Universities with any aspirations to excellence will claim to be research-led, and outstanding in teaching and learning and community engagement – the core functions of every university.

UKZN can justify such claims to excellence. It is among the top-rated universities in South Africa in terms of research output and various local and international ratings. The University requires that its undergraduate and graduate learning programmes are underpinned by research. Research activities span the spectrum from the basic sciences (natural sciences and humanities), through a substantial terrain of applied sciences, to product-related research undertaken mainly in conjunction with industrial partners and government departments. UKZN has a rich history of community engagement from internships, to service learning, to community-based research and engagement with Non- Government Organisations (NGO) and Community-based Organisations (CBO) sectors, and these activities thread through the teaching and research of the institution. UKZN also boasts a wide range of international collaborative arrangements.

What then will differentiate UKZN from other universities with an equal claim to excellence? How will we define our uniqueness as a generator and disseminator of knowledge in a world where knowledge knows no boundaries and all knowledge is globally integrated and connected?

The key lies in the University’s vision to be the Premier University of African Scholarship. The challenge facing the University is to define the concept of African scholarship, to examine the philosophical and political underpinnings of the knowledge enterprises in which we engage, and to construct an institutional knowledge agenda based on developing a shared understanding of the concept of African scholarship that will infuse new and powerful currents into research and teaching. The University’s ultimate success will be measured in terms of its production of new knowledge through research and its effectiveness in diffusing knowledge into society.

African scholarship must in the first instance arise from and interface with our local context. “Local context” is a many-layered term that has geographical, socio-political, socio-cultural and economic dimensions.

Geographically, in terms of place, the University is embedded in concentric local contexts: in Durban and Pietermaritzburg, in KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, in southern Africa, in Africa and in the global South. Each is a viable geographical context and each presents its own challenges to the agendas for research and teaching at UKZN.

From a socio-political perspective, arising from our national history, universities in the local context are central to the processes of nation-building and to the strengthening and deepening of democracy. The legacy of Apartheid is a society that is deeply fragmented and divided. This is a nation in search of an identity – a complex identity. It is also a 5 nation in search of a post-Apartheid imagination. Nation-building remains a major post- Apartheid challenge for South Africa, and UKZN recognises this It sees the arts, humanities and social sciences as playing a fundamental role in this process and contributing to a vibrant civil society.

In this era of rapid globalization and in the context of vast and powerful forces of cultural imperialism, the local socio-cultural context requires that UKZN shoulder the responsibility of ensuring the development of large-scale intellectual enterprises relating to local languages like isiZulu and local music forms, to name a few. Here again the Humanities have a crucial role to play, not only in nurturing and generating knowledge about aspects of the local context, but also in defining and framing the knowledge project itself and thus shaping a distinctive character for the University.

At the same time the University has to respond to the challenges of increasing the capacity of South African industry to compete favourably in the sphere of economic globalization, in terms of both the restructuring of South African industry (with the shift towards manufacturing), and the national capacity for innovation. Economic development is inextricably linked to the need for advancement in education, health care, food security and agriculture, and environmental management – globally-recognised African priorities. The local context requires that the University focus on understanding these priorities and advancing areas of sustainable development that will simultaneously allow us to care for and support our citizens, and compete in the global village.

Thus we may think of the local context of UKZN as a set of concentric spheres: geographical, socio-political, socio-cultural and economic. These spheres are bound together in a complex way by the vision of the University as a premier institution of African scholarship and as a knowledge-generating institution. UKZN must assume responsibility and become the hub for generating knowledge about and disseminating knowledge to its context.

The University cannot develop its knowledge agenda of African scholarship on its own. We will need to develop diverse kinds of strategic engagement that connect us to our local context. Strategic research initiatives will provide the opportunity for the development of networks with other institutions in the National System of Innovation and with institutions in other parts of Africa and the World. Joint approaches to local challenges and strategic linkages with other institutions that work in Africa will firmly embed us in our local context.

UKZN has a rich history of community engagement, spread across Colleges, Faculties, Teaching and Learning, Research and Community Outreach Centres. Our communities include professional and social groupings, non-government and community-based organisations, government, business and industry. Each initiative provides the basis for dynamic interfaces in which different forms of knowledge accumulation and dissemination can intersect with each other and hence provide the basis for new approaches to knowledge production and the advancement of African scholarship.

It is important that UKZN is embedded in its local context and from that perspective enters the international and global arena. This will allow the university to engage with the global knowledge system on its own terms – bringing knowledge production processes relating to the local context into that global system, and thus defining African scholarship. The generation of such knowledge will place UKZN in a unique position and allow it to seek its legitimacy locally and globally, thereby making it a truly global institution.