Mamokgethi Phakeng
The global crisis we are experiencing right now I believe, is showing us the need for universities.
I am working on a paper that will be titled “the return of the expert”. The paper takes into account the disillusionment of people when it comes to higher education in the past few years. It was almost like corporates and industry as a whole, were losing confidence in universities. There were many complaints about the calibre of graduates we were producing and our research. People like me have been at pains to defend the sanctity of basic research. Covid-19 is a horrible pandemic, but it also provides an opportunity for the expert researcher.
Prof Laban Ayiro
African scholars and intellectuals must also step up to be counted. Why would I as an African professor use professor Cresswell's book to teach research methodology when I am a professor like him? I have been in leadership for a long time, why can't I produce knowledge on leadership without constantly referring to scholars like Maxwell?
Some African scholars are beginning to stand up and produce knowledge that will help our continent. I have just published a book on insights into institutional leadership that was to be launched in the presence of His Excellency the President but unfortunately he was out of the country. The cabinet secretary for public service came in his place and we were honored. I am following that book up with another one next week on functional research methods.
Prof. Nicola Kleyn
"How do we work with business to confront and navigate major technological disruption?
How do we do that in a continent where we can’t assume that the demands and challenges of the third industrial revolution have already been met?
If we are not alert to the way that technology is being rolled out globally, then in Africa we will find ourselves only being consumers of these technologies. That would represent a missed opportunity to be part of the global value chains that are associated with actually producing and delivering these technologies.
You can't set up an insolated think tank to deal with this. You need to embed it across curricula. This is hard in institutions where academia is seen as having the answers, I think the role of academia is to ensure that we are asking absolutely the right questions and to be working towards finding those answers"
