Jean-Emile Charlier

Normative influence of the Bologna Process on French-speaking African universities

The Bologna Process experienced a rapidly growing and an unexpected level of support. The authors revisit the key moments of the strategic promotion of the Bologna model and address the issue of the advantages other countries from other continents might gain from lining up with versions of the Bologna model. During the first years, the Process drew on a wide variety of practices and methods, but once it was taken out of Europe, it turned into a closed system based on strict principles. Europe still expresses doubts but it spreads its certainties as it integrates them in its new Licence-Master-Doctorate (LMD) system, which is presented as universally relevant, even though they represent only one particular means of conceiving, addressing and resolving the problems of higher education systems. The example of the export of such a model in Africa can lead people to worry that it might add up to nothing more than a ‘sovereignty bubble’ in a political system that sorely needs to encourage creativity, critical stances and collective endeavours.

The Bologna Process: A tool for Europe's hegemonic project on Africa

This article treats the Bologna Process as a tool that European countries used for their hegemonic project on Africas higher education. It is based on a normative perspective in which it is proposed that the creation of the worldwide higher education area should be a place of knowledge circulation where all scientists can collaborate in a free and open way, and that the ultimate goal of science is to make the world a better, easier and more just place. This article attempts to explain how the Foucauldian concept of ‘apparatus’ can help us understand the attitude of the European countries with regard to the Bologna Process and why, since 2003, they have not associated African countries with the process despite establishing relationships with other world regions. The article will analyse the long-term disregard of Europe for Africa and will show how and why the attitude of the Bologna Process actors (especially the European Commission and the European University Association [EUA]) towards Africa has been evolving since 2007. Finally, this article will explain why the 3-5-8 or Licence-Master-Doctorate (LMD) Bologna models transfer in Africa does not give fair results today.

Inter-regional higher education arena: the transposition of European instruments in Africa

This original book provides a unique analysis of the different regional and inter-regional projects, their processes and the politics of Europeanisation, globalisation and education. Collectively, the contirbutors engage with international relations and integrations theory to explore new ways of thinking about regionalisms and inter-regionalisms, and bring to the fore the role that higher education plays in this.