The OAU Conversation: Why the future of African universities may depend on execution, not just knowledge

Across much of Africa’s higher education system, universities continue to produce rigorous research, highly trained academics, and growing volumes of published work. Yet an increasingly difficult question is beginning to surface beneath that progress.

Why do so many important ideas struggle to influence real-world outcomes?

The issue is no longer simply whether research is being produced. Increasingly, the debate is whether universities are structurally designed to ensure that knowledge becomes visible, usable, and economically relevant beyond academic environments.

That broader question shaped recent conversations at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife (OAU), where professors, research leaders, and external practitioners gathered for a strategy-focused engagement led by Akin Monehin, whose work across corporate transformation and execution environments focuses on the gap between strategy, knowledge creation, and practical implementation.

Although the engagement emerged from a university setting, the themes reflected a wider challenge facing institutions across emerging markets: the difference between generating knowledge and building systems capable of translating that knowledge into societal, industrial, and economic value.

During the discussions, Monehin argued that many institutions already possess valuable ideas and rigorous research, but often struggle with what happens after the research itself is completed.

“In many environments, the assumption is that once knowledge exists, impact will naturally follow,” he noted during the session. “But visibility, adoption, translation, and implementation are not automatic. They require deliberate systems.”

The observation appeared to resonate strongly with several research leaders present, particularly around the growing pressure on universities globally to demonstrate measurable relevance beyond publication metrics alone.

For decades, many academic systems have primarily rewarded rigour, publication volume, citations, and theoretical contribution. Those measures remain important. Increasingly, however, universities are also confronting demands from governments, industry, funding institutions, and society to demonstrate broader developmental and economic impact.

The implications extend far beyond academia.

In many African economies, universities remain one of the largest reservoirs of intellectual capital, technical capability, and research potential. Yet substantial gaps often persist between academic institutions and the industries, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and public systems capable of applying those insights.

The result is a recurring paradox: significant knowledge production existing alongside persistent implementation gaps.

Professor Babajide Odu, Professor of Plant Pathology and Virology and Director of the OAU Research Office, said the conversations reflected broader questions many universities may increasingly need to confront around relevance, usability, and national development impact.

“Universities are producing knowledge every year,” he said. “The bigger question is how that knowledge travels beyond academic environments into places where it can influence industries, policymaking, and society itself.”

Odu noted that the challenge may no longer be limited to research funding alone, but increasingly about whether universities are structured to support translation, collaboration, and practical application.

That systems-oriented perspective also surfaced during discussions around incentives and academic measurement.

Professor Niran Oluwaranti, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Director of Partnerships at OAU, said universities may eventually face growing pressure to demonstrate not only academic productivity, but clearer societal and industrial contribution.

“There is increasing attention globally on adoption and measurable relevance,” he said. “Universities may need to become more intentional about how research connects to industry problems, economic realities, and implementation pathways.”

Referencing ideas discussed during the engagement, Oluwaranti added that some of the practical frameworks shared during the session, including Monehin’s “ABC” model around research adoption and industry relevance, introduced useful ways of thinking about visibility, usability, and practical impact.

Gbenga Ademile, Research Fellow and OAU Research Manager at the university’s Central Office of Research, said one of the strongest themes emerging from the conversations was the need for researchers to think more deliberately about downstream influence.

“A lot of research is very rigorous academically,” he said. “But increasingly, we also need to ask what decisions it can influence, what systems it can improve, and whether the outcomes can realistically travel beyond journals into implementation environments.”

That broader shift appears to align with efforts already underway within the university itself.

Professor Akanni Akinyemi, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research, Innovation and Development), said OAU was increasingly focused on creating structures capable of strengthening engagement between academia and real-world problem-solving ecosystems.

According to him, initiatives such as the university’s proposed International Centre for Development are intended to bring researchers and practitioners into closer collaboration around practical challenges, allowing implementation realities to shape research conversations earlier in the process.

“The future of universities will depend not only on rigour, but on their ability to connect knowledge to impact,” Akinyemi said. “Research becomes more powerful when society, policymakers, and industry can actually use it.”

The discussions also reflected wider conversations taking place across African higher education systems, including within TETFund, around research commercialisation, innovation ecosystems, and stronger university-industry collaboration.

Increasingly, the challenge is being viewed not simply as a funding issue, but as an execution issue.

Many universities already possess talented researchers, promising ideas, and years of accumulated work. The problem, according to participants in the discussions, is often that institutions were not historically designed around visibility, adoption, translation, and implementation.

In that context, execution is becoming a more important part of the higher-education conversation.

Not execution in the narrow corporate sense, but execution as an institutional capability: the ability to move knowledge from theory into usable outcomes that affect markets, policies, organisations, and everyday life.

That shift may ultimately reshape how universities define impact itself.

For decades, many universities across Africa were structured primarily to generate knowledge. Increasingly, however, the institutions most likely to shape the future may be those most capable of helping knowledge travel — across industries, across institutions, and into society itself.

The conversations at OAU may therefore reflect something larger than a single institutional engagement.

They may point to a broader shift already beginning across parts of Africa’s higher education landscape: a move from knowledge generation alone toward knowledge execution.