Planning, Performance, and Power: Monitoring Higher Education Reform in Africa | EP. 8

In this episode of The Solomon Atah Podcast, we engage Prof. Gerald Ouma, a leading scholar in higher education studies and education policy, to examine the complex politics of planning, performance measurement, and reform in African higher education systems.

This conversation interrogates how universities are governed, evaluated, and reshaped under regimes of monitoring, metrics, accountability, and global benchmarking. Beyond institutional language, the episode exposes how power circulates through performance frameworks, funding models, and reform agendas across African universities.

Prof. Ouma offers deep insight into how monitoring and evaluation systems, performance indicators, and policy instruments are deployed to steer universities, often reproducing inequalities between institutions, disciplines, and regions. The discussion asks critical questions about who defines success, whose knowledge counts, and how reform narratives travel from global policy centres into African campuses.

This episode is essential listening for academics, university leaders, policymakers, doctoral researchers, education planners, and anyone invested in the future of higher education in Africa.

In this episode, we explore:

• Higher education reform in Africa
• Planning and performance management in universities
• Monitoring, evaluation, and accountability regimes
• Power, metrics, and governance in higher education
• Global policy transfer and institutional inequality
• Funding models and performance based systems
• The future of African universities

About the guest:

Prof. Gerald Ouma is an internationally respected scholar in higher education policy and governance. His research focuses on university funding, performance management, monitoring and evaluation, and the political economy of higher education reform in Africa and the Global South.
Why this conversation matters:
Higher education reform is often framed as technical or managerial. This episode reveals it as a deeply political process shaped by power, interests, and global hierarchies. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for building equitable, context responsive African universities.

Watch, reflect, and engage:

If you are interested in higher education policy, university governance, performance measurement, education reform, and knowledge production in Africa, this episode offers rigorous and timely insight.
Subscribe to The Solomon Atah Podcast for sustained, critical conversations on knowledge, power, institutions, and Africa’s development futures.

Keywords and discoverability focus:

Higher education Africa, university reform Africa, monitoring and evaluation universities, performance management higher education, Prof Gerald Ouma, education policy Africa, university governance, funding models universities, accountability in higher education, African universities, education reform podcast