A Plugin Campus for Computing in Africa: An Analysis of Five Years

This innovative practice paper describes Academic or institutional change for Graduate Education. Africa is a continent filled with unutilized young talent. This is due to several factors such as limited access to quality education, especially in engineering and computing. A plugin campus refers to a minibranch or remote campus of a base university (usually from the Global North) that operates in another country (usually in the Global South) at the host university's campus. We report an analysis of a case study, where the University Turku ran its plugin campus at the University of Namibia during 2019–24. Its main aim was to offer studies especially in computing, but also to be a catalyst for the University of Namibia and to co-design digital solutions for African challenges. We report how, throughout its operation, the plugin campus has interacted with various individuals and significantly impacted the lives of many. It has identified and trained local talent that otherwise cannot afford to get any education in computing. The five most important lessons learned are that computing and more widely engineering education have to (1) listen to and learn from the local community's demands, especially by the young people, (2) recognize and support talent beyond formal education, (3) adapt to different cultures for better and mutual learning, (4) rethink the traditional educational models of the Global North to better fit different expectations of people, and (5) dedicate time to and trust to build local partnerships for making a difference in people's lives.