There is no such thing as an African university

The idea of universities in Africa as places for the pursuit of knowledge has been denigrated by influential voices promoting the view that they should rather operate as instruments to fix the continent's maladies, says Patricio Langa, an associate professor of higher education at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. Meanwhile, without clarity on the differentiation in the system to promote different purposes and types of higher education institutions, massification will continue to turn universities into diploma mills that promote rote learning and reproduce mediocrity, rather than fostering the pursuit of new knowledge.