Prof. Irene Tracey says Africa’s future is not in replicating Oxford, but in reimagining higher education for itself
In a city that houses one of Africa’s most prestigious universities, the Vice-Chancellor of the world’s most famous university had an unexpected message: Don’t try to be us.
Speaking at the Higher Education Transformation Convening in Accra on September 22, 2026, Professor Irene Tracey, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, urged African countries to develop higher education systems that reflect their own realities rather than simply replicating models from Britain, Europe or the United States.
It was a striking admission from the head of an institution that has defined what a university should look like for 900 years.
“An Opportunity to Rethink”
Prof Tracey told the gathering of vice-chancellors, policymakers and industry leaders that African universities have an opportunity the West no longer has — the chance to rethink traditional approaches from scratch.
Instead of building rigid three-year degree silos, ivory-tower campuses, and systems designed for 19th-century Britain, Africa can create more flexible, innovative and porous systems suited to its respective countries, she argued.
That means universities built for:
A young, mobile population, not an aging one. Where short, stackable credentials, apprenticeships and entrepreneurship are valued as much as a classic BA.
Economies that need jobs now, not in 10 years. Where curricula are co-designed with the informal sector, agribusiness, fintech, and creative industries, not just imported textbooks.
Realities of access. Where a student in Tamale or Turkana can learn without having to live in a residential hall modelled on Oxford’s quads.
The Irony and The Truth
There was irony in the setting. The convening in Accra was co-hosted with institutions that still rank themselves by how close they are to Oxford and Cambridge league tables.
But Tracey’s point cuts deep. For decades, African higher education has suffered from what scholars call “academic mimicry” — adopting external quality assurance models, external examination systems, and even academic calendars that don’t fit local harvests, climates, or labour markets.
The result: graduates trained for economies that don’t exist, and economies starved of the graduates they actually need.
“We cannot continue to produce graduates who are unemployable at home but desperate to be employable abroad,” one Ghanaian vice-chancellor responded in the Q&A.
Beyond Rhetoric
The challenge, of course, is implementation.
Will funding agencies stop rewarding African universities only when they publish in Western journals? Will governments invest enough to allow experimentation? Will regulators allow a degree that is 40% industry placement and 60% classroom?
Prof Tracey’s answer was clear: Oxford itself is learning from Africa. Its partnerships in Ghana, Kenya and South Africa on vaccine research, climate adaptation and humanities archiving have shown that innovation flows both ways.
But the future, she said, will not be Oxford in Africa. It will be something Africa invents for itself — and the world will come to study it.
As the convening closed, her line lingered:
The best way to honour Oxford is not to copy it.