Doctoral Training and Higher Education in Africa

Drawing on insights from across Africa, this book investigates the discourses and practices that guide doctoral training today.

Higher education is regarded as key for driving development and innovation, creating an informed knowledge base equipped to tackle local and global challenges. For too long external forces defined education in the continent, but now African countries are revitalising higher education, designing doctoral training to fit distinctly African needs and contexts. This book investigates the history, present and future potential of doctoral training on international, regional, national and institutional levels. Bringing together expertise from both research and practice, the book analyses the frameworks and structures of the doctoral phase, and how institutions, supervisors, mentors and young scholars meet the challenges of training in real life. The book covers issues such as access to education, proactive recruitment, funding issues, practitioner expertise, enrolment and drop-out, across a range of countries including South Africa, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Benin, Ghana and Morocco.

This book will be a rich resource for higher education administrators and policy makers, as well as researchers and academics with an interest in higher education in Africa.

Christine Scherer is an Academic Coordinator of Early Career & Equal Opportunity in the Cluster of Excellence ’Africa Multiple’, University of Bayreuth, Germany.

R. Sooryamoorthy is a Professor of Sociology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He is also a Research Fellow at the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in STI Policy, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.