This paper begins by reviewing the ways in which the higher education landscape
in Africa has changed significantly during the last decade as a result of the ongoing
regional crisis and the changing perspectives on African higher education articulated within the international development arena and argues that, if the higher education crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was the result of financial conditionalities
imposed through structural adjustment, then the ensuing decade has seen a global
policy shift that has profoundly changed the conditions under which academic work
is carried out. Particular attention is paid to the manner in which the changing,
economically driven constraints on academic freedom, institutional autonomy and
conditions of service in higher educational institutions are mediated by other social
conditions such as gender inequalities, the HIV/AIDS crisis, the effects of long-
term brain drain and the manner in which local capacity is diverted into survivalism.
I argue that higher education reforms threaten to undermine the material base for
academic life by emphasising privatisation and cost recovery in contexts where
poverty is a major feature of life. Exaggerated concerns with “efficiency” and “excellence” lead to increased regulation and surveillance of scholarly output, rendering academic freedom vulnerable to formulaic measures of performance that may
be insensitive to the work of African academics. The paper concludes by recommending a programme of activities designed to re-affirm the public stake in higher
education, strengthen and diversify independent scholarly work and encourage African governments to adopt policies that will strengthen the tertiary sector and ensure an enabling environment for intellectual development and freedom.