She delivered a thought-provoking lecture on the topic, “Collaboration in Higher Education as Service to Society”, in which she challenged African universities to deliberately embrace public purpose and move away from what she described as “tinkering with at the fringes”.

She bemoaned the detrimental detachment of African universities from society and called for a reimagining of the African university to reflect the “heartbeat of society”. She stressed that the call for change was urgent and required a prompt response and not “when we have the time and resources to do so more comfortably”.

She charged ARUA to lead the way in engendering changes that broke boundaries around nationally bound curricula, decolonising African education, and collaborations that replicate power imbalances.

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