Cities and their universities – Partnering for development

Redress and transformation processes in most African cities have created new sets of challenges which may have complicated efforts to restore historical development imbalances. Similarly, attempts to fast-track transformation in most metropolitans and secondary cities in South Africa have inadvertently created 'pressure points' when it comes to grappling with rapid urbanisation.

Whether in reference to natural disasters or conflicts, resource constraints or urban services decline, the current focus on urban issues has confirmed the prevalence of what urban Keynesian theorists have been advocating as the 'crisis perspective'. The emerging debate on most urban agendas is the ability of governments to respond effectively and efficiently and to deliver smartly on their mandates.

A new role for local governments

It has also forced local governments in South Africa and abroad to rethink their respective roles and reinvent themselves – a role that shifts their delivery mode from suppliers of municipal services to one of developmental leaders, orchestrators, collaborators and brokers in pursuit of their mandates in developmental local government.

This is an observable trend in the Global South which can best be achieved by adopting more buoyant approaches to fulfilling pre-existing responsibilities and effecting a smarter approach to municipal service delivery.

For most rapidly urbanising cities in South Africa seeking to reap the full benefits of democratic access, there is renewed hope that a strategic response to dealing with development issues will usher in a more holistic and smart approach in understanding the core issues influencing urban change.

City-university partnerships

My recent doctoral research on city-university relations reaffirms existing praxis in the Global North where partnerships, strategic alliances, collaborations and a mutually beneficial symbiosis between local government and higher education institutions offer the potential for significant institutional connectivity and cultural orientations within a shared spatial footprint.

Given South Africa’s painful history and its spatially defined inequality under apartheid, some critics have noted that higher education institutions, until recently, had a limited understanding of and role in the political economy of urban development. Local government, on the other hand, was mandated to drive urban development, and as a consequence, assumed that it was the sole agent in driving developmental change across its landscape.

It is against this backdrop that a new era unfolds for the city of Durban in the wake of its continued investment in a strategic city-university partnership. In some cases, these ties are between 10 and 50 years old.

In unpacking this relationship, the research focused sharply on the Durban experience as its local case study and critically examined how local government and higher education institutions can collaborate on a range of mutually beneficial initiatives to the benefit of the city.

The realisation is that relevant knowledge generation to support evidence-based policymaking is best achieved in partnership with local research-based organisations and Institutions of higher education.

As a researcher-cum-local government practitioner, I am of the view that the tide is starting to turn for the city of Durban as there is evidence that partnering higher education institutions and local government are finding common ground on which to collaborate on a range of initiatives given their shared concerns.

The study focused on the nature and impact of that collaboration with a number of key objectives including an examination of the nature of the relationship between eThekwini Municipality and its academic partners; an understanding of the enablers and barriers within this engagement; its social and economic impacts and a set of key recommendations that may serve as lessons for others cities in the Global South.

Research gap

The study highlighted the limited availability of literature and research focusing on discourses related to 'civic engagements' and 'community outreach', and the slow uptake and commitment from higher education institutions to embrace social responsiveness or third-stream activities in conjunction with their proximal municipal governments.

Thus, the study contends that there is a research gap in Africa in particular as the current literature points to an area of 'terra incognita' for the Global South.

However, a significant key finding was a strong commitment to effective and purposeful collaboration, which must be seen as favourable to the development of a collaborative culture among and within partnering institutions.

While there are numerous overlapping networks of stakeholders who practise university-community collaboration, in its practical form, some of these networks are disjointed – often working at cross purposes with very little impact or relevance. This disconnection emerged as significant and as an emerging cross-cutting theme which determined the nature of the engagement offerings.

Overall, however, the study reaffirmed that academia is well placed to produce research outputs that have a social and economic outcome. In order to get to that point, it is recommended that more research be designed to have application potential for local government based on the principles of problem-based learning as a mode of knowledge production.

The study further supported the recommendation of existing best practice and more mature partnerships in parts of the United States, Europe, United Kingdom and Asia: that city-university relations must embrace elements of trust, confidence, place-based leadership, shared interests and common visioning as essential ingredients that could move emerging transactional relations to mature translational partnerships for the African continent.

Collin Pillay is a programme manager: academic collaboration for the Municipal Institute of Learning (MILE) at the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality in Durban, South Africa. He recently completed a doctoral thesis entitled “A critical assessment of localised city-university partnering for social, economic and community development: A case study of eThekwini Municipality’s collaborative framework and strategic partnership with academics” at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He can be contacted on collin.pillay3@durban.gov.za.