ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the emerging literature on students’ engagement in African Higher Education (HE). It discusses the state-of-the-art about student engagement in African HE. The chapter examines how student participation is framed at the national and institutional legislative and organizational apparatus. The emerging literature on students’ engagement in African HE can be grouped into two main clusters. The first cluster focuses on broad or macro issues of social, civic and organizational participation of students into the social and academic life of the university. The second cluster focuses on the degree of students’ learning while at university. African political and university elites have often subverted the original nation-building ideals, emanated during the struggle for independence, into a search for personal gains. The Higher Education journal has dedicated a special issue to the challenge of teaching, learning and acquiring/producing knowledge in large and demographically diverse classes, with particular reference to Sub-Saharan Africa.
