tutu evaluates the text to be an “extremely important and profoundly disturbing book”. More appraisals are listed here with the Rwandan government being described as a “murderous” and “profoundly criminal regime”, and Kagame as a “ruthless dictator”.

Further, Edward Clay, who was the UK’s Ambassador to Rwanda from 1994 to 1996, the British High Commissioner in Uganda from 1993 to 1997 and in Kenya from 2001 to 2005, writes in the last paragraph of his review: “Wrong concludes with reminders of why her book’s title is apt. The heroic days of the RPF have yielded to duplicity, treachery, betrayal and assassination. Why did those who later fell out with the regime serve so long as its defenders, apologists and executives; and why is the obscure Kagame of 1990 still standing tall thirty years on?” Finally, at a book launch hosted by Ian Williams, President of the Foreign Press Association USA, he asks Wrong towards the end of their talk: “Is there hope, is Kagame going to appear before the International tribunal?” Clay’s book review was published on DemocracyinAfrica.org and assessed to be a “great read” by scholar Nic Cheeseman, the website’s founder. Cheeseman also expressed in a tweet: “Can’t wait to hear Michela Wrong talk about her new hard hitting book on Rwanda”. (bold in original). Do not Disturb was the website’s “Book of the Month” earlier this year.

Great read! Edward Clay, former UK High Commissioner to Uganda and Kenya, reviews Michela Wrong's new book on Rwanda, Do Not Disturb. The latest in the excellent #BookClub series over at @AfricaDemocracy. Check it out now. @michelawrong #DoNotDisturb https://t.co/xyxutTklMJ

— Prof Nic Cheeseman (@Fromagehomme) March 23, 2021

Can't wait to hear Michela Wrong talk about her new hard hitting book on Rwanda – Do Not Disturb – on the next Resistance Bureau show on Tuesday 9 March. Join us to hear its key messages. @michelawrong @public_affairs #Rwanda #Kagame

Register Here: https://t.co/r7UqK2ABIz https://t.co/zx0kVhcGVv

— Prof Nic Cheeseman (@Fromagehomme) March 4, 2021

The book has received criticisms too and they include charges of naivety, one-sidedness, partisanship, propaganda, demonisation/character assassination of Kagame, revisionism, and racism (see e.g. here, here, here and here). In the first part of his three-part review, Ugandan analyst and journalist Andrew Mwenda writes that Wrong’s book continues with a line of analysis that pathologises African political actors. The matter here is state violence (particularly extra-territorial killings). Mwenda argues that this political phenomenon needs to be analysed as a matter of foreign policy choices (and, generally, political repertoire) not as a psychological/cultural phenomenon. Mwenda further argues that these practices are analysed, interpreted and judged differently by many Western scholars, depending on whether the protagonists are Western or African leaders:

Many countries have always acted extra-territorially depending on their judgement of the nature of the threats they faced. During the cold war, the Americans, French, British, and Russians intervened in other countries using coups, civil wars, and targeted assassinations. The Americans attempted to assassinate Castro 76 times yet he never sought to attack the USA, just to be independent of it. After 9/11, the America government adopted a policy of preemptive war to any threat anywhere. The American state has carried out coups, assassinations or sponsored civil wars and terrorist activities in Iraq, Syria, El Salvador, Guatemala, Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Grenada, Vietnam, Libya, etc. Would Wrong accuse any U.S. president of being a violent psychopath?

This is the problem I have with many Western scholars, journalists and diplomats. When something is done by their countries, they focus on the national policy that informs the decision, not the personality of the leader who made it. They can criticise the policy but rarely do they attribute it to some mental or psychological pathology of the leader. When the same thing is done by an African leader, they ignore the circumstances that informed such a decision and accuse the individual leader of madness or psychopathy. I hate to use the word racism. But if this is not racism, what is it? Wrong . . . presents such policy [Rwanda’s extraterritorial operations] as the product of . . . Kagame’s psychopathy.

Mwenda here opens up the question of comparison about political violence in general and state violence (and state crimes) in particular: how does the Rwandan case of (especially extraterritorial) state violence compare globally — and particularly vis-à-vis Western states such as the US — on a continuum of “degrees” of state violence abroad?

The racism charge in the debate emerges, amongst others, due to the opening chapter of Wrong’s book, which she has reproduced on the Lit Hub website. It has been commented on, in particular by Mwenda (see also e.g. here) and reads as follows:

Rwandans kept telling me that deceiving others, being economical with the truth, was something their community reveled in, positively prided itself upon. Especially when dealing with Western outsiders. A proof of superiority, not shame, when successfully achieved. So much so, that the practice had worked itself into the language. . . . One of Rwanda’s prime ministers, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, shocked the head of a UN peacekeeping force by telling him: “Rwandans are liars and it is a part of their culture. From childhood they are taught to not tell the truth, especially if it can hurt them.”. . . A successor told me the same thing over coffee in a Brussels hotel lobby many years later: “In Rwanda, lying is an art form. When you, as a white journalist, leave a meeting, they will be congratulating themselves: ‘We took her for a ride.’ Lying is the rule, rather than the exception.” It was an accusation tossed into conversations with Tutsis and Hutus, Rwandans and Ugandans, diplomats and military men, lawyers, and journalists. “You spoke to so-and-so? Oh, he’s the most terrible liar.”

Wrong details some of her views regarding political violence/qurium/theelephant.info/culture.html in the case she takes into focus in a talk here (e.g. min 8:57 onwards, and especially min 17:52 onwards), and also offers a comparative commentary regarding Rwanda vs the West/US here (min 4:33 onwards). Wrong reacts to the criticism concerning the points about “lying . . . as part of Rwandan culture” and “culture of deceit” in a book launch event in June hosted by Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor, Channel 4 News (see min 16:19 onwards).

The Royal African Society which co-hosted a book launch back in April received a petition titled “Show that racism has no place at the Royal African Society”. Signed by 1099 people, it notes:

We are shocked to see that the Royal African Society are providing a platform to Michela Wrong. Ms Wrong has a history of using racist and offensive language when discussing the African continent and its people. Wrong’s most recent work, Do Not Disturb, is saturated with offensive stereotypes and underpinned by her argument that in Rwanda, everyone is a liar. In her introduction, she writes about Rwandans: “Deceiving others was something their community revelled in” and “In Rwanda, lying is an art form”. These are long-established tropes which were used in the past to demonise Tutsis. One of the architects of the genocide, Theoneste Bagosora, in his 30-page booklet inciting hatred towards the Tutsi said: “The Tutsis are the masters of deceit” and “Inveterate liars”. Wrong also quotes Ewart Grogan. Grogan, who Wrong refers to as an ‘Adventurer’, was in fact a colonialist who worked for Cecil Rhodes and was convicted for beating Africans in the street. She makes no mention of this, or the fact that Grogan said that in fact all Africans are “fundamentally inferior”, choosing instead to select his quote: “Of all the liars in Africa, I believe the people of Ruanda are by far the most thorough” to support her contention that Rwandans could not be trusted. The neo-colonial undertones to her work are barely concealed.

This is not the first time that Wrong has used outdated, offensive, and unnecessarily graphic language when discussing the continent. In one of Wrong’s previous works, In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz, she said: “Africa, a continent that has never disappointed in its capacity to disappoint: Hutu mothers killing their children by Tutsi fathers in Rwanda; the self-styled Emperor Bokassa ordering his cook to serve up his victims’ bodies in Central African Republic; Liberia’s rebels gleefully videotaping the torture of a former president”. In the same book, Wrong stated that: “There were more recent signs that La Sape was being infected by the ‘slob’ look embraced by America’s blacks, all outsized jeans, baggy dungarees and shorts that drop to calf level”. At other points, she paints a picture of Rwandans as a people conditioned to kill from birth. When describing a typical Rwandan “peasant”, she suggests that “If instructed to kill you, he may well pick up a machete, because the value of obedience has been impressed on him since birth and, above all, no one wants to stand out from the crowd”. Her contempt for Rwandans, who in her mind are all one and the same, is plain to see.

We are shocked that in 2021, and in the era where racism and discrimination in all its forms is being challenged around the world, these views are published and promoted without challenge. . . . We call on the Royal African Society to immediately review their decision to provide Ms Wrong a platform and commit to challenging her racist and offensive views about Rwandans and Africans more widely.

The written reply of the Society’s Director, Nicholas Westcott, to the petitioners includes these lines (emailed to us by Westcott with permission to publish):

We are very conscious of the sensitivity of many issues in Rwanda’s history, and especially the question of the genocide.  I have read Ms Wrong’s book (and indeed her previous books), and I feel your selective quotations distort her message and misrepresent her views. There is certainly criticism of the current government, but not in a form that can justifiably be described as racist. The meeting we are holding to discuss her book is open to the public, so those who disagree with Ms Wrong’s views are welcome to participate and express their own opinion, raise questions or explain their disagreements. . . .

We do not provide a review of the book. Rather we wish to problematise two headlines of the book reviews in the UK press — in the Times and the Spectator. In the review title there is reference to Kagame as a “monster”. The titles read: “Do Not Disturb by Michela Wrong review — the making of a monster” and “The making of a monster: Paul Kagame’s bloodstained past”. The pieces are written by high-profile writers Ian Birrell and Nicholas Shakespeare. Birrell also uses the “monster” characterisation in a tweet about the piece and, in the review, employs the “savagery” term in this passage: “She exposes a more complex and tawdry story, showing the savagery that lies below the smooth surface of a regime hailed by many Western admirers.” and writes that “this gruesome regime . . . lies blatantly on everything . . . .”

Birrell’s text reads:

Yet this interwoven story of two fascinating men is much more than a smart device to tell the tale of another African rebel leader who festered in power, even if it is a riveting account of raw power turned rancid. Wrong, the author of fine books on Eritrea, Kenya and the Congo, challenges the tatty conventional narrative on the 1994 genocide, with its simplistic notion of triumphant Tutsi good guys led by the heroic national saviour returning from exile. She exposes a more complex and tawdry story, showing the savagery that lies below the smooth surface of a regime hailed by many Western admirers.

The pages are laced with irony since Karegeya was a key player in creating the deceptive façade of a democratic Rwanda, before he fled and rebranded himself as an opposition leader. “When they say these dictators and monsters are created by those around them, I think it’s true,” confesses another key figure in exile. “We had a hand in the making of a monster.”

The making of a monster – my ⁦@thetimes⁩ review of ⁦@michelawrong⁩’s superb new dissection of Kagame’s bloodstained regime in Rwandahttps://t.co/fv8mjADNnR

— Ian Birrell (@ianbirrell) March 20, 2021

The book offers searing indictment of naive western politicians and gullible aid groups that appease this gruesome regime in desperation to find a poster child for their policies of spraying cash around the planet, ignoring how it lies blatantly on everything from human rights to poverty data. Wrong also points to the racism that lurks behind the idea Africans need a strongman to keep them in order.

We do not know whether the authors or editors of the book reviews came up with the “monster” titles. In any case we find the “monster” headline disturbing (though not surprising given the racism in part of the UK press) and worth analytical attention. We look in particular at sections of the press and non-academic writing but arguably, the issue is wider and deeper. We have for various reasons become interested by the reception of the book in the press — and in academic and policy circles generally — in the past week, one of the reasons being that this reception is deeply political at various levels. They are “events” (and thus insightful “data”) in the unfolding politics of Do not Disturb. What is discussed and judged (and reframed) there is arguably not just Rwanda, Kagame and the RPF. The book and the fast-mounting debate relate to wider political issues and discourses: representations of Africa; media; Western imperialism, foreign policy and aid; the West’s self-image; North-South relations; Africa rising; African statehood/sovereignty; political violence; knowledge production; the relationship between scholarship/academia/media/experts and foreign policy, for example in the UK and US, and the silences, taboos and no-goes in part of Western scholarship, media commentary and reporting, particularly about state/political violence (or in Wrong’s terms “political murder”) of Western imperialist countries (i.e. the Western empire). Wrong’s writing speaks to some of these foreign policy/international relations issues and the reviews and headlines pick it up (“the world” ignores/wakes up, etc.). Our theme of interest is thus also how Western media, academia and expert circles do politics and the respective authors’ relationship with the foreign policies of their governments (in this case vis-à-vis African countries and governments). We realise that this is a theme that has a long history, but we think it deserves renewed attention as the geopolitical and inter-imperialist conflicts once again intensify, and as the media landscape changes in a very particular way.

Notably, Kagame is not the first post-independence leader from the continent to be characterised as a monster by the Western media in prominently displayed headlines and/or article-summary lines. Instead, he is the latest in a longer list of “monsters” that goes far back in history. We found monster-calling with regard to leaders ranging from Idi Amin, Muammar Gaddafi, Charles Taylor (see also here re. Chucky Taylor), and Robert Gabriel Mugabe, with many in-between. Mugabe: Monster or Hero?  one France24 headline reads. Robert Mugabe: Hero and Monster, titles a Canadian outlet. And the UK’s Telegraph used the monster characterisation for years in some of the Mugabe headlines. Just a few months ago, The Times referred to Amin as a monster in the summary line of a review of the new book by Mark Leopold: Idi Amin: The Story of Africa’s Icon of Evil (for a review see here). Joseph Kony has received monster headlines too, e.g. in The Sun, and in an in-text passage in an Observer report about the documentary film Kony 2012. See also a book titled Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, by Jason K. Stearns. Amin, Gaddafi and Mobutu (and Jean-Bédel Bokassa) also made it onto the list of “monsters” in a book titled Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators, by Jay Nordlinger.

It is against this background that we want to make very few basic points about “the West” and its apparent African Monsters syndrome. We want to start by posing some questions (while leaving them largely open for debate): why have some Western press outlets, throughout the decades, referred to some leaders in Africa (but also in other regions such as Latin America) as monsters? Why do these outlets — and their respective writers and editors — mobilise the “monster” characterisation when they write about other countries’ leaders that a part of “the West” (i.e. sections of political actors, commentators, etc.) views, for whatever reasons, in a critical light? And what might be the commonality between those leaders from around the globe who make it into the infamous box of “monsters”? What are the mechanisms that produce the monster category in politics? Why have some African political leaders that are eventually labelled “monsters” often been labelled “heroes” first (Kagame and Mugabe for example)? What has changed in the politics of these cases that informs the change in narrative, image and label? The discourse we bring into focus is generated in countries with intense geopolitical interests in African countries and so matters of narrative politics and control come in. It is a ubiquitous US, UK and Western European formation that we have in mind when we refer to “the West’.

In any case we find the “monster” headline disturbing (though not surprising given the racism in part of the UK press).

Before we start: yes, there are also headlines that refer to former US president Trump as a monster (e.g. here or here, and he was called monster by an official; see also here re. George W. Bush; and here or here for Barack Obama, or for Jair Bolsonaro, here and here). And the characterisation is not used just by “right-wing” outlets. But, arguably, overall these are somewhat different cases, in different contexts. One may debate in future what the commonality and connection is in these global “monster” cases, across these regions. What explains the choices of the editors and writers? The immediate question at hand, however, might rather be: do the Times/Spectator editors who run the Kagame-monster-headlines refer to some Western leaders as monsters too, or do they only use the characterisations in texts about non-Western leaders? Our focus of analysis is the West and its African “monsters-in-government”, i.e. the reporting, analysing and headlining about leaders from the continent (and by extension in the Third World/Global South; Fidel Castro and Nicolas Maduro, for example, have also had their share of   “monster” headlines).

The “hero or . . .” binary also features here (and the question is why we repeatedly find these binaries in such headlines).

That said, let’s examine one relatively recent case of the West’s African Monsters syndrome: Zimbabwe’s former president Robert Gabriel Mugabe, now deceased. For years, Mugabe — who was at one time happy to implement the policies of the IMF and World Bank — was transformed into the despised tyrant of the continent, a “monster” determined to unleash “mob savagery” against law abiding (white) Zimbabweans (The Daily Telegraph, 10 August 2001).

In the early 2000s, TV programmes and newspaper articles were full of the “catastrophe” for white Zimbabwe, and Mugabe was labelled the killer-in-chief – a man who once knew his place, he was quickly transformed over a period of a couple of years from 1999 to 2001 into the very embodiment of the continent’s monsters.

For the next twenty years and until he died on 6 September 2019, coverage in the media and popular history books were unanimous about Mugabe’s role in Zimbabwe’s plunge. The devastation to white farmers in the country, with hysterical war veterans or “mobs” rampaging mindlessly through the capital, Harare, had a single cause: Mugabe’s megalomania and an insatiable craving for power. Many “serious” studies were dragged into the metanarrative. Dinner with Mugabe by Heidi Holland, published in 2009, told the story of a “freedom fighter” who became a “tyrant”. Even reviews of the balanced account of Zimbabwe’s crisis by Richard Bourne, Catastrophe, which came out in 2011, were replete with praise for charting Mugabe’s lunacy. At the time, the BBC’s James Robbins explained how the book “expertly lays bare Mugabe’s terrifying abuse of power — his path from liberator to destroyer — as well as charting the failures by Britain and the world to challenge him effectively.”

Across the US and UK, some commentators, academics and politicians referred to Mugabe as a madman “on the loose”, and spoke of a crisis “driven by one man’s ruthless campaign”. In the West’s wild imaginings, Zimbabwe became a symbol of the need to reorder Africa. When Mugabe was metamorphosing into a monster of continental proportions in the early part of the century, the then UK Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw (of the Labour party), insisted that it was “our” responsibility not to “let a great continent go down”.

By the end of the first decade of this century, Amazon was listing seven biographies of Mugabe written in the previous few years. Each, in a different way, promised to get to the “man behind the monster”. Today on Amazon’s site, the list of Mugabe “monster biographies” is literally endless — an industry has grown up around this popular imaginary that defies even our wildest exaggerations.

Why does it matter? The core of our argument is not knee-jerk support for political figures on the continent demonised by the monster characterisation. Instead, we see the terms used in headlines of reviews of Wrong’s book, and others, as a default racism — apparently still so deeply embedded in the minds of the respective writers/editors that they are unable to see how they simply slot into popular and racists assumptions about Africa and its people. The language, tools and analyses of these commentators are unreformed and colonial in origin. The monster characterisation dehumanises African leaders, and arguably their families, communities and societies too.

There is another dimension to it which we can only sketch out in brief here, but hope it can be further debated by others in future. It links to pieces that were published a short while ago by Jimi Adesina, Andrew Fisher and Nimi Hoffman, and by Yusuf Serunkuma. These pieces and the issues they raise made a symposium on the issue seem pertinent and an email was drafted and sent to a colleague along the following lines:

Given the Adesina et al. & Serunkuma pieces, African studies might have at hand an emerging debate regarding the link between Western scholarship/scholars and Western politics/foreign policy agendas (in the context of empire/imperialism/imperialist rivalries); a debate about the political character/identity of African studies – historical and current dynamics. See as an example also the declaration of some Western scholars of postelection 2021 Uganda as a test case for US/UK/Biden, and the calls there for these governments to harden their stand vis-à-vis the Ugandan government. What are the theoretical stances, intellectual projects, purposes and politics behind such calls? For US empire to act/govern “better”? What do such interventions – that are arguably part of a large sample (that includes respective social media postings) tell us about the political character of this section of African studies? How do they sit in a longer historical line of African studies and geopolitics, empire/imperialism & western interests, power, hegemony, ideology and intervention? How do scholars reflect on their role in Western policy/empire (or see it as “no role”?)?  Does such a debate make sense? Would it be of use?

The issue here is one that Serunkuma’s latest pieces clearly help to bring into focus: to what extent (and when, why, how, etc.) do the analyses that come out of part of the expert/commentator/academic/media community reflect the foreign policy positions of their governments (i.e. are thus in a particular way political).

How does this relationship between scholars/journalists and government/policy shape the analyses (i.e. matters of focus, argument, evidence, etc.) and modes of knowledge production?

How does that relationship shape scholarly and media controversies, such as the ones around Rwanda? And in what way does existing scholarship (and power relations etc.) inhibit a more extensive, critical debate about Western foreign policy (and discourses and narratives), vis-a-vis governments and leaders on the continent?

And does, as Serunkuma reminds us, a debate proper about “monsters” in the West not emerge because that debate does not get facilitated and supported (also via book launches and reviews), but rather is sidelined, by mainstream media and scholarship? In short, what are the taboos of Western mainstream scholarship and media and might there be a link to how the “monster” debate has unfolded, in the past and now? We cannot go deeper into this issue now, but note that some of these issues about sections of Western scholarship, scholars and analysts get also discussed, for example, in a recent intervention by Moses Khisa, in some twitter posts earlier this year by Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, Yusuf Serunkuma, Godwin Murunga and Jimi Adesina, and in the Editorial philosophy statement of the Pan African Review, amongst others.

Further then with the racism argument: Racist ideas are not new. For years analysts have lamented the “coup, war, famine syndrome” — that the continent only surfaces into Western news coverage, or into popular books, when it faces one of these catastrophes. As a result, no coherent image of Africa or its people can be narrated outside these categories/tropes – the continent simply does not exist without its wars, famines and monsters. These are not simply justifications for foreign interventions in the continent, but long held racist ideas about Africa’s barbarity.

The book and the fast-mounting debate relate to wider political issues and discourses.

Early European intrusion into the continent was justified, set-up and carried out to rid Africa of its pre-existing barbarity – its natural tendency to chaos and disorder. The cases are too extensive to cover in this piece, so we will limit ourselves to two examples. Algeria was invaded by France in 1830, and engaged in a war of pacification as Algerians fought the invaders for decades. Officially, the country was conquered in 1848 but in reality, there were hardly any years without fighting between 1830 and 1871.

The invasion was conducted – officially – in the name of civilisation and against native barbarity. The outcome was truly monstrous. After almost a century of French occupation, schooling in a largely literate pre-French society had been decimated by 1950, with UNESCO reporting 90 per cent illiteracy among the “natives”.  A population of 6 million in 1830 had collapsed to less than 3.5 million in 1852 as millions were forced off the land, and fertile agricultural regions were taken over to cultivate grapes for the export of wine to mainland France. Algerians were labelled “primitive” and unable to appreciate French civilisation, their behaviour pathologised as brutal and monstrous (Frantz Fanon wrote about how this impacted mental health – a process, he described in his medical lexicon, of recerebralising Algerians, literally reshaping their brains and thinking). When Algerians fought back in the 1950s, demanding independence, this was once more regarded as an expression of their primitive nature, and their innately violent character.

The extent of the devastation following the first decades of French occupation led even the pro-imperialist French politician and historian Alexis de Tocqueville to note that colonisation had made Muslim society more barbaric. In other words, the society was already barbaric, and the French had only deepened its savagery.

The language, tools and analyses of these commentators are unreformed and colonial in origin.

The story of European civilisation conquering African barbarism and its associated monsters was common across the decades of colonial occupation and adventure on the continent. Sometimes the language did not always stick to the barbaric script. Take the Congo. Over a period of twenty years, Henry Morton Stanley – the 19th century imperialist adventurer par excellence – helped to establish what became the murderous Belgian empire in the Congo. As Stanley rampaged through the Congo in the 1870s and 1880s, he saw great opportunity for profit and imagined riches everywhere he turned, but the enemy this time was sloth. “In every cordial-faced aborigine whom I meet I see a promise of assistance to me in the redemption of himself from the state of unproductiveness in which he at present lives”. By 1884, Stanley boasted to King Leopold’s court that he had 500 treaties with chiefs and Congolese headmen. The Berlin Conference that was held at the end of that year and into early 1885 divided up Africa among European nations and officially recognised Leopold as the head of the International African Association of the Congo, soon renamed the Congo Free State.

The stated aim of the new Belgian colony – loudly proclaimed by newspapers and embedded writers – was to abolish slavery (a war was going to be fought against Arab slave traders) and to bring civilisation. In the name of this war against barbarism, a regime of utter brutality commenced. The combination of famine, forced labour and systematic violence wiped out millions; according to the historian Adam Hochschild, the population fell from over 20 million in 1891 to 8.5 million in 1911.

Why is this history important? It is our contention that the language of colonialism has remained a determined and fixed feature of mainstream accounts of Africa. Racist imagery of Africa, its barbaric people – who live under a thin veneer of civilisation – remains unchanged, and essentially monstrous. The result of this constant narrative, and its linguistic tools, is to pulverise Africa, to keep its people and politics in a tight hold, and, of course, to justify intervention, provide racist analyses and condescension. For the dominant European narrative, Africans need to be categorised and controlled – this is how it’s done.

To conclude, the debate about these wider and case-specific matters is ongoing, for example in the critical accounts of Wrong’s book and the endorsing reviews. And its continuation is vital. In the meantime, perhaps, the UK press could consider a self-imposed ban on having monster characterisations in its reporting and headlining.

Post-script

An Indian outlet changed the original title of a conversation piece by Roger Southall about Mugabe from a monster-free headline into a with-monster headline.

Original

And the headline on the website in India.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the systemic deficiencies and inequalities in healthcare systems, economies, businesses and educational institutions around the world. African universities have been particularly affected. What does this portend for their future and for the production, consumption and dissemination of scholarly knowledges?

Here I argue that universities face various alternative and overlapping futures ranging from restoration, to evolution, to transformation. These interlinked scenarios encompass every aspect of university affairs from the modalities of teaching and learning, financial models, leadership skills, and institutional governance systems to modes of external engagement. In this context, it is critical to interrogate the desirable transformative trajectories for African universities.

Constructing new futures for African universities and knowledge economies entails institutional, intellectual, and ideological struggles and negotiations, and different ways of studying and assessing the value proposition of universities not only for students and other internal stakeholders, but also for African societies and diasporas in their complex national and transnational dimensions, articulations, and intersections.

As a historian, I trust you will appreciate if I begin by revisiting the agenda for African higher education set at the First African Higher Education Summit held in Dakar, Senegal, in March 2015. The Summit identified the challenges and opportunities for African universities in the realisation of the African Union’s Agenda 2063, which remains as pressing as ever and, indeed, is even more imperative in the coming post-COVID-19 world. Secondly, I will briefly review the challenges exposed and exacerbated by the pandemic. Finally, I will outline the agenda for reform and transformation in four key areas: digitalisation, leadership, institutional cultures, and financing.

Revisiting the agenda of the Dakar Summit

The African Union’s Agenda 2063 provides “a blueprint and master plan for transforming Africa into the global powerhouse of the future. It is the continent’s strategic framework that aims to deliver on its goal for inclusive and sustainable development and is a concrete manifestation of the pan-African drive for unity, self-determination . . . .” Education is indispensable for the realisation of Agenda 2063 in so far as promoting integrated, inclusive, innovative, structural, and sustainable development requires building strong human capital, research systems, and robust collective identities and civic values.

The Dakar Summit sought “to create a continental multi-stakeholders’ platform to identify strategies for transforming the African higher education sector” in pursuit of Agenda 2063. I was commissioned to write the Framing Paper for the Summit and help draft the Declaration and Action Plan. In the paper, I provided a broad overview of the historical development of African higher education from ancient times to the colonial era to the post-independence period.

The latter is characterised by three trends, namely, expansion, crisis and reform. In 1959, on the verge of Africa’s “year of independence” in 1960 when 17 countries achieved their freedom from colonial rule, there were only 76 universities across Africa, mostly concentrated in South Africa, Egypt, and parts of West Africa. The number rose to 170 in 1970, 294 in 1980, 446 in 1990, 784 in 2000, 1,431 in 2010, and 1,682 in 2018. Enrolments rose from 0.74 million in 1970 to 1.7 million in 1980, 2.8 million in 1990, 6.1 million in 2000, 11.4 million in 2010, and 14.7 million in 2017.

As rapid as this growth was, Africa remained with the lowest levels of higher education institutions and tertiary enrolments, which stood at 8.9 per cent  of the world’s 18,772 higher education institutions (Asia had 37 per cent, followed by Europe with 21.9 per cent, North America 20.4 per cent, Latin America and the Caribbean 12 per cent), and 6.6 per cent  of the world’s 220.7 million students. Forty-five per cent of the African students were in Northern Africa. To put it more graphically, Indonesia had nearly as many students in higher education institutions as the whole of sub-Saharan Africa (7.98 million to 8.03 million).

Enrolment ratios tell the story differently. In 2017, the world’s average enrolment ratio was 37.88 per cent, compared to 8.98 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa and 33.75 per cent in Northern Africa. Kenya’s stood at 11.66 per cent in 2016. For the high- income countries it was 77.13 per cent, for upper-middle-income countries 52.07 per cent, for the middle-income countries 35.59 per cent, and for lower- middle-income countries 24.41 per cent. The proverbial development case of South Korea is instructive. As pundits never tire of pointing out, in 1960 the country’s level of development was comparable to that of some African countries: its enrolment rate in 2017 was 93.78 per cent! And China, the emerging colossus of the world economy, had a rate of 51.01 per cent. Put simply, not enough Africans are going to university.

To put it more graphically, Indonesia had nearly as many students in higher education institutions as the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.

The second trend I discussed in the Framing Paper was the massive crisis of structural adjustment in the lost decades of the 1980s and 1990s. The rationales and models that had undergirded them changed in the maelstrom of the world economic crisis and the rise of neo-liberalism following the end of the long global postwar boom and the demise of the Keynesian welfare state in the global North and the developmental state in the global South. The impact on African higher education was devastating. It was expressed in declining state funding, falling instructional standards, declining facilities, shrinking wages, and low faculty morale. Academics increasingly resorted to consultancies or they became part of the “brain drain” as they sought refuge in other sectors at home or in universities abroad.

This was followed by the third trend from the 2000s as many African economies resumed the growth of the early post-independence years and democratisation spread as struggles for the “second independence” intensified. The reform agenda raised and focused on seven sets of issues that I cannot elaborate on because of space constraints. First, there was the need to re-examine the philosophical foundations and nationalist objectives of African higher education in an era of neo-liberalism and knowledge economies.

Second, African higher education institutions were confronted with the question of how to deal with their changing demographics and the demands for equity, diversity and inclusion based on the social inscriptions of gender, ethnicity, class, religion, etc. Third, the question of privatisation and its effects rose to the top of the policy and public agenda as public institutions were increasingly privatised, private institutions exploded and overtook public ones, and for-profit-institutions expanded. Fourth, the challenges of governance and accountability became increasingly apparent.

Fifth, financial pressures intensified as public funding declined, cost sharing measures were developed, and conditions of work in terms of salaries declined, forcing faculty to indulge in income generation activities including consultancies and adjuncting. The result was low research productivity, poor staff morale, institutional conflicts, and declining quality of education. Many African universities became glorified high schools. Sixth, demands grew for accountability through the quality assurance movement from the ever-expanding stakeholders of higher education. Finally, the perennial struggle between indigenisation and internationalisation for Africa’s higher education institutions and knowledge production systems entered a new phase as globalisation accelerated.

Put simply, not enough Africans are going to university.

The paper noted some of the key global developments African universities had to grapple with. Four stood out. First, was the unbundling of the systems developed after World War II including the erosion of universities’ monopoly over research and credentialing as new entrepreneurial providers and research institutions sponsored by business, non-governmental organisations, and other agencies emerged. Second, was the disruptive and transformative impact of technology in all aspects of university activities from teaching, to research, to operations and provision of services. Third, there were fundamental shifts taking place in the global political economy in terms of hegemonies and hierarchies and in the nature and future of jobs that challenged traditional curricula and pedagogies. Fourth, new forms of intra- and inter-institution competition and collaboration were emerging within and across countries, increasingly sanctified and reproduced by rankings that regulated global academic capitalism.

I made six recommendations for the Summit. First, how to match growth, or massification with quality. Second, strategies for improving financing and management. Third, how to promote the articulation, harmonisation and quality assurance in Africa’s higher education systems that needed greater horizontal and vertical differentiation and diversification. Fourth, modalities to promote institutional autonomy and improve governance. Fifth, enhancing research and innovation. Sixth, strengthening beneficial internationalisation and diaspora mobilisation.

These recommendations found their way into the Summit Declaration and Action Plan, which identified eight priorities. I will quote each priority as described in the heading.

1. We call for an ambitious commitment of various stakeholders to expand higher education, including, achieving through concomitant investments in academic staff, infrastructure, and facilities by the state, private sector, and society at large, a higher education enrolment ratio of 50%…
2. Promote diversification, differentiation, and harmonization of higher education systems at the national, institutional and continental/regional levels by African countries to enable consolidation and assure the quality of educational provision against locally, regionally, and internationally agreed benchmarks of excellence.
3. Increase investment in higher education to facilitate development, promote stability, enhance access and equity; develop, recruit and retain excellent academic staff and pursue cutting-edge research and provision of high quality teaching. Appropriate investments are required at institutional, national, regional, and international levels.
4. African higher education institutions shall commit themselves to the pursuit of excellence in teaching and learning, research and scholarship, public service and provision of solutions to the development challenges and opportunities facing African peoples across the continent. Key actions are required by all stakeholders and levels to assure quality, relevance, and excellence.
5. Commit to building capacity in Research, Science, Technology, and Innovation.
6. Pursue national development through business, higher education and graduate employability: Despite the rapid expansion of higher education enrollments, there are serious concerns about the ability of Africa’s universities to produce the kinds of graduates who can drive the continent forward.
7. Nation building and democratic citizenship: As enshrined in the relevant sections of African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, 1981 and in the AU’s Agenda 2063, the continent seeks to deepen the culture of good governance, democratic values, gender equality, respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law.
8. Mobilize the Diaspora: Develop a 10/10 program that sponsors 1,000 scholars in the African diaspora across all disciplines every year, for 10 years, to African universities and colleges for collaboration in research, curriculum development, and graduate student teaching and mentoring.”

Challenges exposed and exacerbated by the pandemic

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 forced universities around the world to confront unprecedented challenges that simultaneously exposed and exacerbated existing deficiencies and dysfunctions. Six stand out. First, in terms of transitioning from face to face to remote teaching and learning using online platforms. Second, managing severely strained finances. Third, ensuring the physical and mental health of students, faculty and staff. Fourth, reopening campuses as safely and as effectively as possible. Fifth, planning for a sustainable post-pandemic future. Sixth, contributing to the capacities of government and society in resolving the multiple dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Universities in Africa were among the most affected and least able to manage the multi-pronged crises because of their pre-existing capacity challenges that centred on ten dimensions, namely, institutional supply, financial resources, human capital, research output, physical and technological infrastructures, leadership and governance, academic cultures, quality of graduates, patterns of internationalisation, and global rankings.

The first refers to the inadequate number of universities on the continent noted earlier. The second concerns inadequate financing, declining public investment, and limited philanthropic support for higher education. The third is about the insufficient availability of faculty and lessening attractiveness of academic careers because of the devaluation of academic labour. The fourth points to low levels of research funding and productivity. The fifth alludes to the poor state and maintenance of physical and technological infrastructures.

The sixth touches on external interference and politicisation of university executive appointments, corporatisation, and lack of leadership development opportunities. The seventh suggests growing social conflicts with the pluralisation of internal and external constituencies and erosion of academic freedom. The eighth signifies persistent mismatches between graduates and the needs of the economy that results in high levels of unemployability. The ninth implies the durability of coloniality, intellectual dependency, and unequal international engagements. The tenth indicates the low standing of African universities in world rankings, notwithstanding the problems with rankings as instruments of global academic capitalism.

Universities in Africa were among the most affected and least able to manage the multi-pronged crises because of their pre-existing capacity.

Some of these institutional deficits directly affected the ability of universities to manage the pandemic and to plan for the post-pandemic future. Most crucial are the technological, financial, and research capacities, and the state of institutional cultures and leadership. Many African universities suffered from limited digital infrastructure, capacity, and connectivity, which made it difficult for them to transition online for education, research and administration. The digital divide was evident among and within countries and institutions in terms of access to broadband, electronic gadgets, data costs, digital literacy and preparedness for administrators, faculty, staff and students. Digital inequalities reflected and reinforced the prevailing differentiations of class, gender, age, race, location, disability, and other social markers.

The technological challenges were compounded by worsening financial strains. University revenues from auxiliary services plummeted following campus closures; student enrolments and ability to pay tuition dropped sharply as economies went into recession and unemployment for parents or guardians rose; government funding declined; and philanthropic donations fell and were increasingly diverted to emergency healthcare. Universities were forced to undertake severe budget cuts including job furloughs, reductions in salaries and pensions, suspension of capital projects and renegotiation of service contracts. Some stared at the brink of bankruptcy and permanent closure. Under such circumstances, new investments in electronic infrastructures were difficult to support and sustain.

The financial crisis was of course not confined to African or developing countries. It was a global phenomenon as evident in numerous reports from UNESCO, the European University Association, International Association of Universities, Association of Commonwealth Universities, and African Association of Universities. Depressing stories on the loss of millions of jobs in universities and other draconian cost containment measures including salary reductions, suspension of pensions and other benefits, increased workload, merging and elimination of some departments, outsourcing of more and more services were reported in the academic and national media in developed and developing countries alike, such as—to mention those that I read every day—University World News, Times Higher Education, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, and The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and closer to home the Daily Nation and The Standard. Similar reports have been produced by consultancy firms such as McKinsey, Ernest & Young, and Moody’s.

The pandemic not only put pressure on the finances and operations of African universities, but also raised the stakes for research and policy interventions; they were expected to undertake biomedical and socioeconomic research to manage the pandemic. As I noted in an article in University World News summarising a series of webinars by the Alliance for African Partnership that I moderated between April and July 2020, some universities produced hygiene products and personal protective equipment including hand sanitisers, masks, ventilators, EpiTents for patient isolation and mobile hospitals, testing kits, and robots for delivery of food and medicines to patients. Others undertook research on the epidemiology of the coronavirus and biomedical treatments and the socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic, provided advisory services to government, developed software to monitor the pandemic’s spread, and sought to raise awareness and provide psychosocial support to their constituents and the wider society.

Digital inequalities reflected and reinforced the prevailing differentiations of class, gender, age, race, location, disability, and other social markers.

However, most African universities and firms stood on the sidelines as their societies waited for the development of vaccines in the global North, China, and India. At best, a few collaborated with overseas universities, research establishments and networks, and hosted clinical trials, although they were “unable to secure a fair pricing agreement”. Weak research and drug manufacturing capabilities have made African countries vulnerable to vaccine nationalism in the global North, while democratic deficits have led to the securitisation of mitigation measures, gravely undermining human rights in several countries.

As of May 26, 2021 doses administrated per hundred people range from more than 100 per cent in 13 countries to 90 per cent in the UK, 86 per cent in the US, 56 per cent in Canada and 54 per cent in Germany. African countries have the lowest rates of vaccination, ranging from less than one in a hundred in 18 countries, one in a hundred in seven countries, two per hundred in eight, and three per hundred in seven. This is a monumental and global scandal of deadly proportions. What are our universities, governments, and industries doing to serve and save themselves besides stretching their hands and praying for salvation from the rich world apart from indulging in perennial and petty, but often vicious, national and institutional politics?

COVID-19 should be a wake-up call for African universities and countries to strengthen their research capacities, science, technology and innovation systems, manufacturing capabilities, and inter-institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration through existing consortia such as the African Research Universities Alliance, and new ones. Beyond being involved in quality control and to have an important role to protect the continent “from being used as a testing lab for COVID-19 vaccines”, some believe African universities “should join forces with the pharmaceutical industry and funding organizations to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines in the continent”.

Funding for research by governments, the private sector and the universities, and collaborations among the three needs to be enhanced. Despite innovations made in some universities, “the scale of collaboration with the industry that takes headline-making innovation beyond the walls of an institution is conspicuously missing. These collaborations can also provide an opportunity for further validation, and a path to widespread adoption and commercialization.” The comparative research data should be of concern to us all.

Most African universities and firms stood on the sidelines as their societies waited for the development of vaccines in the global North, China, and India.

In 2013, Africa accounted for 2.4per cent of world researchers, compared to 42.8 per cent for Asia, 31.0 per cent for Europe, and 22.2 per cent for the Americas. In terms of scientific publications, Africa’s share was 2.6 per cent in 2014, compared to 39.5 per cent for Asia, 39.3 per cent for Europe, and 32.9 per cent for the Americas. For research and development (R&D) as a percentage of GDP, Africa spent 0.5 per cent compared to a world average of 1.7 per cent and 2.7 per cent for North America, 1.8 per cent for Europe, and 1.6 per cent for Asia. Africa accounted for a mere 1.3 per cent of global R&D.

The agenda for reform and transformation

A crisis, as the saying goes, is the flip side of opportunity. The bigger the crisis, the more profound the lessons to be learned, and the greater the imperatives for transformation. African universities are likely to pursue three scenarios. The restore scenario will be focused on reclaiming the institution’s pre-pandemic financial health and operations, while the evolve scenario applies to “institutions that will choose to incorporate the impact and lessons of the pandemic into their culture and vision” while under the transform scenario institutions will “use the pandemic to launch or accelerate an institutional transformation agenda”.

For some universities what is at stake is survival, for others stability, and for many sustainability. Institutional survival is a precondition for stability, which is essential for sustainability. Confronting the entire higher education sector is the question of its raison d’être, its value proposition in a digitalised world accelerated by COVID-19.

I would like to focus on four critical dimensions: promoting progressive digital transformation, effective leadership, strong institutional cultures, and sustainable funding for African universities. For the first two I propose a dozen strategies for each, and for the last two seven strategies for each, respectively. Given the limitations of space, I shall only give the broad outlines of the various proposed initiatives.

As a scholar of intellectual history—the history of ideas and knowledge producing institutions—I’m only too aware that knowledge production is framed by certain crucial dynamics, what I call the 4Is: first, intellectual, which refers to the prevailing paradigms; second, ideological, in terms of the dominant and competing ideologies at a given moment; third, institutional, as far as the nature and organisation of an institution is concerned; and finally, individual, one’s social biography with reference to gender, race, nationality, class, religion, politics, etc.

For some universities what is at stake is survival, for others stability, and for many sustainability.

Institutional change occurs at the intersections of these dynamics, out of concrete social struggles within and outside the academy, among the university’s ever expanding and shifting constituencies. Change, in short, does not emanate from analytical prescriptions or rhetorical declarations, however compelling. However, constructing desired futures is not a wasteful exercise; it can inspire action for ideas constitute an indispensable part of praxis.

In a forthcoming co-authored paper with Paul Okanda, USIU-Africa’s ICT director, in the Journal of African Higher Education, whose abridged version appeared in University World News on February 11, 2021, a twelve-point agenda is proposed for the digital transformation of African universities. First, they need to embed digital transformation in the institutional culture, from strategic planning, organiational structures, to operational processes. Second, invest in digital infrastructure by rethinking capital expenditures that historically favoured physical plant. Third, develop online design competencies both individually and through consortia. Fourth, entrench technology-mediated modalities of teaching and learning encompassing face-to-face, blended, and online.

Fifth, embrace pedagogical changes in terms of curricula design and delivery that involves students as active participants in the learning process rather than passive consumers. Sixth, develop holistic and innovative curricula that impart skills for the jobs of the 21st century. Seventh, adopt and use educational technologies that support the whole student for student success going beyond degree completion. Eighth, develop effective policies and interventions to address the digital divide and issues of mental health disorders and learning disability.

Ninth, as learning and student life move seamlessly across digital, physical, and social experiences, universities must safeguard data protection, security, and privacy. Tenth, in so far as the market for online programmes is transnational, universities must pay special attention to international students who face unique barriers. Eleventh, they should develop meaningful partnerships with external constituencies and stakeholders, including digital technology and telecommunication companies to close the glaring employability gap. Twelfth, universities will increasingly be expected to anchor their research and innovation in the technological infrastructure that supports and enhances the opportunities of the Fourth Industrial Revolution for Africa.

As for effective leadership, I also see twelve areas for improvement. The multi-pronged health, economic, financial and social crises of COVID-19 have underscored the importance of strategic and smart institutional leadership at all levels.

First, it requires ensuring that appointments of institutional heads and governance boards are based on verifiable leadership competencies, passion and understanding of the higher education sector. All too often, their selection reflects misguided political considerations, expectations of donations which are hardly ever honoured in African universities, or preferences for alumni wedded to institutional nostalgia and stasis. Second, university leaders at all levels, from department chairs to deans, vice chancellors to board members, must undergo periodic leadership development training that is specifically tailored for higher education.

Third, university leaders must possess and sharpen their financial acuity. In addition to managing complex institutional budgets, they now need to develop the ability to manage reductions in staffing, programmes, and space. Fourth, cultural competency is more critical than ever. University leaders must go beyond making statements about valuing diversity and inclusion and articulate and exhibit a deeper awareness of systemic injustice, inequality, and privilege, and show boundless compassion and commitment for promoting an inclusive institution.

Fifth, they must display technological deftness. In an increasingly digitalised academy, it’s no longer enough for university leaders to be comfortable using emerging technologies; they must model and promote institutional technological savviness and competence, and develop analytics expertise to promote data-driven decision-making. Sixth, the pandemic has shown that crisis management is essential. Besides preparing for traditional natural and security threats, leaders are currently forced to manage physical and mental health crises, emergency preparedness and business continuity, and to lead in times of uncertainty.

Seventh, leaders need an entrepreneurial mindset. More than ever universities want leaders who are calculated risk-takers, innovative entrepreneurs, and effective in promoting the university mission as they create beneficial external partnerships and revenue generation initiatives. Eighth, political savviness is an important asset as university leaders are increasingly required to work in uncertain and politically polarised times at national, regional, and global levels that challenge them to pursue and promote advocacy and institutional discourse that is calm, informed, and respectful.

Ninth, empathy and respect is essential as mental stress and financial insecurity rise among university constituencies. Leaders are expected to demonstrate empathy and respect for all their internal constituencies. They must reveal their humanity, even in decision-making. Tenth, multi-genre communication skills are indispensable. Further to strong written and verbal communication skills, leaders are now increasingly expected to provide efficient, timely, clear and persuasive messages and stories to diverse constituencies using multiple platforms including social media.

Eleventh, possessing high emotional intelligence is a must. Additional to the ability to demonstrate confidence and empathy, leaders are more and more expected to demonstrate self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, and social skills, rather than egotism, impulsivity, and proneness to bullying and micromanagement. Finally, agility is necessary. On top of well-established professional knowledge and experience, success increasingly depends on a leader’s ability to be flexible in the face of many changes, to have the capacity to learn and assume new and more responsibilities, and to show fortitude, unflappability, and moral compass.

Building strong institutional cultures requires adherence to seven critical values. First, is academic freedom, which in most jurisdictions embodies two dimensions: the freedom of inquiry for faculty and students and the procedural and substantive autonomy of institutions. In the first instance, a faculty member should be able to teach or express scholarly views without fear of reprisals, and in the second, an institution has the right to determine for itself on academic grounds how its core business of teaching and research is conducted. In many African countries and universities academic freedom in both senses is contested and often breached by pervasive authoritarian interventions and impulses by the state, administration, and governing boards.

Second, is shared governance, which refers to the participation and demarcation of rights and responsibilities in decision making between faculty, management, and governing boards. Typically, faculty is expected to exercise authority on academic matters such as the curriculum, instruction, and degree requirements. As universities have become more complex and demands for accountability have increased, democratic organisational processes have been eroded, replaced by what critics call corporatisation and managerialism. It is critical to balance the management of the university as a complex organisation and the traditions and ethos of collegiality, participation, and distributed power by maintaining what is called in South Africa cooperative governance.

Third, is diversity, equity and inclusion. Given their critical role as pathways for social mobility and leadership across all sectors, universities are increasingly expected to promote diversity, equity and inclusion at all levels and for all their constituencies. Inequalities of access, support, and success are deeply entrenched across Africa’s and the world’s multicultural, multiracial, and multi-ethnic, gendered, and class societies that are also marked by other forms of difference and discrimination. By providing opportunities for underrepresented groups and creating and sustaining an inclusive climate through their mission, values, policies, and practices, universities promote inclusive excellence for institutional and national progress.

Fourth, civility and collegiality. The academic bully culture—as Darla Twale and Barbara De Luca call it in their book by that title—has grown. Some call it academic mobbing. Incivility and intolerance in universities has several manifestations. At a macro level, it reflects the frictions of the increasing diversification of university stakeholders, the growing external pressures for accountability, and the descent of political discourse into angry populisms. Student and faculty incivility is also fueled by a rising sense of entitlement, consumerist attitudes, emotional immaturity, stress, racism, tribalism, sexism, ageism, xenophobia, social media, and other pervasive social and institutional ills that universities must confront and address to foster a healthier institutional climate.

Universities are increasingly expected to promote diversity, equity and inclusion at all levels and for all their constituencies.

Fifth, universities must maintain their role as generative spaces in the rigorous search for truth. The “posts” and the movement for decolonising knowledge has vigorously and rightly contested the epistemic architecture and metanarratives of the Eurocentric academy and its hegemonic knowledges. However, as we pluralise knowledges and universalisms, remake intellectual cultures, and transform our universities, we must resist the relativism of alternative facts, the nihilism of anti-science, and the solipsism of self-referentiality beloved by populist demagogues, many of them products of the world’s leading universities, as some critics noted with the neo-fascist Trumpists in the United States who live in a world of alternative facts.

Sixth, effective communication is essential for building cohesive communities out of the university’s disparate constituencies that have divergent interests, priorities, and preferences. Internally, there are students, faculty, staff, administrators and governing boards, and externally prospective students and employees, alumni, parents, government, regulatory agencies, competitors, institutional partners, donors, the media and general public. This requires developing multiple communication channels, messages, and styles tailored for different audiences to create dialogue and understanding. Good, transparent, and regular internal communication fosters a sense of community, efficiency, and the collective pursuit of th institutional mission, vision, and goals.

Seventh, embracing social responsibility is vital for universities to eschew institutional naval gazing for the higher purpose of social impact that can mobilise internal and external stakeholders. Universities are well placed to provide evidence-based knowledge, solutions and innovations for society. Socially responsible universities need to embed public service in their missions, experiential learning in their curricula, and research that is responsive to pressing local, national, regional and global problems. They need to enhance their social ownership as public goods, in tackling social inequities, and embrace research-sharing with their communities.

Financial sustainability requires pursuing seven strategies as well. The low financial capacities of many African universities is sobering. The FY21 budget of the University of Illinois system, where I spent the longest time in my academic career, is US$6.7 billion, which is probably more than the combined budgets of public universities in several East African countries. In Kenya, in 2020-2021 the government allocated the equivalent of US$1.13 billion for all public higher education institutions, down from US$1.53 billion in the previous year, of which US$1.06 billion was for salaries and only US$70 million was for infrastructural development. Research hardly features.

We must resist the relativism of alternative facts, the nihilism of anti-science, and the solipsism of self-referentiality beloved by populist demagogues.

First, public funding for higher education needs to be raised substantially if African countries are serious about improving the quality of human capital so essential for integrated and innovative sustainable development, and for them to turn the demographic explosion into a dividend rather than a disaster. The burial of the ghosts of structural adjustment programmes is long overdue. African governments need to develop innovative allocation mechanisms to universities encompassing clear funding formulas, performance contracts, and competitive grants.  The latter two should be open to both public and private universities.

Second, there is a need to establish differentiated tuition pricing and targeted student aid. Besides increasing spending per student, which is the lowest in the world, African governments and universities must develop targeted free or low tuition for the neediest students who qualify for university studies, improve student loan recovery schemes, and make them income-contingent. Private universities can do this through effective and sustainable internal student aid policies and external scholarships.

Third is exercising prudent financial management. As I noted in the Framing Paper for the 1st Higher Education Summit held in Dakar in March 2015, the financial challenges facing higher education institutions require the adoption of more sophisticated and transparent budgeting models to ensure efficient utilisation of limited resources. The spectre of corruption that undermines the finances of some universities should also be ruthlessly tackled.

Fourth is diversifying revenue streams. Universities tend to have seven major sources of funding, namely, government subventions, student tuition, auxiliary services, income-generating activities, research grants, philanthropic donations, and loans. African universities could increase income from auxiliary services by providing better accommodation for their students rather than leaving them captive to shoddy and dangerous neighbourhoods as has become the case on many campuses; undertaking entrepreneurial activities including consultancies, offering executive programs, and establishing enterprises that leverage their expertise and innovations; consistently bringing in large research grants; and raising philanthropic donations from Africa’s rapidly expanding middle classes and high-net-worth individuals (with assets of more than US$1 million).

According to Frank Knight’s The Wealth Report 2021, in 2020 their numbers reached 231,000 (down from 251,511 in 2019), representing 0.48 per cent of the world’s total, while those of ultrahigh-net-worth individuals (with assets of more than US$30 million) reached 3,270 (up from 3,127 in 2019) accounting for 0.63 per cent of the world’s total. Collectively, the African HNWIs own nearly US$2 trillion. The few that give to universities prefer to donate to renowned universities in the global North than in their own countries. Indeed, the African elites prefer to educate their children abroad rather than at home, just like they trek overseas for medical care.

The national bourgeoisies of African countries tend to be among the least patriotic in the world in terms of building or supporting national high quality educational and healthcare facilities because they can readily access them in the wealthy countries. This is one of the unintended benefits of COVID-19: it underscored the importance of building such facilities and services at home as the elites and their children who are socialised and pampered to be as un-African as possible could no longer freely travel overseas.

African elites prefer to educate their children abroad rather than at home, just like they trek overseas for medical care.

Fifth is creating institutional mergers. There is no doubt that Africa needs more universities, but they must be financially sustainable. Many of the public and private universities that have mushroomed in the last two decades are simply glorified high schools. For economies of scale in the higher education sector, mergers are imperative even for the fiercely independent and often thinly disguised for-profit private universities. This has to be part of a strategic agenda for diversification and differentiation, accompanied by horizontal and vertical articulation of higher education institutions at national, regional, and continental levels.

Sixth is forging robust inter-institutional collaborations. University consortia will become increasingly necessary to promote quality education, facilitate cost sharing and bargaining in the procurement of expensive technological infrastructures, instructional materials, talent development, and to facilitate the mobility of students, faculty, credit transfer, and the development of inter-institutional innovative programmes and practices.

Seventh is strengthening external partnerships with other higher education institutions and non-academic sectors and organisations. Old patterns of asymmetrical internationalisation under which Africa was subordinated to Euroamerican institutional and epistemological systems must be replaced by strategic inclusion, mutuality, and co-creation of activities and initiatives, and humanising internationalisation by abandoning exploitation of international students who tend to be treated as “cash cows”.

Also important are partnerships with the private sector which under-invests in skills and needs to complement government funding in promoting high-quality education and reducing the much-bemoaned skills gap that employers often complain about. However, universities have to be discerning in establishing public-private partnerships to ensure they are not exploited as has happened to some universities. Critical players also include African international and intergovernmental agencies that often play second fiddle to their foreign counterparts in funding university activities and formulating policies.

Many of the public and private universities that have mushroomed in the last two decades are simply glorified high schools.

In this presentation I have tried to share ideas on the nature, dynamics and possible futures of African higher education. Some of the data might be disconcerting, but it is not meant to disempower us, rather to enrage and energise us. I come from the radical tradition of the 1970s and 1980s, honed in Southern Africa’s experiences of liberation struggles, that as we strive for better futures we must combine the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will, that is, there is need for a cold-hearted analysis of conditions as they are, and ironclad conviction of the agency we possess as human beings and social actors to bring about change. That is why I am neither an Afro-pessimist, nor an Afro-optimist, but an Afro-realist.

Higher education is too important for Africa’s future to be held captive to haphazard interventions and superficial reforms. What is needed is fundamental transformation thanks, in part, to the massive disruptions of COVID-19. Studies show that the returns on investment for education are much higher for society and individuals than any other form of investment. This applies to all levels including tertiary, and not just to primary education as we were told by the misguided missionaries who propagated the neo-liberal assault on universities during Africa’s “lost decades” of the 1980s and 1990s with the connivance of the anti-intellectualist and anti-developmentalist political classes of many African states. I believe we—governments, the private sector, civil society and the universities working together—can remake the future of African higher education. 

As the world’s biodiversity continues to decline, there is a race to conserve the fauna and flora which is vital for the continued survival of humans. Yet, despite concerted global efforts through frameworks such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the IUCN red list of species threatened with extinction continues to grow.

Conservation efforts by nation-states and non-state actors have been ongoing for decades, with mixed outcomes. Of particular concern have been the projected benefits to the local communities and the sustainability of conservation efforts. These concerns are particularly pronounced in the case of wildlife conservation in the African Savannah, where local communities — which have been the custodians of the wildlife for centuries — often get the short end of the stick.

While most of the wildlife conservation areas were established by the colonialists, the expansion of conservancies into communal rangelands in Kenya has mainly been driven by non-state actors, gaining praise and condemnation in equal measure.

Wildlife conservation challenges 

The early conception of wildlife conservation was one whose objective was to preserve nature in its pristine state, void of human interference — commonly referred to as the “fortress” approach that used fences, boots, and guns to keep human disturbance off the conservation areas. This concept was first applied to the Yellowstone National Park, which was established in the United States in the 1870s, and it soon spread to the rest of the world, reaching Africa mainly through colonial governments.

With its scenic beauty and abundant wildlife, Kenya was among the first countries in Africa to establish wildlife conservation areas on large expanses of land. From their inception, these conservation areas were the preserve of the white foreign tourist, while the communities on whose lands these parks were established were viewed as a threat to their existence. They had no role in the management of the parks and nor did they share in the accrued benefits. Thus, a significant task of the conservation agents was to guard against the community’s interference in the pristine conservation area.

Ironically, these communities had to put up with the damage caused to their farms and livestock by marauding wild animals as the needs and value of wildlife took precedence over the needs and livelihoods of the people. Human-wildlife conflict was the order of the day for the communities living adjacent to protected areas.

Change in perception only came in the 1980s with the advent of participatory approaches and the “bottom up” development discourse. Acknowledgement of the importance of involving communities in conservation efforts led to the adoption of community-based natural resource management approaches that were initially applied in Southern Africa and later in East African countries, including Kenya.

In principle, the community-based conservation approach placed communities at the centre of decision-making in the conservation areas and included them in sharing the benefits as a form of compensation conservation that evolved following the establishment of conservancies in communally managed areas.  

“Community” wildlife conservancies?

In Kenya, the establishment of community conservancies was not primarily motivated by the potential benefits to the communities but rather by the fact that over 65 per cent of the wildlife is on communal lands outside the designated national parks and reserves.

While conservancies were initially established in the areas of southern Kenya where wildlife density was relatively greater, they have now spread across the country. It is presumed that income-generating alternatives for the marginalised and poverty-stricken pastoralists who mainly inhabit these areas have fueled the growth.

In some quarters, the income from conservation is regarded as a substitute to livestock production, and therefore a possible alternative to pastoralism. Moreover, conservancies are regarded as a panacea to poaching, human-wildlife conflict and land degradation. These assumptions have created a fertile ground for the exponential growth of community conservancies, particularly in northern Kenya.

According to the Kenya Wildlife Conservancy Association, 160 conservancies cover approximately 15 million acres of mainly communal rangelands. This expansion has mainly been fueled by the very substantial technical and financial support provided by the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT). The growth has also been buoyed by the Wildlife Management and Conservation Act of 2013 that provides the legal framework for the establishment of conservancies.

Conservancies are regarded as a panacea to poaching, human-wildlife conflict and land degradation.

With the influence and support of the NRT, certain county governments are currently developing county conservancy laws to provide an additional layer of legal entrenchment. Coming at a time when communities are struggling to register their land, the timing for enacting this law has cast doubts about the proponents’ motives.

The laws being proposed by the counties provide a new institutional framework for the management of conservancies, bringing them directly under the control of the county governments. Some observers say that such legislation is at cross-purposes with the community land management mandate as enshrined in the Community Land Act (CLA) 2016.

Moreover, the new legislation advances the NRT’s community conservancy model which extends the role of conservancy management to the management of the land, thereby overstepping the conservancy mandate as defined by the Wildlife Management Act of 2013. This act defines a conservancy as set aside for “wildlife conservation purposes”, a clear recognition that a conservancy is a form of land use. And as the Community Land Act 2016 mandates the community with developing and managing its land use, the establishment of a conservancy is therefore squarely a community land-use decision.

Conservancy management thus falls under the mandate of the community assembly and community land management committees, contrary to what is envisioned in the NRT model. Indeed, current conservancy management practices empower the conservancy committee to usurp the role of local community land management institutions and destabilise this long-standing institutional framework.

Moreover, while conservancies are typically established on designated sections of communal lands, in the NRT model, in the north, the conservancies cover entire areas such as a whole ward, taking up large expanses of land that are also intended for various other uses.

COVID and conservancies 

Wildlife conservation is heavily dependent on tourism dollars and with the COVID-19 pandemic persisting, it has come under unprecedented financial strain. According to the Kenya Wildlife Conservancy Association (KWCA), “the collapse of the tourism industry has left parks, reserves, and wildlife conservancies stripped off the vital funding needed to manage land and reward communities”.

Already it is being reported that conservancies in high potential areas such as the Mara are unable to pay their leases, a clear indication that the current conservancy approach is far from sustainable. The near complete collapse of the tourism sector has exposed the fault lines in the high-maintenance conservation models and put into question the achievability of the projected earnings that have been used to justify their establishment.

Running a community conservancy is an expensive affair. For instance, the operational costs of the NRT-initiated and supported conservancies run to a minimum of KSh4 to 6 million per year. According to the NRT’s 2019 annual report, only a few conservancies can raise their own operational costs, let alone generate additional income for the communities.

The near complete collapse of the tourism sector has exposed the fault lines in the high-maintenance conservation models.

In 2019, the conservancies under the NRT had a combined running costs deficit of KSh129 million, a gap currently bridged with donor funds. In a bid to cover the shortfall, the NRT has been lobbying county governments to support the conservancies with Samburu County being the first county to develop a legal framework to provide mechanisms for channeling county funds to the conservancies.

Isiolo County has a draft conservancy bill pending in the County Assembly. But passing the bill is not a guarantee that conservancies will be directly funded from the county coffers as they will be competing for resources with other needs. Turning the bill into a reality will therefore depend on the willingness and the interest of the County Assembly.

Zimbabwe’s CAMPFIRE

Kenya’s experiences mirror those of Zimbabwe, where the CAMPFIRE project, a world-acclaimed conservation success, stalled immediately donor funding was withdrawn after almost 15 years of operation. The Zimbabwe example of community engagement was based on benefit-sharing from nationalised and well-established parks.

Only a few conservancies can raise their own operational costs, let alone generate additional income for the communities.

One wonders how the Kenyan model, which is based on community conservancies outside government-run conservation areas, can be profitable. Furthermore, trophy hunting and the sale of wildlife hides and ivory were a major income stream in Zimbabwe whereas in Kenya these activities are banned, making it more difficult to generate substantial revenue for a conservancy to be self-sufficient.

It is therefore easy to conclude that most of the conservancies in northern Kenya cannot be self-sustaining without the donor funding they currently receive.

Herder conservationist model

For conservation to be sustainable within the pastoral livestock production system, an alternative herder-driven approach is more adapted. The method enables the reconciliation of conservation objectives with the livestock and land management objectives of the pastoral communities.

Instead of the armed ranger model, which is expensive and a colonial relic, active herders who are in any case out in the rangelands take up the role of the “herder conservationist”. This approach would involve identifying experienced herders from the various settlements who actively herd livestock in the rangelands. The herder conservationists would be appointed from multiple settlements distributed across the rangelands to cover this large expanse of land which, in essence, conservancy rangers have not been able to cover. This approach would extend wildlife protection to areas beyond the current conservancy precincts at a minimal cost.

The main advantage of this approach is that the herders constantly traverse the grazing landscapes and the rangelands used by wildlife, most of which are not accessible even by the four-wheel drive vehicles used by the ranger scouts. This capacity, coupled with the provision of essential communication and surveillance equipment, is crucial in wildlife conservation.

For conservation to be sustainable within the pastoral livestock production system, an alternative herder-driven approach is more adapted.

The herders do not need to be armed but should be properly incentivised and supervised, reporting to a central command which will in turn work with the Kenya Wildlife Service — the body that is mandated with the protection and conservation of Kenya’s wildlife — to resolve arising problems

The basics of this approach mimic the wildlife protection methods that pastoralist communities employed well before the emergence of the current conservation approach. It also presents another advantage in that it is based on the values that the communities themselves attach to wildlife. Moreover, the use of boots and guns is reminiscent of the largely failed fortress approach to wildlife conservation.

Wildlife-based tourism

A key lesson deriving from the COVID-19 pandemic is the need to stop putting a value on wildlife based on the tourism numbers it attracts and the income it generates. The value of wildlife as a function of the communities’ social-cultural systems needs to be strengthened and the communities’ appreciation of the intrinsic value of wildlife enhanced. Already, where the community has been sensitized to the need for wildlife conservation, one can spot wildlife browsing alongside livestock in areas where the wildlife is not under protection, for example in Wajir and Garissa counties. In most pastoralist areas, the wildlife drinks water from the same watering points used by the community.

If established, therefore, a herder conservationist system would provide a sustainable way of ensuring that even with minimal incentives communities will protect wildlife. Moreover, the approach significantly reduces the overheads, thereby ensuring long-term sustainability.

The use of boots and guns is reminiscent of the largely failed fortress approach to wildlife conservation.

Furthermore, the conservation approach must take advantage of the ongoing changes in communal land governance which will mean that the community cannot register the conservancies in their current form but must do so through a proxy community-based organisation or wildlife association.

This is because, whereas the community is not a legal entity recognised as such in law, the Community Land Act now allows the community to be registered as a legal entity with an established decision-making organ (the community assembly) and a management committee. The proposed model will be a good fit with this land governance system as herders who are members of the community report to the management committee.

The management committee spearheads land use planning and has oversight in the use of the land. Conservation of the unique fauna and flora of the drylands must feature strongly as one of the land uses in the community plans.

These suggestions are not the ultimate silver bullet for solving the challenges faced by community-based conservation. However, if these and other views are given consideration in the ongoing legal and policy conversations, sustainable conservation approaches are attainable.

The Wildlife Conservation and Management Act of 2013, currently under review, provides an opportunity to embrace alternative views. Also, the county level legislations on conservancies need to consider strengthening the community structures that are already mandated with the management of land and other natural resources on communal lands rather than establishing additional institutional layers, which might be counterproductive. Most importantly, the community’s decision needs to be considered and respected in order to arrive at a sustainable community conservation model.