âNegotiating the Fabric of the African University (â¦) is an outstanding contribution to the study of African higher education. Combining conceptual reflections and detailed case studies, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of the historical and contemporary processes that have shaped the establishment and transformation of universities in Africa. One of the great merits of the volume is to bring out the distinctiveness and nuances that characterize the interaction among a variety of key actors, including students, teachers, researchers, administrators, and university leaders. Professors Langa and Kaldewey should be congratulated for this excellent scholarly work which is set to become the most important reference for researchers and policy analysts interested in the evolution and transformation of African universities. The result is the weaving of a ânegotiated social fabric,â to use the evocative notion shared by the authors to describe the powerful identities that connect the local and global dimensions of scholarship and institutional life.â
â Jamil Salmi, Global Tertiary Education Expert, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Policy, Diego Portales University (Chile)
âThis book examines the university, the cradle of the colonial library, with a keen sense of theory. The book examines the students, teachers, researchers and administrators, architects, and users of the institution it describes with a passion for the empirical. The University of Africa, or African University, seeks to integrate the very thing it was created to oppose, local knowledge, torn between different colonial traditions and the call for decolonisation. The work is grounded in history beyond the ambient presentism. This impressive and comprehensive book is both original and enlightening. A great future classic has been published.â
â Mamadou Diawara, Goethe Research Professor, University of Frankfurt/Main, Germany MIASA Director Germany, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana, Point Sud, Center for Research on Local Knowledge, Bamako, Mali
âIn this nuanced and insightful exploration, Langa and Kaldewey, delves into the complex tapestry of the African university. Weaving together context,
â LuÃs Jorge Ferrão, Rector of the Pedagogic, University of Maputo, Mozambiqueinstitutional analysis, and personal narrative, with their collaborators they reveal the intricate negotiations that shape the fabric of the university in Africa.â
âThis book is not only a comprehensive and insightful volume on African higher education, but also an invitation to read diverse voices of authors from different countries and contexts. By examining the fabric of the African university, the book helps the readers to understand its patterns, colours and historic imprints and invites them to actively participate in weaving, cutting and sewing the fabric of the African university in the future.â
â Lea Weigel, Sociology Student at the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
âThere is no such thing as the âAfrican universityâ: there are instead many models, visions and histories. This edited collection offers a rich and diverse set of insights into the multiplicity and plurality of higher education across the continent.â
â David Mills, Professor of Education at Kellogg College, Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education, Oxford University