We are each consumed by the daily challenges we face but have perhaps not given sufficient attention to and taken the necessary advantage of the phenomenon of change. The first of these changes concerns African politics.

African politics has undergone fundamental change in the last decade and half, with the majority of African countries abandoning the failed systems of one-party rule and military dictatorship, in favour of more open and inclusive democratic systems of government. Multi-party elections have become a regular feature of our national politics. Clearly, we still face many challenges in deepening popular democracy and empowering state and civil society institutions to serve our citizens better, and ensure that all our countries become more democratic.

This challenge is directly relevant to our universities. Our universities had in the past played an important role in the democratic processes due to defining features such as free debate, as well as open and critical search for solutions. Accordingly, the political changes on the continent could never be complete without the full involvement of African universities. Over the years, a good number of them have not performed well with regard to vibrancy, efficiency and effectiveness.

Two of the key activities of higher education, namely research and teaching are the most powerful vehicles that we can and should use to deepen democracy. Research, in particular, engenders the values of inquiry, critical thinking, creativity and open-mindedness, which are fundamental to building a strong democratic ethos in society. We need research and a curriculum that can contribute to the advancement of all forms of knowledge and scholarship. In particular these must address the diverse challenges and demands of the local, national, regional and African contexts, while simultaneously upholding rigorous standards of academic quality.

The second change affecting Africa concerns the issue of peace and stability. In the past, the OAU had a policy of non-interference in the affairs of member-states. Today, the AU firmly asserts our common duty to intervene to prevent such horrors as the 1994 Rwanda genocide, as well as respond to the need to restore political order and maintain peace, in the interest of the African masses. African universities must play an important role in consolidating peace and stability on the continent. The starting point could be the development and strengthening of a curriculum around the subjects of peace, stability and conflict resolution and management.

The third important change is the socio-economic development of the African continent. Through NEPAD, the continent has adopted an integrated, comprehensive and holistic approach to the challenges of development. It now speaks with one voice about the pressing needs of our countries, individually and collectively. In addition, NEPAD continues to engage different sectors on the continent to mobilize internal resources for the regeneration of our continent.

Globalization is the fourth change that has had a profound impact on our continent. One driving factor of globalization is the role played by modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)in transforming the global economy and the very lives of the peoples of the world. That we do not fully benefit from these ICT advantages serves both as a cause and an effect of Africa's underdevelopment. We have continued to export both human and capital resources to the rich countries of the developed north. We have seen a pervasive world phenomenon of globalization further marginalize Africa, and confine our continent to the periphery of an increasingly integrated and interdependent world.

One of the things we may want to look at is the role of the African universities in a continent whose politics continue to change for the better; a continent that is becoming more assertive in dealing with those who undermine the peace and stability of our countries; a continent that is implementing a comprehensive development programme in the face of a changed world that continues to marginalize Africa and her people; and a continent which has not accessed modern technology and therefore remains ever poorer and underdeveloped.

Our countries are going through a critically important transition phase. South Africa is moving from its racist past to a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society. The Democratic Republic of Congo is trying to break away from various forms of autocracy, towards democracy. Burundi is breaking loose from tribal conflicts to consolidate a unified nation that uses its diversity to strengthen itself. Somalia is emerging from its conditions as a failed state, to reunite all Somalis into a new democratic state. Sudan is working to overcome long-standing racial, tribal, regional and religious conflicts, build a new nation, united in its diversity. What then is the role of the African intellectuals and universities in all this, not merely in analyzing the problems and challenges facing us, but in offering practical solutions?

The AU through NEPAD has established the Peer-Review Mechanism. Apart from this African initiative, we have very few authentic African institutions that act as barometers to measure our progress with regard to such important matters as democracy, peace and stability, peoples and human rights, development issues, and the creation of people-centred societies.

We know the long and rich history of higher education on this continent from the time of the flowering of Nubian civilization, to the great temples of knowledge in ancient Egypt, to the era of the great centres of learning in Timbuktu in the middle of the second millennium A.D.

Timbuktu was not only a great intellectual centre of the West African civilizations of Ghana, Mali and Songhai but also one of the most splendid scientific centres and contributors to the period described as the European Medieval and Renaissance eras. Indeed, because of the importance of the manuscripts at Timbuktu, the governments of Mali and South Africa have established a project of restoring and preserving these priceless documents, so that as we look at the challenges facing our continent, we will be able to draw from this invaluable fountain of knowledge. Undoubtedly, today, as in the past, higher education has an important role to play in the economic, social, cultural and political renaissance of our continent and in the drive for the development of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS).

An African university cannot but be an important and critical part of the African Renaissance. The challenge for an African university should be viewed as a call that insists that all critical and transformative educators in Africa embrace an indigenous African world-view and root their nation's educational paradigms in an indigenous socio-cultural and epistemological framework. This implies that all educational curricula in Africa should have Africa as their focus, and be indigenous-grounded and orientated. Failure to do so may result in education becoming alien and irrelevant.

As part of our renaissance, we may want to view the African university through a number of features, which could include an African identity and vision that:

• Provides an overarching education philosophy that is consonant with the cultures of the people;
• Represents a critical point of departure from the current colonial-Western identity;
• Creates a new paradigm that locates the African condition, knowledge, experiences, values, world-view and mindset at the centre of our scholarship and knowledge-seeking.
• Places education at the centre of our development programmes to ensure that we create a continent that is developed and prosperous.

In this context, African educational thought and practice are characterised not only by their concern with the person, but also by their interweaving of social, economic, political, cultural, and educational threads together into a common tapestry.

Higher education, then, should not be separated from life itself. It is a natural process by which members of the community gradually acquire skills, knowledge, and attitudes appropriate to life in their community.

The centuries-old subjugation of Africa to foreign exploitation wreaked serious damage that continues to impact on contemporary Africa.  This was accomplished through a whole range of arrangements including educational philosophies, curricula and practices whose context corresponds with that of the respective colonial powers. We need a distinctively African knowledge system to recover the humanistic and ethical principles embedded in African philosophy. Such a system would develop both a vision and a practice of education that lays the basis for African people to participate in mastering and directing the course of change and fulfilling the vision of learning to know, learning to do, learning to be, and learning to live together as equals with others.

An educational discourse of this kind in higher education would view knowledge and minds not as commodities, not just human resources to be developed and exploited, and then cast aside, but as treasures to be cultivated to improve the quality of life of both individuals and societies.

In this context, some of the important challenges facing education in Africa are:

• The African heritage - what to retain, modify or replace;
• The colonial heritage; the language problem as well as the cultural and philosophical questions in our education systems;
• The dichotomy between education for self-reliance versus education for technological and industrial advancement; and
• Education for national unity.

Obviously, we cannot ignore the phenomenon of the brain drain. In part this is caused by the fact that our universities have become less competitive as regards the financial rewards they offer our teaching and management staff, and less capable to offer possibilities for original research. As a result, our universities and the continent struggle to retain the critical mass and necessary interdisciplinary skills that we now find in Western institutions. Funding of higher education across the continent, as a means to counter the brain drain, requires our attention.

The African continent is immense, not only in terms of its size but, more importantly, with respect to the cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity. Its biggest challenge is poverty and underdevelopment. Higher education is thus faced with considerable challenges related to the eradication of poverty. They include the radical improvement of the health infrastructure, so as to deal effectively with such illnesses as Malaria, TB and Aids. They address creating the conditions for African countries to create modern economies, enabling the integrating of Africa into the modern global economy.

It remains the task of intellectuals to offer solutions to Africa's problems, as well as make a contribution to the renaissance of an African continent that is united, peaceful, democratic, fully developed, prosperous, and a respected member of the world community.

Africa’s political leaders have to ensure that they act in a manner that truly respects the views of the African intelligentsia with regard to the African Renaissance and the birth of the African Century. The African dream should no longer be a gigantic mirage that shimmers as a false hope on the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert.