This book offers theoretical and practical insights into the marketing of higher education in Africa. It explores the key players, challenges and policies affecting higher education across the continent; their marketing strategies and the students’ selection process. While acknowledging the vast size of the continent, this book aims to provide an understanding of the dynamics of higher education in Africa. This book recognises the private and government involvement in higher education provision and students and staff as stakeholders in the marketisation process. Strategic efforts are directed by universities to attract prospective students. This book further addresses issues such as the responses of higher education sectors to the notion of markets and marketing; consumerism and competition in higher education in Africa; conceptions of the commodification of higher education in Africa; and the dominance of Western epistemologies and their influence in transforming higher education sectors. Students as consumers in increasingly marketised higher education sectors in Africa are also discussed. Though primarily for marketing students and academic researchers, the book's feature of blended theoretical and practical knowledge means that it will also be of interest to marketing practitioners and university managers.

Strategic Marketing of Higher Education in Africa explores higher education marketing themes along the lines of understanding higher education markets, university branding and international marketing strategies, digital marketing, and student choice-making. The Higher Education landscape around the world is changing. There is global competition for students’ enrolments, universities are competing within their home market as well as in the international market, and as government funding for public universities is reducing there is pressure on universities to seek additional income by increasing their student enrolment. African universities are not an exception in this competitive market. This book is unique in providing a composite overview of strategic marketing and brand communications of higher education institutions in Africa. It recognises that there is a growing need for universities to understand the stakeholders and develop strategies on how best to engage with them effectively. Highlighting the unique characteristics, nature, and challenges of African universities, this book explores the marketisation strategies of African universities, with focus on the strategic digital marketing and brand management. The book provides significant theoretical and marketing practice implications for academics, higher-education administrators, and practitioners on how best to market higher education in Africa and reach out to prospective students. International practitioners aiming to market to Africans and start a partnership with an African university will also find this relevant in understanding the dynamics of the African market.

Drawing on the South African case, this book looks at shifts in higher education around the world in the last two decades. In South Africa, calls for transformation have been heard in the university since the last days of apartheid. Similar claims for quality higher education to be made available to all have been made across the African continent. In spite of this, inequalities remain and many would argue that these have been exacerbated during the Covid pandemic. Understanding Higher Education responds to these calls by arguing for a social account of teaching and learning by contesting dominant understandings of students as decontextualised learners premised on the idea that the university is a meritocracy. This book tackles the issue of teaching and learning by looking both within and beyond the classroom. It looks at how higher education policies emerged from the notion of the knowledge economy in the newly democratic South Africa, and how national qualification frameworks and other processes brought the country more closely into conversation with the global order. The effects of this on staffing and curriculum structures are considered alongside a proposition for alternative ways of understanding the role of higher education in society.

Finland, South Korea and the state of North Carolina in the United States are three systems that successfully have harnessed higher education in their economic development initiatives. Common to the success of all these systems is, amongst others, the link between economic and education planning, quality public schooling, high tertiary participation rates with institutional differentiation, labour market demand, cooperation and networks, and consensus about the importance of higher education for development. Linking higher education and economic development: Implications for Africa from three successful systems draws together evidence on the three systems, synthesises the key findings, and distils the implications for African countries. The project on which the book is based forms part of a larger study on Universities and Economic Development in Africa, undertaken by the Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa (HERANA). HERANA is co-ordinated by the Centre for Higher Education Transformation in South Africa.

This volume of the International Perspectives on Education and Society series investigates the challenges and prospects for higher education in Africa, especially issues of development, expansion, internationalization, equity, and divergence.

Reviews "This volume brings together excellent scholarship and innovative policy discussion to demonstrate the essential role of higher education in the development of Africa and of the world at large. Based on deep knowledge of the university system in several African countries, this book will reshape the debate on development in the global information economy for years to come. It should be mandatory reading for academics, policy-makers and concerned citizens, in Africa and elsewhere.” Manuel Castells, Professor Emeritus, University of California at Berkeley, Laureate of the Holberg Prize 2012 and of the Balzan Prize 2013 "The dominant global discourse in higher education now focuses on ‘world-class’ universities – inevitably located predominantly in North America, Europe and, increasingly, East Asia. The rest of the world, including Africa, is left to play ‘catch-up’. But that discourse should focus rather on the tensions, even contradictions, between ‘excellence’ and ‘engagement’ with which all universities must grapple. Here the African experience has much to offer the high-participation and generously resourced systems of the so-called ‘developed’ world. This book offers a critical review of that experience, and so makes a major contribution to our understanding of higher education.” Sir Peter Scott, former editor of Times Higher Education and Professor of Higher Education Studies, University College London, Institute of Education

This book explores the key players, challenges and policies affecting higher education in Africa. It also explores the marketing strategies and the students’ selection process, providing theoretical and practical insights into education marketing in Africa. In particular, it focuses on the competition for students. The growing number of student enrolments, the public sector’s inability to meet the ever-increasing demands and new private universities springing up mean that it is essential for universities to identify their market and effectively communicate their messages. Although there has been substantial theoretical research to help shed light on students’ choices and universities' marketing strategies, little work has been undertaken on higher education in the African context. Filling that gap in the research, while at the same time acknowledging the regional differences in Africa, this book offers empirical insights into the higher education market across the continent.