African HE can be more competitive through 4IR technologies

Universities across Africa need to embrace the new technologies being forged under the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or 4IR, to expand their educational capacity and produce relevant new knowledge, according to Tshilidzi Marwala, outgoing vice-chancellor of the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in South Africa. Meanwhile, South African universities, which are too disconnected from higher education institutions in the rest of Africa, must adopt a greater pan-continental focus as part of their own contribution to development efforts, he said.