**5. Community engagement funding**

It goes without saying that all academic activities require funding to be realised. It is worrisome that community engagement has not yet received its well-deserved attention even after centuries of the birth of universities [3]. This is because there are no clear policies supporting and providing guidance at the policy level both at the universities and government level. In his speech in 1968 at the inauguration of the University of Zambia, Julias Nyerere summoned the government to play its role in providing funds for universities to use its intellect and resources to advance the development of proximal and distal communities and Africa for Africans in general [24]. While community engagement is well articulated in the institutions' vision and mission, there is a gap between pronouncement and actualisation of such pronouncements through the strategic budget and goal setting. Evidence from the strategic planning of most universities is that there are no clear objectives or goals set for community engagement. In the absence of set goals, there will not be activities planned and this will mean no accountability from both students and faculty. Inherently, there will be an allocated budget. Looking at the strategic plan for Universities such as Zululand [45], there is no mention of community engagement goals. There is an agreement between the various university reports [50] and studies reporting lack of funding as a challenge to implement community engagement across universities in the both developing and developed countries [3, 22].

There is strong and closer relationship between government and universities such that there is a close alignment of university policies to government legal frameworks [47]. In RSA, HEIs are expected to submit the annual performance plan (APP) to the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) annually [37]. The APP should report on the performance targets, which must be aligned to the respective university strategic plan during DHET's Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) period. DHET as the major funding body of the HEIs [20] measures the performances because the department ensures that set targets by the government are met. Each university's APP and the annual reports must clearly display the relationship between the strategic plan and the performance relating to the three-core business of the university as tabled in the reporting regulation [37].
