In this interview, UDI Global Fellow and former President of the University of Johannesburg in South Africa Ihron Rensburg shares his vision for the future of African higher education. He argues that true university leadership requires more than administration—it demands transformative thinking, optimism, and a deep belief in Africa’s future.
Drawing comparisons to China’s decades-long higher education transformation, Rensburg calls on African university leaders to embrace innovation, reimagine their institutions, and seize the continent’s demographic dividend. He highlights models like Arizona State University (ASU) and emerging African institutions as sources of inspiration, while emphasizing that transformation begins in the leader’s spirit, passion, and willpower.
The leader has to be a transformer or has to think about transformation, and think about it and be energized by it, dynamized by it. The idea that actually with my team, with my senior leadership team, I'm able to reimagine and reinvent the institution. And so I think it begins with that, the kind of that perspective that is open-minded and that's energized by the challenge, as opposed to a mind set that says, I'm an administrator. My job is only to administer the institution.
There is a place for administration, no question about that. But I think over the next 2 to 3 decades, it is the time for Africa's universities to rise up. I think China offers an interesting example, although of course the culture and the setting is different nonetheless. You had to catalyze thousands of university leaders over a sustained period of five decades to be able to land where China landed at this point in time.
And so I think it's going to require that kind of passion, the kind of love for the work, that kind of belief, a kind of optimism and hope for Africa's future that is required amongst all university leaders if Africa is indeed going to become a place where we seize the demographic dividend that is available to us, and so it's all to do with the spirit, if you like, or to do with what sits inside oneself. In one's heart, if you like, so to speak. By heart, we mean our willpower, right. And so it sits in our heart. It sits in our whole being. This choice of defaulting to being an administrator, only to being an administrator that's innovative, transformative. That looks at global models, ASU, again comes to mind, looks at other institutional models in Africa itself, to draw inspiration from. And so I think it all begins in the spirit being in that, in that sense of optimism and hope and, and in that belief that actually it looks impossible, but it can be done.