GOING GLOBAL CLOSING REMARKS 4 JUNE 2015, DR
BLADE NZIMANDE, MINISTER OF HIGHER EDUCATION
AND TRAINING
Program Director
Ministers
Deputy Ministers
Vice-Chancellors
Heads and Executives of Education Organizations and Institutions
Dr Jo Beall, Director Education and Society, British Council
Conference delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is an honour to give this brief closing address at the Going Global
2015 conference, and I am proud to announce that Going Global 2016
will be hosted in the city of Cape Town. I should add that while it is
always a pleasure to participate in a productive, stimulating and well-run
conference, the quality of this conference does present a challenge to the
host of the next event! The bar has indeed been set very high.
Going Global 2015 (Connecting Cultures, Forging Futures) has
explored key issues in relation to what it means, or could mean, to cross
cultural boundaries at individual, organizational, and national levels. The
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explicit recognition that meaningful collaboration and development in
all spheres cannot take place without such important cultural
connections having been explored and understood, represents a
significant step forward for all of us.
These issues will be revisited during Going Global 2016, which
highlights in its theme ‘Building nations and connecting cultures
through international education’, the role of higher education in
building strong, productive and economically viable societies and
economies.
It is by now widely accepted that modern higher education institutions
need to position themselves strategically in national and international
contexts.
Indeed, the demands of modern economies and societies require higher
education institutions to have differentiated missions and mandates that
will deliver the complex mix of knowledge and skills required for
progress and development.
Working against the realization of such mission-driven differentiation,
however, are systems of recognition and reward that tend to result in a
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drive to convergence as institutions strive to compete on the same
playing fields, and against the same performance rubrics.
Moreover, these systems of recognition and reward, which largely
ignore different histories and different resource bases, can - if used
thoughtlessly and competitively - impact negatively on important
development
aims
and
on
the
establishment
of
productively
differentiated, locally relevant and globally connected, systems.
In undertaking discussions focused on forging meaningful shared
futures, it is therefore important to remain vigilant and guard against the
inherent unfairness of systems that ignore contextual and resource
differences between institutions, rather than valuing their diversity and
using these as a platform for building shared values.
Going Global 2016 will set out to do just this. It will take as a starting
point the challenges posed for international education by the persistence
of conflicts, continuing competition between ‘South-South’ / ‘NorthNorth’ / and ‘North-South’ engagements, and by the fact that despite
considerable achievements in higher education endeavours in developing
countries, few institutions in such contexts are recognized in the top
hundreds of global rankings systems.
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By way of illustration in this regard, Africa has only 6 institutions in the
top 100 of the “BRICS and Emerging Economies” rankings, according
to the ‘Times Higher Education (THE) 2015’ list. Of these, 5 are in
South Africa, and 1 in Morocco1. In the global THE ranking, Africa
fares even worse, with only one university, the University of Cape Town
at position 124, making it onto the top 200 list.
These rankings can be used to create a feeling of despondency amongst
policymakers and educationists in Africa, and to confirm negative
perceptions of the value and quality of the higher education sector on the
continent - on the other hand, if deliberately steered, they can be used to
provoke the kinds of discussions that are intended to take place at Going
Global 2016.
Importantly, the conference in 2016 will also explore the fact that the
development of innovative approaches towards ensuring a shared and
sustainable future for us all is no longer confined to conventional sites of
global research leadership, but emerging across the globe.
Recently, several forums have provided time and space for Africa to
consider and deliberate on its roles, opportunities and responsibilities in
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The universities are: the Universities of Cape Town (position 4), the Witwatersrand (14), Stellenbosch (17), and
KwaZulu-Natal (47), Marrakech Cadi Ayyad (50), and Pretoria (77). The countries in the list include the BRICS
group, as well as Hungary, Turkey, Taiwan, Colombia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Mexico, Thailand, Poland, UAE, and the
Czech Republic.
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this regard: for example, an important summit was held in Dakar,
Senegal in March this year to discuss the setting of goals to revitalize
Africa’s higher education systems.
The time is therefore ripe for us to continue and deepen our
understandings of the development of appropriate, constructive and
meaningful development targets for universities in the developing world
in the context of globalization of education, through engaging
constructively with debates and approaches surrounding the ways in
which higher education institutions are seeking to develop, gain, and
claim international recognition and thereby opportunities for further
growth through collaboration.
It is clear that at Going Global 2015, important deliberations have
begun on these issues, and we look forward to taking these further at
Going Global 2016 in Cape Town.
In closing, I would like to add to the thanks and acknowledgements
given by my colleague Professor Jo Beall to the organisers and
participants of this conference, my own thanks to her for bringing the
Going Global conference to Africa for the first time in 2016. Professor
Beall’s longstanding commitment to Africa, and as a South African born
and bred, to South Africa in particular, is well-known, and continues to
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ensure that she actively includes the continent in international forums
and that its considerable contributions to higher education debates and
developments are acknowledged.
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