SAFEGUARDING ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN AFRICA: THE 2025 DAR ES SALAAM ANNEX TO THE 1990 KAMPALA DECLARATION
Edward Mboyonga, University of the Free State, South Africa
The article was originally published as an opinion piece for African Arguments.
Around the world, academic freedom in universities is increasingly under threat from the rise of populist regimes, repressive governments and heightened polarisation based on race, religion and other political divides. In China, for example, Pringle and Woodman (2022) have described the state of academic freedom in universities as being caught between a rock and a hard place, owing to increasingly repressive policies and the constant involvement of the government in the internal affairs of universities. In India, there has been a decline in freedom of academic and cultural expression in public universities, which has been exacerbated by the Hindu nationalist, Narendra Modi’s election as prime minister since 2014 (Kinzelbach et al. 2023). This has mainly been the case with universities located in minority Muslim states. Recently, the conflict in Gaza has underscored the fragile state of academic freedom in universities in the global North. In the United Kingdom (UK), Germany and the United States (US), some universities, academics and students have faced punitive repercussions for voicing their opposition to the ongoing atrocities in the world but especially in the so-called middle East. In Germany, such threats have led to a significant decline in the country’s position on the 2025 Academic Freedom Index, causing it to fall outside the top 10 per cent. Similarly, recent protests at numerous campuses in the US, along with the subsequent revocation of visas and related rights, based on allegations of antisemitic behaviour, have led to the withdrawal of state funding from major universities, including Harvard. These developments indicate a higher education environment that is increasingly characterised by threats of federal research grants being frozen, loss of tax-exempt status, control over curriculum, and self-censorship, in a nation once regarded as a shining example of democracy. Read the full Text …
