Marketisation in higher education in Africa: new directions for a decolonising continent

The marketisation of higher education is an idea that originated in the west and was promoted to serve specific purposes. Based in a neo-liberal philosophy of free markets and originating in the declarations of Sorbonne 1998 and Bologna 1999 and the World Trade Organisation’s General Agreement on Trades in Services (GATS), 1995 marketisation was conceived as a strategy for encouraging free movement of goods, services and knowledge across the countries of the west, especially those in Europe. This, it was argued, would improve efficiencies and effectiveness, encourage comparability of standards across countries and provide large sections of the population with greater access to services and programmes. The idea sounded appealing and no sooner than it had taken off in Europe, did African countries join the bandwagon. This chapter argues that marketisation in African universities should seek a different moral compass and be based on different sets of assumptions and rationales to those operating in the west. The conceptual field discussed in the first chapter is used to provide critical analysis of the claim that has been made about misdiagnosis and wrong prescriptions. The chapter also argues that, at the moment, Africa cannot afford the free-markets model proposed for Europe but requires a highly regulated market, which responds to and seeks to interrogate issues of poverty, inequality and unemployment, and corruption, which blight the entire continent. The chapter is concluded with a proposal for rethinking the marketing of higher education in Africa