**5. Implications and conclusion**

Higher education searches for an African identity in most Sub-Saharan African countries ([14], pp. 39–40). Few higher education institutions in this region have added on the production of skilled labor for existing burgeoning industries in the society. While these expectations of higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa are essential, it is necessary to reconstruct the task of education to attend to the complex realities of the 21st-century lifestyle. Achille Joseph Mbembe [26] has quizzed, "is today's Beast the same as yesterday's or are we confronting an entirely different apparatus, or entirely different rationality—both of which require us to produce radically new concepts?"

Higher education must prepare the Sub-Saharan African learner for life in the 21st-century and beyond. It must equip learners to resolve systemic challenges such as poverty, healthcare crisis, leadership crisis, engineering, and national and human resource management. Contemporary realities present comprehensive challenges to human life. These challenges may be scientific, technical, engineering, or sociological. For example, the emergence of recent viruses calls attention to the need to survive in the phase of global pandemics. Also, technological advancement from 4th Generation (4G) to 5th Generation (5G) broadband cellular technology must be a concern for the economies of the Sub-Saharan African region. Failure to connect these concerns to higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa would continue to reverse the gains in this region. It should be the task of higher education to produce learners with ready and advanced competencies to respond to these complex realities of the 21st-century. Authentic higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa will be based on the past, but it will equip learners with the attitude to live in the present and survive the unknown but anticipated future.

The curriculum of higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa leans towards theory than praxis. While the theories are expected to positively impact learners' behavior and thinking, they are cast in socioeconomic demographics unrelated to their social context. Accordingly, these theories bear little relevance to the social experiences of learners in this region. At best, learners are required to memorize these theories and reproduce them during assessments. At worst, learners lack a deep understanding of reality and the competencies to apply these concepts in their social contexts.

A pragmatic approach to higher education in the Sub-Saharan African region would incorporate a balance between theory and praxis. This approach would assist learners in building their careers and engage them in critical thinking. Theory-informed practices would activate learners' competencies, making them significant participants in the learning process. The basis for learners' assessment will be the engaged social activities. This approach to higher learning will require learners to analyze, synthesize, and apply innovative concepts for productive ends in their social contexts. Ultimately, learners will acquire the ability to examine real-life issues from multiple perspectives, choosing solutions that advance individual and collective interests and goals.

Ensuring a balance between theory and praxis in higher education in the Sub-Saharan African region requires a change in higher education. Current instructional designs in higher education in the region dominantly center around the lecturer. In this pedagogical approach, the lecturer selects the learning contents and determines the study design and the goal of the learning process. All learners are required to

assimilate these contents, memorize them, and reproduce them during evaluation for grading. In some dotted instances, lecturers use the content-focused learning approach. Core subjects are emphasized in the learning process because they contain essential educational information, and the learner's mastery of their contents will assist them in attaining the goal of higher education.

The latest development in higher education in the Sub-Saharan African region is learner-focused learning—andragogy. Andragogy refocuses decision-making in the learning process from the lecturer to the learner. Learners' social experiences influence the contents, design, and goal of the educational process. While andragogy provides a collaborative approach to higher learning, unconscious and unorganized social experience may overwhelm the learner, leading to disorientation.

A pragmatic theory of learning emphasizes heutagogy within the broader andragogic approach. Heutagogy is self-determined learning with a strong focus on the learner's independence, competencies, and attitude ([27], p. 56). Heutagogy invests learners with lifelong learning skills that prepare them to productively navigate through the complexities of their social experiences ([28], p. 381). The lecturer serves as an academic coach, who may be called upon per the learner's needs. Learners discover the content, design, and goal of the higher educational process ([27], p. 56).

The heutagogical approach requires learners to determine problem areas in the subject and explore their social contexts for solutions ([29], p. 135). This approach transforms learners from a state of positivity to activity, with higher-order thinking and attitude that will make them useful in their social contexts ([30], p. 129). Some educationists have identified competency-based curriculum (CBC) as a model within heutagogy. Charles Ong'ondo described the CBC model as "outcomes-based rather than content-based. It is certification-based on demonstrated learning outcomes. The focus is not on knowledge for knowledge's sake, but on how that knowledge can be applied" (cited in [31], n.p.).

The gulf between higher education institutions and the larger social context in the Sub-Saharan African region must be closed to adopt the heutagogical learning strategy. The unrelatedness of higher education to the larger social context continues to affect authentic higher education in the region adversely. Higher education institutions and the larger society have varying views on the task, contents, goals, and design of higher education and the problems, goals, and developmental strategies of the larger society.

A pragmatic theory of education will provide the avenue for connecting society's goals, problems, and strategies to the task, contents, goals, and design of higher education in the Sub-Saharan African region. In this collaborative paradigm, higher education institutions and industries will develop academic content and determine the employable skills and attitudes learners must possess to fit into the corporate society. The industryacademia collaboration will also point to a store of critical, innovative ideas and models for the burgeoning industries in the Sub-Saharan African region. Market-driven learning designs, work-based internships, tracer studies, and grants for priority academic/industrial fields will facilitate the inclusion of business-like decisions and strategies into the contents of the higher educational process ([32], p. 63).

A quality higher education in the Sub-Saharan African region cannot be achieved solely by the efforts of higher education institutions. Governments of the larger society have essential roles to play in reconstructing higher education to meet the exigencies of the knowledge-based information economy. Governments in the region must implement the various policies and strategies they have designed on higher education. These policies must empower lecturers and administrators of the higher education institution to work towards authentic higher education. Policies on higher education must target raising the standard of quality faculty through lifelong learning opportunities such as sandwich,

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104087 Making Higher Education Count in Sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons from John Dewey's…*

online, and distance learning programs. Governments must ensure that faculty work in attractive and invigorating higher education environments. Especially, faculty must have access to fast broadband internet connectivity and open learning resources.

Further, governments must enforce regulatory efforts and accreditation requirements on entry, contents, delivery, staffing, exit, and management of higher education through their agencies. The establishment and maintenance of quality assurance mechanisms across higher education institutions will significantly boost higher education in the Sub-Saharan African region.

A knowledge-based information economy requires learners with higher-order thinking and attitude. The Sub-Saharan African region has been longing for high stock of individuals with these attitudes and abilities. It expects higher education to produce a stock of human resources with the ability to analyze, synthesize, and apply innovative concepts in their social context to advance society's goals and strategies towards development. However, higher education in the Sub-Saharan Africa region falls short of this target. A reconstruction of higher education in the region along the lines of pragmatic educational philosophy would be promising. In *My Pedagogic Creed*, Dewey's pragmatic views offer a paradigm for reforming higher education in the Sub-Saharan African region. Its strong emphasis on social activities within the social experience of the learner must be balanced with the values of the learner's larger social context and empirical theories to create authentic higher education that produces a labor force to move the larger society towards its developmental goals and strategies.
