Community engagement in African agricultural universities: challenges to the institutionalisation of engaged scholarship

Abstract Community engagement in Africa outside South Africa has attracted relatively limited scholarly attention, and there continues to be limited documentation of how African universities engage with external communities and institutionalise community engagement practices. In this study, we scrutinise how agriculture university schools enact community engagement. We conducted a longitudinal multi-case study from 2021 to 2023 of eight agricultural schools located in East, West, and North Africa. The study used a multi-methodology research strategy applying document analysis, two surveys, five group interviews, and 42 individual semi-structured interviews. Survey data were analysed using descriptive statistics, and document and interview data were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. The findings show that agriculture-related community engagement is a highly diverse phenomenon, implemented with varied breadth and depth across the eight cases. Students’ attachment, internships, and entrepreneurship teaching and support constitute important means of community engagement across the eight cases. We identify several factors facilitating and hindering the institutionalisation of community engagement. External funding can provide both opportunities and barriers, depending on whether projects are strategically leveraged for further institutionalisation. A major barrier to adopting engaged scholarship practices is that community engagement is equated with the traditional outreach function of agricultural universities. We contend that enhanced conceptual clarity and methodological awareness may be necessary to embrace and institutionalise more contemporary engagement practices to deal with the hyper-complexity that African rural communities face.