Knowledge Diplomacy and African Higher Education explores the emergent and dynamic global model of the aid-driven, research-intensive African university as a potential panacea for national and economic development in rapidly shifting contexts. Anchored in the concept of knowledge diplomacy, the book interrogates the logics and practices that shape development agencies’ interventions, revealing how emergent forms of aid, research, and doctoral education are being institutionalized within African higher education systems.

Based on a study of Swedish aid-driven research co-operation and empirical data from interviews with staff and students from universities in Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi and Ethiopia, this is the first comprehensive analysis to move beyond deterministic colonial, neo-colonial, and neo-liberal explanations of university transformation in offering a more nuanced account of how African universities are being reinvented—from predominantly teaching-oriented institutions into research-driven, globally engaged universities—through the agentic moral and intellectual leadership of African scholars themselves.

This highly original book challenges readers to re-examine comfortable assumptions about the promises and paralysis of foreign aid-driven research co-operation and its articulation with development in African higher education. This book will appeal to scholars of comparative and international education, higher education, development practitioners, diplomats and policymakers engaged in strengthening science systems and international research collaboration.