Academic freedom in Africa: A systematic review of content analysis studies

Abstract

The intellectual discourse on academic freedom has gained prominence across the globe in recent past. While such discussions portend a positive signal for academics, little is known about academic freedom in Africa. This article examines the existing research and scholarship on academic freedom in Africa with the sole intention of questioning the conceptual underpinnings of the frequently studied topics related to academic freedom and the methodological distribution of studies related to academic freedom in Africa. An electronic database search was performed in Scopus and google scholar for papers published between 2004 and 2022, followed by a systematic review of content analysis articles which described academic freedom in Africa. After eliminating all the duplicates, 29 unique research studies were identified as peer-reviewed articles in English. Out of the 29 full texts which were assessed for eligibility criteria, 4 were excluded with 25 Full-text records left to be used for the systematic review of content analysis. The systematic review revealed five main areas of study namely, legal and constitutional laws for the protection of academic freedom, effects of colonialism on academic freedom, challenges and safety of academic freedom, academic freedom and intellectual engagement, and academic freedom and sexuality. Our findings further revealed that there is a dearth of literature on academic freedom in Africa presumably because of the chequered development of Africa’s democracy. One thing is however clear that as the democratic architecture of Africa dips, as a result of the upsurge of coup d’detat in recent past, the future of academic freedom remains bleak. It called for academics to seek support from other civil society groups to promote academic freedom and to keep the discussion on academic freedom alive, relevant and current, within the academic community.