Keywords

1 Introduction

Internationalization has been one of the key innovation mantras in Kenya’s university sector since 2000. Universities have opened international offices with directors, signed partnership agreements with international universities, and initiated study abroad programs to shore up their global presence. Yet, despite the increased internationalization activities in recent years, the process is not new nor are the developments restricted to Kenya. Internationalization is as old as the foundation of modern universities in the country, and the current manifestations of the process echo developments in the rest of Africa including historical origins, current motivations, rationales, and configurations as well as outcomes. Throughout the country’s higher education history, internationalization efforts have been anchored in the perceived pragmatic needs and global competitiveness while eschewing the rich tapestry of indigenous epistemologies that would enrich institutional transformation.

In this chapter, I explore the evolution of the internationalization of higher education in Kenya paying close attention to the context in which it has been framed from the colonial era to the contemporary period. In the exploration, I demonstrate the manifest tension between the desire by universities to espouse global values as a measure of success against the call for the institutions to demonstrate local relevance even as they clamor for global ranking through internationalization. The analysis begins with the framing of higher education internationalization followed by the analysis of internationalization in the colonial, immediate post-independence, and the contemporary periods.

2 Conceptualizing Internationalization and Education Quality

A myriad of definitions of internationalization exists in extant literature; consensus is hard to come by. Zeleza attributes the contested definitions to the “…diversity and complexity of its rationales, activities, stakeholders, and providers at the international, national, sectoral, and institutional levels.” (Zeleza, 2016, p. 213). Notwithstanding this challenge, it is possible to provide a working conception of internationalization based on existing literature. Knight (1999), conceptualizes it as the process of integrating “transnational elements into the purpose, functions or delivery of post-secondary education” (p.2). A Delphi panel of international education experts expanded Knight’s definition with the rider, “….in order to enhance the quality of education and research for all students and staff, and to make meaningful contribution to society” (De Wit & Hunter, 2015, p. 3). The transnational elements include study-abroad programs, allowing students to learn about other cultures (internationalization at home), providing access to higher education in other countries where local institutions cannot provide demand, upgrading international perspectives and skills of students, enhancing foreign language, and offering cross-cultural understanding (Altbach & Jane, 2007). While quality enhancement has been an important motivation for internationalization, commercial interests and global competitiveness have also been key impetus driving the process. Therefore, from the foregoing, pro-active rather than reactive overtures define institutional approaches to internationalization.

Besides internationalization, the concept of educational quality is germane to this work. There is no consensus on what education quality means or what features denote its existence. Some have approached it from an input perspective, others have looked at the outputs of the system, yet others have focused on the process of education itself. The merits of the various definitions aside, quality in higher education goes beyond the narrow confines of performance and outcomes to include the complex and broad intangible benefits of the education. In this chapter, I employ Harvey and Greens view of quality as a “transformation” in which higher education leads to qualitative change in learners cognitive abilities and, ultimately, to futures perceived as desirable (Harvey & Green, 2006). Quality university education should go beyond merely transmitting concepts derived from the western epistemologies to questioning such concepts as well as initiating the dialogical process of uncovering African epistemologies to arrive at a balanced view of the world to enrich the academic space. This view of quality is in tandem with the competency approach to internationalization which underscores the importance of developing skills, knowledge, attitudes and values of students and faculty so that they become internationally knowledgeable and interculturally skilled (Qiang, 2003).

A conceptual framework is central to the analysis of internationalization efforts and this work is no exception. Figure 13.1 portrays the concept of internationalization used in this work with quality of learning outcomes as the guiding reference. The beliefs about internationalization and values it promises for the institutions form the bedrock of the initiative. The internationalization efforts in three epochs of university development in Africa—colonial, development, and neo-liberal—are assessed along these beliefs and values. In the analysis, the internationalization approach in the three eras is epitomized by emphasis on western epistemological values and beliefs while neglecting African knowledge embedded in local communities. Importantly,  the neoliberal era is characterized by emphasis on global competitiveness and revenue generation that deepens the link to western epistemological values. This work advocates for a broad-based inclusive internationalization which affirms and promotes African epistemological identity evident in indigenous communities as a counterweight to the excessive western imprint in the current internationalization efforts.

Fig. 13.1
figure 1

Conceptual framework of quality internationalization & African higher education

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Source Author.

3 Internationalization and the Colonial University

It is impossible to navigate the manifest tensions between internationalization and local relevance without a recourse to the history of higher education development in the country. The roots of university development coupled with the nature of the colonial university in Kenya are the focus of this section. The section looks at the colonial university including the rationale for its establishment, the curriculum content, and expected outcomes. In the process of the analysis, the genesis of university internationalization is illuminated.

The foundation of the university in Kenya was international; in 1956 the Royal Technical College, the precursor to the current University of Nairobi, was founded as a branch of the University of London. The college offered degrees in arts, science, and engineering awarded by the University of London underlying both the pragmatic skills and moral values that graduates were to personify. The college had a singular mission to train local manpower both in functional skills and British norms for the emerging colonial bureaucracy. In terms of curriculum, modes of instruction, and methods of assessment this colonial university college followed the traditions of the metropole university. There was no room for local innovation in instruction, curriculum, or program developments (Lulat, 2003, Wane & Munene, 2019). This colonial experience in early university development was not a Kenyan phenomenon alone, but was a reality replicated across the rest of Africa whether under British, French, or Portuguese colonialism (Mamdani, 2018).

While the overt aims of Kenyan colonial higher education architecture were clearly enunciated, the two interrelated covert goals were less obvious. The first was to act as a fulcrum of economic, cultural, and mental subordination of the indigenous African peoples. It was the vehicle that shaped the incorporation of African economies into the global network of capitalist production through the strengthening of the local colonial economic production and bureaucracy—in human skills development and values articulation. This supported the economic relations between the colonized African nations and the metropolitan states. The second was to redefine knowledge production in the continent. The courses offered and modes of instruction were a replica of the content offered and the pedagogical approaches employed in the mother European university. Importantly, the colonial university introduced the one-size-fits-all western disciplinary mode of knowledge organization and promoted the notion of universal scholars tutored in universally sanctioned theories and methodologies irrespective of the local context. Differently stated, it elevated the notion of “international” excellence in knowledge production and dissemination in the university as something foreign, and not local knowledge and its relevance.

Appreciating the genesis of internationalization of higher education in Kenya requires the fundamental recognition of the role of the colonial university in setting up the dominant patterns and structure of internationalization that elevates foreign epistemology while eschewing local knowledge and processes. The colonial university was among the first major assaults on African indigenous epistemologies which were perceived as subordinate to western knowledge systems. Equally, the colonial university set the stage for framing higher education internationalization in terms of economic benefits, albeit latently. These twin themes continue to reverberate in the discussions on internationalization of higher education especially now that international partnerships and linkages have become central in universities' strategic planning in the country.

4 The National Development University and Internationalization

Kenya’s independence in 1963 obliterated the architecture of the colonial university and ushered in the era of the national development university, from 1970 to the early-1990. The University of Nairobi (inaugurated in 1970 after the breakup of the federated University of East Africa) and its affiliate Kenyatta University College (KUC) were the first development institutions established with the specific purpose of fronting national development along the lines of the land grant universities in the USA. Later in 1984 Moi University was established and in 1985 KUC became a full-fledged public university, Kenyatta University. Until the mid-1990s, the three were the only national development universities in the country.

Like in the rest of Africa, the Kenyan national development university had an Africanization agenda centered on manpower development to replace colonial bureaucrats, an economic transformation through modern agriculture & commerce, and the advancement of political progress through civic education (Alperovitz et al., 2009; Government of Kenya, 1965; Mazrui, 1992a, b & Yessufu, 1973). Koffi Anan captured this succinctly as he delineated the role of the African university:

I believe that the university must become a primary tool for Africa’s development in the new century. Universities can help develop African expertise; they can enhance the analysis of African problems; strengthen domestic institutions; serve as a model environment for the practice of good governance, conflict resolution and respect for human rights, and enable African academics to play an active part in the global community of scholars (Anan, 2000).

These development roles assigned to the university were encapsulated in various policy documents generated by the Kenyan government to guide the war against the three enemies of national progress: illiteracy, poverty, and disease. The first development blueprint noted the centrality of higher education in national progress (Government of Kenya, 1965), a position upheld by the World Bank-funded policy document on Kenya’s education (Government of Kenya, 2005) and by the state-appointed Public University Inspection Board (Government of Kenya, 2006). In the state’s policy proscriptions for progress, a direct correlation existed between university education and national development.

True to this calling, the development universities articulated their local relevance by developing programs and outreach activities that addressed local needs overlooked by the colonial university. The University of Nairobi and Kenyatta University, for instance, developed programs on African and Kenyan history, African musicology, African literature and oral literature, and Kiswahili. The University of Nairobi established the Institute of African Studies to promote research on indigenous institutions and material culture and developed an extra-mural studies program to offer courses through distance learning. A major victory was attained when the university renamed its Department of English to Literature Department (Sicherman, 1998), a victory over the domination of European approach to literature which excluded important African authors and oral literature. The university’s renowned traveling theatre traversed the country taking to the people literature and performing arts with socio-political relevance. These activities were meant to buttress attitudinal shift from the colonial euro-centric to the independence afro-centric orientation among the students, a fact noted by the first vice-chancellor of the university in his address to the first graduating class in 1970: “We are obliged to design a system of education that will help to promote social change and contribute to rapid economic growth, not only by training educated manpower needed for specific tasks of development, but also by creating proper attitudes of mind in our people” (University of Nairobi, 2020). In this way, not only did the universities contribute to the intellectual engagement and promotion of local culture but they also facilitated the codification of the same in written form. The first generation of Kenyan authors in various fields of humanities and social sciences were based in these institutions.

In addition to these local relevance initiatives, there were three areas of regional internationalization worth mentioning that the universities pursued. First, universities in the three countries of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, collaborated in sharing external examiners for thesis, dissertations, and examinations as a quality enhancement mechanism. Second, French students from Kenya were often hosted by universities in the French-speaking Burundi and Rwanda for a month-long language field experience. Third, the Inter-University Council of East Africa (IUCEA) was established by the three east African governments and national universities in 1980 to facilitate contact and cooperation in academic activities.

While the Kenyan political leaders and key university administrators envisioned a fully national development university that is locally relevant, Africanist in outlook, and actively engaged in the lives of the local citizenry, overall the reality was anything but. In terms of pedagogy and curriculum content, both the University of Nairobi and Kenyatta University College remained largely beholden to the traditions inherited from the colonial university. The lecture method of teaching, a rigid examination structure, and oversight by external examiners from the commonwealth countries including Britain remained the hallmarks of teaching and assessment in both undergraduate and graduate studies. The teaching content largely continued to emulate the curriculum in the west (America and Europe) especially in disciplines like education philosophy, psychology, and sociology in which theories and research methods were mostly foreign. Additionally, though the universities established departments of African languages, indigenous languages never became their concentration both in teaching and research. The departments' focus were, and continue to be, Kiswahili, the national language. Moreover, attempts by the three east Africa governments (Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda) to develop an East African Community Higher Education Area (EACHEA) modeled along the Erasmus Program in Europe to facilitate student mobility never materialized (Oanda & Matiang’i, 2018). All said, very limited efforts were made to moderate the preponderance of western influence by incorporating intellectual thoughts and methodological approaches by African scholars and thinkers as well as reframe the organizational architecture to enhance regional indigenous internationalization.

Besides this imbalance in knowledge production and dissemination, academic mobility, international collaborations, and partnerships also reflected the dominance of western academic paradigms. Junior academic staff in the universities were sponsored by international government agencies and private foundations for doctoral studies in Canadian, European, and US universities further cementing the western epistemological hold on the local universities. Kenya, for instance, was a beneficiary of the US government African Scholarship Program of American Universities (ASPAU) which sponsored 1,500 students from 1961 to 1970 of whom 64% returned to Africa to take up university positions (Rich, 1978). The British government through the British Council, Canada through CIDA, and Germany through DAAD played a key role in supporting manpower development in Kenyan universities in the 70 and 80 s. The Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations collaborated with the US government to support African universities’ manpower development as part of the cold war foreign policy (Arnove, 1980). Research partnerships and collaboration activities, dependent on foreign donors, were skewed in favor of foreign universities (Bogonko, 1991).

The modicum localization initiatives made by the development universities notwithstanding, the institutions largely remained foreign just like their counterparts in the rest of Africa. The universities remained alien institutions teaching western theories and epistemologies to the neglect of African knowledge systems and, for the most part, disengaged from the development needs of the local populace. In Nabudere’s assessment, the universities “….continued to reproduce dependent Eurocentric knowledge, a knowledge that is dependent on its actualization in centers that exploit the African people and utilize African resources freely….The models of western universities, which Africa adopted, have proved completely unsuitable for Africa’s needs” (Nabudere, 2003, pp. 5–6). Mazrui baptized the national universities as “multinational corporations”, highly dependent on the west as a reference point for decision-making, selling cultural goods manufactured in Europe to Africans, and whose graduates had intellectual dependency on the west (Mazrui, 1975 and 1992a, b).

As a project of African nationalism, decolonization, development, democratization, nation-building, and regional integration, the development university failed, to a considerable degree, to reframe internationalization discourse to elevate African epistemologies. The university manifested tensions between the necessity to retain an “international” (western) outlook in the academy and the need to be locally relevant, engaged, and African in outlook. In Table 13.1, a summary of the success and failures of the national developmental university in balancing the pull of the colonial university and its western orientation and the need to be locally relevant is presented.

Table 13.1 The Developmental University Localization: Goals, Strategy, Success & Failures
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5 Internationalization and the Neo-Liberal University

State Policy Shift.

From independence in 1963 to the late-1980s higher education was fully funded by the state. The government not only provided funds for both operational costs and capital development but also fully sponsored students for both undergraduate and graduate studies. Since the early 1990s, the landscape of universities in Kenya has shifted, catapulted by the twin forces of marketization and privatization. Under the government’s policy of revenue diversification, public universities must generate revenues from tuition fees, marketing programs, and private sources to supplement declining state subsidies. Furthermore, to satisfy the surge in demand for university education, private universities would be permitted to operate in the country thereby ending the state monopoly in the provision of university education (Munene & Otieno, 2008). In this new dispensation, the state's focus will be on policy development, regulation, accreditation, and enabling access rather than direct involvement in university affairs. This change in government policy in higher education was enshrined in the 1994–1998 National Development Plan that proclaimed:

…..the central thrust of the new policies is to rely on market forces to mobilize resources for growth and development with the role of central government increasingly confined to providing an effective regulatory framework and essential public infrastructure and social services. The government will limit direct participation in many sectors and instead promote private sector activity (cited in Kiamba, 2004, p. 55).

That public universities would now be required to adopt private sector business models and corporate governance styles was amplified by the minister for education who declared:

This is a turning point in the development of our public universities, where they are being called upon to adopt business-like financial management styles. It is also a point in time when universities have to plan well ahead about resources expected to be coming from sources other than the exchequer. ... [The] time has come to seriously take account of the universities’ potential to generate income internally. It is an open secret that some of our universities are capable of generating substantial amounts of money from the resources at their disposal. ... Income from such sources should be exploited and treated as definite sources of university revenue (cited in Kiamba, 2004:55–56).

The consequences of this policy shift have been institutional massification, from 3 national universities in 1995 to 74 public and private universities today. Student enrollment has also swelled from 20,000 in 1990 (Mulinge et al., 2017) to around 509,470 today (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2020).

Internationalization in the Age of Neo-liberalism.

The new policy shift was not confined to Kenya but part of a global trend that began in 1980 when higher education reforms in Britain and USA tightened the link between universities and the national economies while strategically positioning them as instruments for global competitiveness. “Academic capitalism” (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997) is now the operating mantra as universities develop market-based academic programs, focus on STEM disciplines, marketize services, engage in applied contract research while limiting the growth in basic sciences, fundamental research, humanities, and social sciences. Academic capitalism has been embraced in higher education in nearly all countries in Africa heralding an era of government retreat in financing universities and their increasing reliance on private revenues (Assie-Lumumba, 2006, Ochwa-Echel, 2013, and Zeleza, 2003).

As Kenyan universities have veered into the marketplace, they have been thrust into the global marketplace of ideas and resources. Universities are now viewed as an important cog in enhancing the nation’s global competitiveness through the training of a globally competitive workforce. They must also be globally competitive institutions and generate resources from the global marketplace. Thus, privatization, marketization, and globalization are intricately fused together in this neo-liberal university paradigm. It is in this market-competitive environment that the current internationalization efforts are situated.

Most of Kenya’s universities now have a directorate of international programs whose raison d'être is revenue generation through the capture of the student market, access to research grants through collaborative partnerships, and the enhancement of institutional profile through global ranking. Table 13.2 highlights the rationales and objectives given by the country’s leading universities to justify the establishment of the directorates. These goals principally focus on reputation-enhancement and revenue-generation through partnerships, student enrolment, and staff exchange for short-term visits. Missing in these objectives are important such as full campus internationalization and the advancement of indigenous African knowledge. Furthermore, the directorates are also poorly staffed with only one senior academician serving as the director and between 2 and 5 supporting staff. Without well qualified and knowledgeable staff, it is doubtful these directorates will be successful whether advancing full campus internationalization, enhancing research partnerships, leading the curriculum internationalization efforts including strengthening African epistemologies, and increasing students and scholar mobility.

Table 13.2 Rationale for International Directorates in Kenya’s Leading Universities
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Enrollment of international students remains the key strategy the universities are focusing on to generate tuition revenue as well as enhance their reputations in a competitive environment. International student enrollment, however, remains dismal. Table 13.3 documents the paucity of international students in selected public and private universities in 2018 (Muyaka, 2019). The overall diversity ration of 0.015% suggests an academic climate with inadequate international cross-cultural diversity that would enrich the teaching–learning experience.

Table 13.3 International Student Enrollment as Reflection of Diversity in Selected Universities, 2018
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While no official government policy exists on university internationalization, the Kenya National Qualification Authority (KNQA), a state agency that standardizes higher education qualifications, has initiated steps to normalize university universities operations and resources to make them attractive to international students. The target of 30,000 students from the current 4,000 in five years seeks to ensure that Kenya becomes the destination for international students in the region with Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, among others, as the catchment areas according to KNQA head (Waruru, 2019). In marketing their programs, the KNQA head avers, universities:

must also provide decent and affordable accommodation to international students on a reliable basis and on a bigger scale….and, there may be a need for them to come together and market their programs as a group rather than do so individually. This is what we are proposing for now and we shall start with willing universities…..What is needed is aggressive marketing and joint branding (Waruru, 2019).

The embedded narrative of “aggressive marketing”, “joint branding”, “market programs”, and “decent and affordable accommodation” speaks to the repositioning of universities to attract a fee-paying clientele rather than also recalibrating the institutions to internationalize and advance neglected areas of academic inquiry including indigenous African knowledge systems. In this case internationalization through international student enrolment does not seek to affirm the centrality of African knowledge and African perspectives in global knowledge production and dissemination. Rather, it seeks to merely sustain and expand the unequal relations in knowledge production and dissemination that favors the west.

Another important internationalization activity that the Kenyan universities boldly proclaim is collaboration and linkages with international universities. Indeed, most universities have established linkages and partnerships with foreign universities especially those in the west. A look at the partnerships in some top public universities underscores the extent of these linkages. The University of Nairobi has established links with universities in Belgium, Germany, UK, and USA. These partnerships have grown exponentially since the 2000; between 1999 and 2003, the university had signed 38 partnership agreements and in the next five years, 2004–2008, the number had grown to 116 (Otieno, 2012). The longest running partnership with the Free University of Belgium has provided support for ICT infrastructure, masters, and doctoral training. Moi University has had a longstanding relationship with Indiana University in the USA and the Free University of Belgium that support doctoral training, faculty exchange, and joint research programs. Egerton University offers an aeronautical engineering program in collaboration with Michigan University in USA. Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology has had a longstanding partnership with several Japanese universities funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

These partnerships for academic training, student exchange and collaborative research with universities in the Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, and USA are dictated by funding availability. With financial resources coming from the wealthier partners in Asia, Europe, and the USA, it is not a surprise that the flow of trainees is from Kenya to the international partners. In contrast, students on academic exchange are from the same partners to Kenyan universities. The dominance of western universities is reflected in these flows, and reflects a shift from educational and cultural norms of international education to financial ones. Kenyan universities have strategically positioned themselves both as revenue-charging hosts of study-abroad students from western universities, and recipients of training resources from foreign universities. Few Kenyan students travel abroad for short-term academic exchange. When they do travel for education, the major destination is Uganda as self-sponsored students in pursuit of training in high demand programs such as medical sciences. Uganda is a preferred destination owing to the lower cost of training compared to Kenya (Ogachi, 2009). Knowledge is no longer an instrument of global cross-cultural understanding but a commodified good to be traded globally. More significantly, the partnership structure provides little incentives for the study and integration of African epistemologies into the realm of global academic discourse as part of internationalization.

Scholars agree that internationalization is incomplete in absence of a comprehensive strategy of internationalization on campus. Put differently, internationalization at home where all faculty and students experience it, is as critical as international partnerships and linkages. The American Council on Education has defined it as:

a strategic, coordinated framework that integrates policies, programs, initiatives, and individuals to make colleges and universities more globally oriented and internationally connected. In order to foster sustainable and just global engagement, the comprehensive internationalization model embraces an organizational growth mindset. It frames internationalization as an ongoing process rather than a static goal. To that end, it recognizes that all constituents at a college or university—students, faculty, and staff—are learners and central to the institution's equitable, intercultural transformation (American Council on Education, 2021).

Equally, Hudzik (2014) sees comprehensive internationalization as the means through which higher education institutions respond to widening and more complex expectations to connect globally to better serve students, clientele, and society in the twenty-first century. Comprehensive internationalization is, therefore, a necessary condition for empowering the entire university community to engage fully with the global academic community on a solid footing.

It is, therefore, surprising that despite the establishment of directorates for internationalization and global engagement, all Kenyan universities lack a strategy for comprehensive internationalization. No institutional policies and strategies have been enacted to support faculty develop intercultural competence in curriculum development and teaching. There are no physical or virtual opportunities for all students to engage in academic activities beyond the national boundaries. There is no financial support for approved short-term study abroad programs for undergraduate and graduate students. Furthermore, the senior most official overseeing the internationalization efforts is the director, a rank below a dean. This denies the position the political clout and visibility to champion internationalization in the organizational hierarchy particularly the need for resources. Without a comprehensive campus internationalization strategy, internationalization is confined to a few fortunate scholars and remains detached from most internal stakeholders. This denies the majority of the faculty and students opportunities to explore and affirm the African identity, culture, and language in the realm of global knowledge production.

There have been some moves to infuse internationalization through academic courses with an international bent. The teaching of three major international languages of English, French, and German has been a feature in the academic programs since the 1970s. The British, French, and German governments have provided resources for academic staff development as well as for teaching and learning to strengthen the teaching of these languages and allied cultures. A more recent addition in nearly all public universities is the Confucius Institutes through which the Chinese language and culture are taught. As China’s global influence increases, so have the universities sought to establish Confucius Institutes to tap into the training and research resources that flow from this academic partnership. That foreign governments are at the forefront of promoting their own languages in Kenyan universities need not surprise us. Language is the vehicle through which a society’s culture and values are codified and transmitted and by financing their national languages programs, these governments are reinforcing the continued dominance of foreign values and cultures in the academy. Meanwhile, Kenyan universities have yet to develop programs on indigenous languages as in South Africa to counter the dominance of foreign languages.

In sum, while neoliberalism has heightened the need for universities to be globally competitive it has also catalyzed the revenue-generation as a key impetus for internationalization. In turn, this contributed to a lopsided view of internationalization which eschews African epistemologies and identity in global knowledge production and neglects campus-wide internationalization efforts.

6 Conclusion

Higher education internationalization in Kenya is a by-product of external and internal forces that have shaped the development of universities rather than an intrinsic impetus to improve the quality of learning outcomes. It is a development trajectory guided by the desire to fit into the contours of the global paradigm of higher education success rather than local relevance enriched by internationalism. The colonial university sought to reproduce the metropolitan British university locally and, therefore, subordinated indigenous African knowledge systems. Whereas the post-independent national development university made some efforts to incorporate African epistemologies in the curriculum, these efforts remained minuscule and confined to specific academic units rather than a university-wide academic mission. The internationalization agenda of the contemporary neo-liberal university driven by the need to attain global competitiveness and revenue enhancement centered around the marketization of academic programs. In this financial model of internationalization, the advancement of African knowledge remains elusive.

All told, the contours of internationalization in Kenya’s higher education has yet to grapple with the intricacies of centering African epistemologies as the core of knowledge production in universities. An internationalization strategy that strikes a balance between ethical revenue generation and the advancement of African knowledge will go a long way in mitigating the current lopsided approach to efforts.