By Maina Waruru. The Pan African University’s Institute of Basic Sciences, Technology and Innovation or PAUSTI, based in Kenya, is seeking to boost its faculty by recruiting up to 32 short-term lecturers from across the continent to teach for periods ranging from four to 16 weeks. Read more...

By Jane Marshall. After months of union strikes and protests against the government of Senegal’s ‘lack of respect for signed agreements’, the national assembly adopted laws improving the status of university lecturers and living and working conditions for students. Read more...

By Kudzai Mashiningo. An agreement has been signed that will see Zimbabwe sending nearly 20,000 graduates for employment in South Sudan. This is in line with an initiative by Zimbabwean authorities to export labour from a country that has Africa’s highest literacy rate and one of its highest jobless rates – estimated at over 80%. Read more...

By Tunde Fatunde. Nigeria’s education minister has sacked the vice-chancellors and governing councils of 13 federal universities. In the same breath, he announced the university leaders’ successors. Strangely, no reason was given for the mass firing that has shocked the higher education community and the country. Read more...

By Wachira Kigotho. South Africa, Egypt and Tunisia are the only three African countries among the top 50 globally that are leading in science and engineering publication, according to the American National Science Foundation’s ranking index that is topped by the United States and China. Read more...

By Linda Nordling. When Tanzania’s national science funding body, the Commission for Science and Technology or COSTECH, got a budget increase in 2010, it did not spend it all on research. Read more...

By Patrício Langa, Gerald Wangenge-Ouma, Jens Jungblut, Nico Cloete. Demands for free higher education and other social services such as health and basic education in Africa date back to the 1960s. These demands were common across countries with diverse ideological orientations – from socialist Mozambique and Tanzania to capitalist Kenya and Uganda. Read more...

By Brendan O'Malley. A political crisis is engulfing Europe as a result of the rising number of refugees queuing at the European Union’s borders and making their way across the continent in search of a place to rebuild their lives. Read more...

By Munyaradzi Makoni and Karen MacGregor. Violent protests and racial clashes closed universities around South Africa last week. Vice-chancellors called for help in identifying perpetrators of campus violence, who showed “total disregard for the academic project, the rules of engagement and the laws and Constitution”. Read more...