Recap: Africa Lecture Series - Principal in conversation with Professor Adam Habib

Professor Adam Habib, Director of the School of Oriental and African studies (SOAS), University of London, joined Professor Iain Gillespie, Principal and Vice-Chancellor at the University of Dundee, for a discussion on their journeys in engagement and commitment to Africa. 

The event formed the fourth edition of the University of Dundee’s Africa Lecture Series. 

The theme of the discussion was ‘how universities are taking forward promotion of equitable partnerships in their institutional engagement with the Global South’. 

Both the University of Dundee and SOAS have committed to an equitable way of working with international partners in Africa built on co-creation, shared responsibility and co-delivery.

“We are either in it together, or we’ll all sink.” 

Today both Africa and Scotland are faced with the challenge of ensuring economic growth and transformation while adapting to climate change.  

To address these transnational challenges, the University of Dundee is increasing the breadth and scope of its engagement with Africa and developing a new model for engagement and partnership that is truly equitable.  

SOAS shares the same goal as Dundee to foster the richer, interconnected scholarship the world needs to address global challenges. 

“All of our challenges are transnational, and they require global sciences and local knowledge to be able to address them,” said Professor Habib. “If one part of the world doesn’t address it, all of us will remain vulnerable.  

“It’s important that we build institutional capacities and human capabilities around the world so that we can address the local manifestations of these transnational challenges. 

“We are either in it together, or we’ll all sink.” 

Reimagining partnerships 

In collaboration with African institutions as equal partners, the University of Dundee is co-creating a new agenda for excellence education, research and engagement.  

Milestones in helping achieve Dundee’s goal include the launch of the Africa Doctoral Fellowship (ADF) scheme and the announcement of a joint LLM degree with the University of Lagos (UniLag), Nigeria. 

“What we are striving to do is work with our partners in Africa to help upskill and train, and create opportunities for partnerships for the future between us and our colleagues overseas,” said Professor Gillespie. 

“The LLM programme co-created with UniLag, for example, is very much seen through that lens – we aim to deliver a strong education and a great opportunity for students coming to Dundee, while ensuring they are trained for Nigeria, for Nigerian problems, and that UniLag gets what it needs.” 

Like Dundee, SOAS is “reimagining higher education partnerships”. They have been developing a portfolio of equitable partnerships since 2023. 

Commenting on the University of Dundee’s ADF scheme, and the importance of training people across borders, Professor Habib said, “I think it's absolutely essential for two reasons.  

“One is, if we can train them and send them back [to their home country], they can train others and we create the institutional capacities and human capabilities in those societies to address what I call these ‘local manifestations’ of transnational challenges. 

“But there's a second - bringing the experiences here may provide you with an understanding of how to do things in Dundee, in Scotland and in the UK. 

“When you do research on other parts of the world and you bring it here, they speak to your community as much as they speak to those other parts of the world, and there's simple lessons of comparative research.” 

Partnership building in the Global North, for the Global South 

Both institutes are on a journey towards a new form of partnership built on co-creation, shared responsibility and co-delivery.  

They share a common view that the key problems of our age such as climate change are transnational; to address them effectively, we need to do things differently in our engagement with the Global South.   

“It will not be an easy journey, but we need to send a signal that things can and should be done differently,” said Professor Gillespie. “We should commit to continuing the dialogue and to supporting each other, and indeed other partners, as they join us on this journey. 

“I look forward to continuing to build on our relationship.” 

Professor Habib said, “This is a continuous process of experiential learning. Now, you can't learn from your mistakes unless you're transparent about them, unless you have the confidence, I would argue, to reflect on what went wrong, why it didn't work, what worked, and learn from that and do it again and again and again. 

“You can't do that on your own. You have to do it with others. You have to learn from them, they learn from you, and that transparency has to be at the heart of the process. Otherwise, no experiential learning is possible.”