Inequality as the key obstacle to widening successful participation in South Africa

This chapter has two inter-related themes. The first is that, despite a critical need to raise the level of ‘educatedness’ across sub-Saharan Africa, successfully widening participation in Higher Education in the region continues to be severely hampered by conditions arising from inequalities. The inequalities are both external – that is, inequalities between the region and other parts of the world – and internal – that is, social inequalities that result in differential access to opportunities and resources within individual countries.