Abstract
The global higher education landscape has continued to experience changes and transformation, and there have been various contextual evidences that globalization has been a major contributor to this change. As a result of globalization, higher education institutions become more marketable and the need for brand building has increased. Over the years, there have been various attempts by higher education institutions to boost and improve their public image, and this has necessitated corporate visual identity and some changes to their names. This research is an inquiry into higher education branding in Africa using the social media perspective. Evidences were culled from the websites of universities in East Africa, West Africa, North Africa, South Africa, and Central Africa. Two institutions were selected from the regions and how they have branded themselves and established themselves on social media was considered. With various institutions offering service to members of the public, there are various avenues for dishing out information and engaging their prospective clients. The notable platforms these institutions use include Facebook, twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. This study recommends that the mandate by which each institution was established should be incorporated into their brand identities and propagated via social media. There should be an audit of all social media pages to understand engagement levels across all platforms, and to proffer other ways of branding to the institution.
Highlights
The global higher education landscape has continued to experience changes and transformation and there have been various contextual evidences for this change, globalization has been a major contributor to this change (Altbach, P& Knight, J, 2007: Altbach, P.G, Reisberg, L &Rumbley, L.E. 2009)
Higher education institutions around Africa are operating in an increasingly competitive environment and this justifies the use of new communication and branding channels including social media
This paper has looked at branding in higher education in Africa using the social media perspective
Summary
The global higher education landscape has continued to experience changes and transformation and there have been various contextual evidences for this change, globalization has been a major contributor to this change (Altbach, P& Knight, J, 2007: Altbach, P.G, Reisberg, L &Rumbley, L.E. 2009). There has been more demand for higher education as universities compete globally to attract students (UNESCO, 2020). According to British Council (2020), Higher education globally has internationalization of teaching and research, raising quality standards and global relevance, attracting the best pool of students and staffs, ensure increase in revenue generation and pushing the frontiers of knowledge through research and encouraging internal diversity. This has led to massive proliferation of various private or public universities. Branding is a major part of the higher education domain and this enables them to compete with others in the global market. There has been development of various technologies that has helped branding activities in Higher education but there are differences across various spaces because the globalization process flow differently across various regions
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