Policies emphasising internationalisation are amongst the imperatives for change in higher education worldwide. Internationalisation has many aspects one of which is transnational collaboration not only within Europe, but across the North-South divide. In this presentation, we ask how international collaboration with the Global North affects knowledge production in the Global South.

While education has been high on the development agenda for years, universities have been recognized only recently as key drivers for societal growth in Africa. Some twenty years ago, the World Bank recommended closing universities in the region and instead sending graduates overseas for training (Obamba, 2013; Brock-Utne, 2002). However, with the knowledge economy discourse, the tides have changes and capacity building of the African higher education sector has become widely included in donor policies in Europe. Such policies often lead to so-called capacity building projects where donors from Europe finance collaboration between higher education institutions in the Global South. The type of institutions and knowledges promoted worldwide are the outcome of development in learned institutions in the Europe over the past 200-300 years (Adriansen et al. 2016a). Furthermore development assistance, internationalisation, and other global trends lead to academic dependency as argued by a number of African researchers (e.g. Arowosegbe, 2016; Teferra, 2014). Few, however, have shown what this dependency entails (exceptions being Breidlid, 2013; King, 2008). The objective of this presentation is to analyse the ambivalent ways in which collaborative projects can be a means to independence while reinforcing dependence at the same time.