Globalization and internationalization in engineering education in Africa

Recently, the higher education domain has been on a quest for rapid social, technical, economic and political overhaul as a result of the post-industrial environment. The quest has led to major changes and evolution in higher education institutes of learning. These factors of evolution in higher education are globalization and internationalization. Globalization and internationalization are closely related but different. Globalization can be likened to the context of economic and academic trends that are tailored to meet 21st century realities while internationalization is the process of planning and implementing products and services so that they can be adaptable to specific context such as language and culture. This research seeks to understand the approaches towards globalization and internationalization of engineering education in Africa. findings from the study revealed that the practice of engineering education is not only domiciled to a particular country, region or continent. As a result of human development and civilization, it has become global and internationalized and there are various approaches to globalization and internationalization which were expatiated on in the study. This study therefore recommends that there is a need to focus more on provision of adequate facilities such as better internet service and other information and communication technologies to encourage the conduct and practice of engineering education and more impetus should be given to internationalization of engineering education in Africa as it has the capacity to help develop the region.