'Are we prepared to think beyond national boundaries?'

A new model for transnational partnerships that acknowledges and strengthens the contribution made by public higher education institutions in the Global South is required to produce the kind of knowledge that the world needs, according to Professor Adam Habib, the former vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, and now director of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. In the absence of such a model, universities in the south have been weakened at a crucial moment by a brain drain to their northern peers; and the search for the kinds of global solutions that can address transnational challenges including in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change will remain fruitless, Habib said.