The 21st RUFORUM Annual General Meeting (AGM) convened in Gaborone, Botswana from 1st – 5th December 2025, set the scene for renewed commitment to doing things differently in repositioning Africa’s universities as engines of transformation. Guided by the theme “Positioning Africa’s Universities and Higher Education Sector to Effectively Impact Development Processes on the continent,” the AGM brought together 1,112 participants ...

By Maureen Agena War, migration, and prolonged conflict have disrupted higher education across Africa, leaving millions of young people without stable pathways to learning or employment. In countries such as South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and the Central African Republic, many universities have been destroyed or repurposed, lecturers displaced, and entire cohorts of students forced ...

RUFORUM 2025 AGM – Gaborone, Botswana:  Dumelang! With this warm Setswana greeting, an assembly of continental educators, scholars, partners, governments and researchers were officially welcomed to the 21st RUFORUM Annual General Meeting (AGM) at the Gaborone International Conference Centre (GICC). The event is hosted by the Government of Botswana under the theme ‘Positioning Africa’s Universities and the Higher Education Sector ...

By Maureen Agena The African Union’s Agenda 2063 articulates a clear continental ambition, to unlock Africa’s potential to feed itself and to harness the transformative power of its greatest asset, its people. While natural resources remain abundant and diverse, Africa’s long-term prosperity hinges on the strategic cultivation of human capital through robust, forward-looking education systems. Like many governments across the ...

By Maureen Agena RUFORUM 2025 AGM – Gaborone, Botswana: Across the continent, universities in Africa are graduating a rapidly expanding cohort of PhD and postdoctoral researcher scientists whose work will influence health systems, food security, climate resilience, and technological innovation. Yet, even as the demand for scientific leadership grows, structured leadership and mentorship training for early-career researchers remains thin, inconsistent, ...

RUFORUM 2025 AGM – Gaborone, Botswana:  What was meant to be an ordinary field visit for participants of the RUFORUM AGM side events on 29 November 2025, quickly evolved into a vivid demonstration of the promising green economic potential that Safflower holds for poverty eradication. As participants walked through the safflower fields and listened to the testimonials of famers on ...