Internationalisation or not we move : perspective from an outsider

Abstract

Internationalisation of higher education is a highly contested subject or subdiscipline within the field of higher education and there are many voices articulating varied opinions on several issues on the topic. Like most subjects in the global higher education sphere, Africa is often made an unwilling participant or a participant by omission. Such situations have led to attempts to reconfigure the meaning of internationalisation from different spheres and what should constitute internationalisation. One of these attempts at Higher Education Forum on Africa, Asia and Latin America 2019 sparked a series of engagements which would later result in several journal and newspaper articles. This chapter takes a look at some of the issues upon which these engagements were anchored in a bid to showcase the complexity of the subject and to show how difficult it is to reach, beyond reasonable doubt, a university-accepted definition or pathway for the subject. The chapter focuses on the fact that whether higher education initiatives constitute internationalisation or not, working towards responsiveness at all levels must be encouraged.