Emnet Tadesse Woldegiorgis

Policy Travel in Regionalisation of Higher Education: The Case of Bologna Process in Africa

There has been a growing interest among scholars of International Relations and Comparative Public Policy on issues of policy travel since the 1990s. Even though regional higher education policies are developed within certain intergovernmental policy settings encompassing shared interests among states of regional groupings, they tend to travel across continents impacting other regions, sometimes in quite different contexts. In this regard, the policy travel of the Bologna process of Europe into other regions could be a very good example as one of the pioneers of higher education policy harmonisation initiative. Since its inception in 1998, the policy has managed to attract the attention of other regions, including Africa, reshaping higher education policies at national sub-regional and continental levels. Explaining similar scenarios, a considerable number of literatures on the inter-regional movement of ideas and practices in social policy has been developed over the last twenty years through various concepts including ‘policy transfer’, ‘policy diffusion’, ‘cross-national attraction’, ‘policy borrowing’ and ‘policy convergence’. This particular paper explores the notion of policy travel through the conceptions of ‘policy transfer’ and ‘policy diffusion’ and addresses the underlying question of how the Bologna process of Europe travelled to the various sub-regions of Africa.

Historical and Political Perspectives

Within the framework of the functional, organizational and political approach, the political dimension is a crucial component explaining the historical and political context of regionalization processes in Africa. Political dimension, as stated by Knight (2012, p. 19), “…refers to political will and strategies that put higher education initiatives on the agenda of decision-making bodies”.

The Influence of the Bologna Process

The process of regionalization of higher education in Africa is not an isolated process which has developed within its own policy dynamics. International processes and other regionalization initiatives have also influenced the development of higher education regionalization in Africa. Because of historical reasons, however, the impact of European policy initiatives have been more apparent than others in the context of Africa.

Higher Education Finance

The issue of higher education financing in Africa has been the subject of discussion since the 1980s. Historically higher education financing has been the sole responsibility of the public sector with most of the funding coming from state governments. In the past three decades, however, the African higher education sector has witnessed a massive increase in enrolments which has created a huge demand pressure.

Achieving African Higher Education Regionalization

Even though regionalization of higher education in Africa has been underway for several years and was given a boost with the development of the African Union Strategy for the Harmonization of Higher Education Programmes (AU-HEP) in 2007, the process has been slow and faced many challenges. A key objective of higher education regionalization is to create common regional policy frameworks that facilitate mutual recognition of academic qualifications, promote student and staff mobility, ensure effective quality assurance mechanisms, create a system for the transferability of credits, and ensure the competitiveness of African regional higher education in the global knowledge system.

Academic Mobility in Africa

Academic mobility is one of the functional elements of regionalization within the FOPA framework discussed in Chapter 1. Academic mobility is not a new phenomenon – scholars and knowledge have been moving around the world for centuries. The fact that the concept of the universe is embedded in the term ‘university’ is evidence of the important role that knowledge and people mobility play in higher education. But it is not just students and scholars who are crossing international borders – so are academic programmes and providers.