Abstract:
In this paper, the authors draw on philosophy (particularly African philosophy) to analyse the call for an African university. The call for an African university may be viewed as a call that insists that all critical and transformative educators in Africa embrace an indigenous African worldview and root their nation’s educational paradigms in an indigenous socio-cultural and epistemological framework. In this reflection, attention is given to two matters: (1) what is African? and (2) what is an African university? They comment on distinguishing features between a Eurocentric or western idea of a university, and an African sense of the role and function of the university in society, and then spell out the implications of these distinctions for higher education policy in South Africa.

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Van Wyk, Berte; Higgs, Philip (2007). The call for an African university: a critical reflection, Higher Education Policy 20(1):61-71