The Africa Charter Core Facilitating Team convened a plenary session on Day 2 of the Times Higher Education (THE) Africa Universities Summit 2026 “Powering Africa’s future through talent development, innovation and inclusion“, held 30 and 31 March 2026 at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) in Nairobi, Kenya.
The focus was on strengthening Africa’s place in the global knowledge ecosystem. The panel “Connecting agendas: Towards transformative research collaborations and reparatory justice in higher education” featured Isabella Aboderin, Founding Director and Chair, Perivoli Africa Research Centre (PARC), University of Bristol; Divine Fuh, Director of HUMA – Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape Town; Marie-Annick Gournet, Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor of Reparative and Civic Futures, University of Bristol; and Puleng Segalo, Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair, University of South Africa (UNISA).
About the panel: Calls for equitable and transformative research partnerships and demands for the pursuit of reparatory justice for benefits gained from colonial extraction have become increasingly urgent agendas for higher education. Though profoundly connected, both concerns have, to date, been pursued in parallel. This panel brings together experts to examine the substantive linkages between the repair and transformative research collaborations agendas and to trace resulting opportunities for synergistic and timely policy and practice change – by higher education institutions, funding bodies and publishers – to redress historical and ongoing inequities embedded within the global academic system.
