Development aid from donor countries to Africa is usually directed to issues identified as priorities in the home country's development agenda - issues such as HIV and Aids, poverty reduction, primary health care and food security, among others. This kind of focus is often at the expense of high-level knowledge development such as that produced within the research culture of universities. But, according to Peter Maassen, professor of higher education at the University of Oslo, the neglect of knowledge in development cooperation with sub-Saharan African countries can jeopardise the impact of development cooperation in the targeted areas.

Almost 16 years after 1994, at the Higher Education Summit of the Minister, a broad spectrum of the South African higher education community accepted differentiation as strategy to bring greater diversity and mission for purpose into the system.

The research reflected in Responding to the Educational Needs of Post-School Youth indicates that in South Africa there are almost three million youth between the ages of 18 and 24 who are not in education, training or employment – a situation which points not only to a grave wastage of talent, but also to the possibility of serious social disruption.

Nico Cloete comments critically on the CHE's recently published The State of Higher Education (2009).

Lidia Brito, CHET board member, has been appointed as the head of the science policy division at UNESCO.