Over the past decades, the development of the internationalisation of higher
education has revised the conceptual framework of higher education, enhanced
its scope, scale and importance, and transformed its world, as well as
reshaping relationships between countries. More powerful universities play a
central role and are suppliers of knowledge, whereas weaker institutions and
systems with fewer resources and lower academic standards occupy a peripheral
position and are consumers. The centre-periphery dichotomy in the
internationalisation of higher education undoubtedly presents considerable
challenges to the higher education institutions of the peripheries. For developing
regions like Africa, higher education is an important instrument for socioeconomic
development, and one of the strategies to improve and qualify higher
education is internationalisation. In spite of various attempts to enhance
the benefits of internationalisation, African higher education has continued
to be peripheral, with relationships remaining asymmetrical, unethical and
unequal. Along with some positive benefits, internationalisation has brought
complicated implications and new challenges, such as the brain drain, cultural
values, the commodification of higher education, the persistence of inequality
between global north-south universities, and so on. The purpose of the present
paper is to highlight the challenges and unintended consequences of the
internationalisation of higher education, with a particular focus on Africa.
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