**2. Literature review**

#### **2.1 Strategic management shortfall in community engagement**

Strategy is an intentional action to maximise strength and opportunities while finding ways to navigate weakness [17]. Strategic management provides direction and inspiration for the institution to move to the next level [18]. According to Usoh and colleagues [19], strategic planning within universities 'is an official document that determines policy direction, decision making and institutional strengthening within the university'. Such planning is done to ensure proper resource allocation [20], which leads to positive organisational outcomes [21]. The organisation's strategic plan and objectives are aligned with the vision and mission. Most universities include community engagement in their vision statement. The challenge is mostly in the actualisation of the statements. The failure of attaining the intended objectives renders such vision statements fruitless. Strategic objectives should be well-defined and have clear indicators to measure and monitor progress. Evidence from a study at the University of Vienna pointed out that when goals are not clear, faculty are not certain of what to do [22].

Based on the evidence that universities do not include community engagement in the strategic planning, it is important that university top managers reconsider its inclusion. This will require that all the layers of leadership be involved in various forums to bring input on what is required. In fact, if universities are to live up to what community engagement is, that is, redressing the skewed relationship with communities, such strategic planning should start at the community level to identify needs

to influence transformation [4]. If universities are to be true to themselves [23], it would important to include community inputs, such as social needs or gaps, in the strategic planning to ensure accountability and responsible reporting in their report. Such needs will inform strategic objectives whether short-term or long-term. The community-university collaboration will amplify and authenticate their voices and ideas. This aligns with what Julius Nyerere challenged universities on not using their knowledge for self-prestige but to bring change among communities whose taxes are the lifeblood of universities globally [24].

Scanning through the strategic plans of some universities revealed that community engagement is an afterthought. This is because the teaching and learning component and research have clear targets and are well funded [25, 26]. The same cannot be said for the third component, community engagement since it is prioritised in most universities globally. This is despite the call to transform community engagement so that it addresses social needs [10]. According to Martin [27], without strategy, business is left to chance or wishy-washy thinking, which might never happen. Holland [28] emphasised the need for universities to establish strong administrative leadership to steer the community engagement schedule to achieve the set vision and mission.

When HEIs endeavour to define community engagement-related strategic goals, all role players are aware of the intended objectives; thus, required activities are planned and implemented [22, 28]. Given the limited resources within HEIs, the development of such objectives forces management to take bold decisions and challenge themselves to break the status quo related to community engagement by taking new stances through budget provisions. Observations from the University of Cape (UCT) Social Responsiveness annual report indicate the level of boldness, and the management has taken to lead the transformation of the community lives no matter how small it may be compared to the extent of inequalities in RSA [29].

#### **2.2 The community engagement in the African higher education context**

It is commonly believed that Africa lags behind in most educational development areas. While there are few universities in the top World University Ranking (WUR) report, the majority are at the bottom of the list [30]. In view of the university rankings, most universities globally are miles behind in gaining points on community engagement. From the very beginning, in East African University, one African leader, the first President of independent Tanzania, emphasised the importance of universities being visible in the communities, 'work against prejudice' by revealing the truth within communities through science, to advance community development [4]. The sharing of knowledge concurs with Julius Nyerere who said if a part of Africa develops, then the whole of Africa will benefit as well [24]. Thus, according to Horthemke [31] knowledge is regarded as an instrument to create culture and identity among the citizens. According to Cunningham and colleagues [10], Community engagement must be engrained in universities such that it becomes a culture. This means that it must be a tangible lifestyle through which those academics and students strive to improve those around them. Ultimately, through community engagement, the discriminations, marginalisations and inequalities are removed as university faculty engages reciprocally to share and exchange knowledge [9, 24, 32].

A plethora of evidence reveals that the other aspect of community engagement which is service learning has been receiving the best attention from most universities globally. For instance, students across various disciplines such as medicine [33], nursing [34] and education [35] and among a few are annually exposed to experiential learning within

#### *Advancing Community Engagement in Higher Education Institutions in South Africa… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108150*

communities. This is mainly because service learning is clearly defined, and allocated time bears credits for students' learning outcomes [36].

The most recent quest for university transformation in South Africa (SA) appears to be turning the tide towards the long-neglected social responsibility and collaborative knowledge development through community engagement [37, 38]. The call for engaged scholars and community-driven universities was long made by the late President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere who challenged universities to use education to influence change in the African continent [24]. From the inception of the 'third mission' in 1800, in the West, education was challenged to include community engagement, which was meant for nation-building and not to enrich an individual only [39].

Universities are gunning towards commercialization and entrepreneurship, which relates to community engagement [22, 40]. In SA, top-ranked universities such as the UCT, Stellenbosch and Pretoria, their budget is most fed by the so-called third-stream financial system [41]. On the contrary lower-raked universities such as Sol Platjie, Mangosothu, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMU) and Zululand depend largely on government and student tuition for funding [41]. Of course, there are many factors causing such disparities in income generation and allocation among the RSA universities. The main driver is the long-term history of inequality, skewed prioritisation of communities, and race difference through the apartheid system. The wounds of such a system will obviously take longer to heal because the historically disadvantaged universities such as those listed above are occupying the bottom sits in the RSA ranking are left miles behind by those at the top. This will take longer and would require serious reconsideration by the government and respective universities if the community engagement status quo is to be changed.

Reflecting on the report by the 2019 Department of Statistics report, it appears that universities such as Cape Town and Wits depends less (34% and 36%) on government funding (40% and 30%) on the third stream [41]. The allocation on these universities is much lower than total average of all universities in RSA. On the flip side, Sol Plaatjie and Mpumalanga depend largely on government funding 87% and 86%, respectively, with very little coming from the third stream 4% and 2%, respectively. Based on the funds' allocation presented by the Statistics Department of SA [41], the annual reports of the four universities with a high focus on the third mission can sustain themselves more than their counterparts. While the business of the university is good as another funding, it is recommended that the basic humanitarian aspects of social responsibility must not be neglected [40] and such university's innovative strategies feed SDG number nine, on building resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation [42].
