Contradictory functions, unexpected outcomes, new challenges

Concluding chapter to the book Castells in Africa: Universities and Development. 

"The conclusions of these chapters should not be taken as cataloguing the failure of African academia only. The intention is the opposite. We already know from international indicators that African universities do not perform well by comparison with their global peers. The question is why and how. This is the path opened by Castells’s trilogy. His work shines a particularly powerful light on the developmental predicament, and is especially valuable in pointing to the many structural impediments that must be acknowledged and strategically accommodated if they are to be overcome."